On his superb site Kitbliss, Chris Oakley recently penned an amusing article about a fictitious team that had launched a new kit for 2022-23 – in keeping with the modern craze for ‘referencing’ older strips, they had taken inspiration from their 2021-22 outfit.
The only problem is that we live in a post-satire world, as evidenced by Sporting Clube de Portugal’s new shirt – using the same design as last year, the green and white are reversed and there is some black trim added.
It brought to mind the example of Olympiacos from the season just gone. We have previously looked at how adidas have dealt with the large number of red/white striped teams in their roster but the Greek side were given the same design as they had been three years in 2018-19, just with the gold trim changed to white.
Based on the popular Condivo 18 design, it featured white stripes that were slightly narrower than the red ones – meaning that the adidas logo on the 2021-22 version isn’t fully legible as it treads on to red stripes. The change in sponsor’s logo did also at least help to provide some differentiation, along with the shorts design. The font also differed, the 2018 World Cup style replaced by that used at Euro 2020.
Otherwise, though, fairly samey and perhaps another strike against the craze for one-year kit cycles. We await the launch of the 2022-23 Olympiacos kit to see how distinct it is.
