Fantasy Kit Friday – if Liverpool had never left adidas, 2021-22 and 2022-23

By Simon Treanor

• This is part of a series, covering the following:
  1996-2006
  2012-20
  2021-21

As I’m sure you can appreciate, it’s been a tough few years to be a Liverpool fan.

Coming off the unmitigated failure that was the 2021-22 season, you have to ask yourself – what do we have to show for the past few years? Yes, we have a likeable team playing superb, exciting football. Yes, we have a manager who is perfect for the club every way, Yes, we’ve finally achieved the holy grail after 30 years, plus a Champions League and almost every other trophy. But ask yourself this: how many transfer windows have we won? Are you not embarrassed by our shamefully low net spend? Our team is both too old and too young, and full of flops that the manager is too stubborn to replace. No wonder if you look at these stats I’ve cherry-picked, it’s clear things haven’t really improved since the Brendan Rodgers era.

But all this I could take – just about – if I didn’t have to see on social media that seemingly every day Arsenal or Manchester United have released some superb new retro gear. Or some streetwear, or a change kit or training equipment with a really cool design. Even the regular kits, the routine training gear makes me jealous.

Yes, I’m pining for adidas again, and it’s time to update the Liverpool FKF series for this – and last – season. The colours remain the same, but otherwise we imagine a parallel universe in which the club was with adidas, and using real designs of the era.

2021-22

Home: The peculiar secondary colours chosen for this home kit – peach and beige – don’t really lend themselves to anything too dramatic, so we’ll keep it simple.

Of all the ‘plain’ templates in 2021, I’ve gone for the collared style, as worn by Leeds United (home) and Colorado Rapids (away).

Away: A remarkable four colours on this kit, which complicates it a little. The primary colour mainly suits a plain kit but…I feel like we should do something different and the subtle side panels used by San Jose Earthquakes are a decent compromise.

Third: Ah, now this is more like it. Yellow and red are classic Liverpool away colours, and historically lend themselves to pinstripes. We’ll save the main pinstriped template for later, so the more spaced out pinstripes on FC Cincinnati’s away shorts make a nice compromise. They won’t all be from MLS.

2022/23

Home: As promised, pinstripes would reappear.

I was blown away by Aberdeen’s new kit, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see it as a Liverpool kit. It speaks for itself, really.

Away: Liverpool’s current away kit combines white, black, cyan and magenta, which is just one colour away from a printer test page. However, if your printer was outputting pages like that you’d probably be on the phone to Hewlett-Packard, so we’re going to simplify the design.

I love a two-colour stripe, like on the new Lyon home, and even with these unusual choices, it kind of works. It also gives me a chance to use my favourite motif – multicoloured adidas stripes.

Third: This is a leaked kit rather than anything confirmed and, well… it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. It’s seemingly a two-colour kit which is a bit restrictive, particularly when one colour is red, which obviously can’t be too prominent on a Liverpool change strip.

I think the best thing is to go with a plain template – Arsenal’s third shirt is probably the best example, allowing for tonal Liverbirds repeating through the fabric.

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Thanks for that, Simon. Feedback is always welcome, along with requests for future FKFs – comment below or tweet @museumofjerseys.