Today’s request comes from Louis Ostrowski, who commented on this post wondering how life might have been if Chelsea had never left Umbro for adidas in 2006.
While we haven’t had time to do everything, we will return to it in the future and this sets the ball rolling with that 2006-07 season, when Chelsea were going for a third straight Premiership title but had to be content with winning both of the domestic cups.
The challenges for the kits – the home, especially – are two-fold in that you have to avoid making it look too much like the strips Chelsea had just before parting with Umbro but also in that two of the double-diamond’s biggest club contracts at the time were the blue-clad Everton and Rangers.
(As an aside, it’s a pity that Marina Granovskaia didn’t broker a return to Umbro during her stint as Chelsea CEO, as the ‘Marina and the diamonds’ headlines would have written themselves.)
Umbro’s templates in 2006-07 were aligned to a main overarching approach, with small differences from shirt to shirt. The home is based on the Everton away, while the Monaco-style Rangers change kit is the starting point for the Chelsea away. The black and grey third uses the Rangers home layout, but with ‘proper’ crest, which should please the traditionalists.
Feedback is always welcome, along with requests for future FKFs – comment below or tweet @museumofjerseys.
Thank you MOJ! You forget how busy some kits were around that time, even the plainer kits had so many flashes and squiggles.