It feels like it should be a mistake that a Tottenham Hotspur kit of white shirts, navy shorts and white socks would be classed as a mashup, but of course it’s all to do with the club’s preference for wearing all-white in European competition.
A tradition instigated by Bill Nicholson in the 1960s, the practice fell out of favour during Tottenham’s continental sorties in the 1990s but it was reinstated since 2006-07 and it remains in situ. Tonight, Tottenham host Milan in the Champions League last 16, looking to overturn a 1-0 deficit from the first leg three weeks ago.
As with the game in the San Siro, it’ll be all-white against black and red stripes, black shorts and black socks, which is Milan’s first-choice kit combination this season.
Back in 2010s, when adidas produced the kits, the classic white shorts and black socks had primacy and that meant that Tottenham had to alter their look for the first leg in Italy on February 19. Familiarity bred contentment as Peter Crouch scored the only goal to give them a lead heading back to London. This was also the first season where Tottenham had a dual-sponsorship approach – Autonomy’s name was on the Lilywhites’ shirts for Premier League games but Investec had that advertising space for cup competitions.
For the game at White Hart Lane on March 9, Tottenham were in all-white as Milan wore black shorts and a scoreless draw sent Harry Redknapp’s side through to the quarter-finals of European football’s biggest competition for the first time since 1962, when they had made the semi-finals.
That was a very clean design