The best FKF requests are the ones that give you a sense of a missed opportunity – that they really could and should have happened – or, a little bit disconcertingly, the ones that give you a feeling of Mandela effect – that they actually did happen.
Today’s one isn’t far off the latter category, in our view. After all, Hummel have re-done (or overdone) the ‘Danish Dynamite’ design for Denmark more than once with varying success and in 2019-20, they celebrated their recoupling with Coventry City by providing a refreshed version of the club’s 1987-89 home strip.
Southampton were also given the original design from 1987-89, similar to the Denmark offering but with black as the third colour (and a more traditional left-over-right v-neck) and, when it was announced that they would move from Under Armour to Hummel in 2021, more than a few kit enthusiasts expected a modern reinterpretation.
It hasn’t happened yet, but when the change was in the offing, Tom Leonard was one of those expecting or hoping for something along those lines and he requested a Southampton version of the Coventry kit.
In our view, when approaching something like this, it’s best when the manufacturer references the old strip while at the same time bringing something fresh – adidas did this successfully with the Germany away kit in 2018 and the Arsenal second strip of 2019-20.
It’s something Hummel managed with that Coventry kit, too. Without getting two technical, the original design was a halved shirt with a third colour, slightly darker than one of the halves – pinstriped across the body – the 2019-20 version had pinstripes in two different weights, fading up on one side and down on the other. The Southampton home has black as a third colour, of course, while the away is in the traditional yellow and blue colour scheme.
As ever, feedback is welcome, along with requests for future FKFs – comment below or tweet @museumofjerseys.
The most of UA era kits were absolutely horrendous. I only liked the kits of 16/17 season + 17/18 home & 18/19 away (yellow&blue is always nice colour combo). 20/21 kits were alright but real shame the opportunity to mix&match between home & third wasn’t properly used that season. When Saints used change shorts they rather went with red ones. 17/18 was also a missed opportunity when there wasn’t a recreation for 1980-85 away kit as well. Esp 19/20 kitset was a shocker, otherwise that season had decent kits imo but Saints had the worst kits of that season.
They look great – sadly unlikely to ever be seen in real life given the demise of Hummel’s UK distributor, and the sheer number of teams moving on from their deals with them.