- Thanks to Pavel Shalaev and his site for helping in terms of research
As regular readers of the site will know, we are big fans of a team being able to interchange their first and second kits.
A less-seen, but still enjoyable, trope is when the away and third strips employ a totally different palette to the home but can be mixed together themselves (e.g. Arsenal having a yellow and navy away shirt in 2000-01 and a navy and yellow third).
However, it’s quite rare that an outfield kit will be interchangeable with a goalkeeper’s outfit – certainly something that’s unlikely nowadays, when firms produce the same goalkeeper design in five or six colours for all of the teams across its roster. Back in 2002, there was more imagination shown when it came to the netminders’ strips and Reebok took decided to bundle the Liverpool away and goalkeeper kits together in terms of colour.
The away, first seen in the Charity Shield defeat to Arsenal, was black with grey panelling and red trim, grey shorts and black socks. The goalkeeper’s shirt also looked to be mainly black but had a grey back, while the default shorts and socks were the opposite to the outfield change kit.
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Obviously, the shirts couldn’t be worn together – and the alternative goalkeeper shirt, yellow with a navy back, was also troublesome alongside the black away – but each jersey was worn with all four black and grey shorts/socks combinations.
In terms of the away kit, black-grey-grey was used at Sunderland, all-black at Arsenal and in the League Cup against Sheffield United and black-black-grey against Charlton Athletic.
The all-black goalkeeper strip had 14 outings, with quite a lot of them in Europe, while black-grey-black was used by Jerzy Dudek – who favoured modified two-thirds sleeves on his shirts – against Spartak Moscow.
Black-grey-grey wasn’t used in 2002-03 but the following season, on-loan goalkeeper Paul Jones became Liverpool’s oldest post-war debutant as he wore that combination against Aston Villa. It had four other outings during that campaign.
