- As ever, United Kits made research easy
This weekend marks the 21st anniversary of the last time Liverpool and Manchester United met in a cup final.
Goals from Steven Gerrard and Michael Owen gave Gérard Houllier’s side victory at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
With Arsenal having moved eight points ahead (with a game more played) at the top of the league table as they beat Charlton Athletic the same day, it looked like United were set to end up empty-handed for the second year in a row, but they staged a recovery to come back and win the league.
Two things make the cup final interesting from a kits point of view.
Firstly, Liverpool went without the Worthington Cup sleeve-patches, not wanting to advertise a rival beer to their main sponsors Carlsberg – similar to how Manchester City refuse to wear Emirates patches in the FA Cup nowadays. Secondly, United were in change shorts and, though it might not look it, socks.
In the summer of 2002, the Red Devils had signed a deal with Nike, who unsurprisingly provided them with a white away shirt trimmed in black and red. The shorts were a nice throwback to those provided by Admiral a quarter-of-a-century earlier, featuring a red and white dual stripe, while the the socks were very much of the time, featuring a large black expanse on the back.
White-black-white would only appear on three occasions – against Charlton Athletic, West Ham United United and Aston Villa – while there was the usual practice of donning the home shorts or socks when the occasion demanded it.
The all-blue domestic third kit was the second choice for the Champions League but, away to the red and blue halves of Basel in November, United wore white shorts.
This look would re-appear at Middlesbrough on Boxing Day while the early-December trip to Burnley in the Worthington Cup saw them in white-black-black.
However, two days before the trip to Turf Moor, United were away to Liverpool in the league and on that day they donned the same look that would be used in the league cup final. While the home shorts and socks served as away back-ups, there were bespoke black alternative shorts and white socks for the home strip.
These white socks were favoured at Anfield and again in Cardiff after United lost the toss for colours.
Ever since a 3-1 win in 1996-97, United had favoured all-white away to Liverpool and presumable that was the logic here.
With the black shorts absent, it made sense to wear ‘proper’ white socks but one wonders why that was not done at Basel or Middlesbrough.
Whatever the reason, the all-white preference against Liverpool didn’t affect design sensibilities: for 2003-04 (and the next two seasons after that), United had a new white third kit and that too had a vertical black stripe, albeit a thinner one, on the socks. These ones did appear at Anfield.
