Top 5s – Over-rated kits

By Kitman Ramsey

• Any kit enthusiast on Twitter will know KMR as someone with strongly held views – we were delighted when he got in touch to suggest this topic. It could prove controversial

1986-88 Denmark home

The 1980s were a transitional period for football shirts, with the booming replica market changing the emphasis from function to form.

Less-established manufacturers started to make waves in this period, such as Le Coq Sportif, Matchwinner and Hummel, the latter of which debuted a template that has divided opinion for the last four decades, so much so that it was re-introduced this season.

Hummel’s pinstriped halved shirt worn most notably by their greatest collaborator, Denmark, is the definition of chic to many football kit collectors. To me, the red and white pinstripes create a light shade of pink from afar that gives the opposite effect.

The template works far better with two colours in similar shades, such as Aston Villa’s away shirt at the time, or Real Betis’s third shirt this season.

1988 Netherlands home

To many, this is THE greatest football shirt of all time.

With new fabrics allowing more advanced printing techniques on shirts, different patterns were experimented with as the 1990s approached, including this fade design from adidas, which first appeared at Euro 88 and was used by both of the finalists: the Netherlands and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The former were able to wear their now-iconic orange shirts which used this modern design, while the USSR had to change to plain white shirts, allowing the Netherlands to catapult this shirt into folklore.

I think it suffers from the same issue as the Danish shirt, as the white washes out the bright orange which usually makes Dutch shirts so striking. Also, the Netherlands should always be in either contrasting black or white shorts, rather than the orange worn in this final and that have been chosen as preference recently.

1991-92 Liverpool home

Perhaps as a Gen Z-er, I don’t feel the nostalgia that a lot of millennial football shirt collectors do for kits released in the 1990s, and for this reason the adidas Equipment period has always seemed like a low point in their catalogue.

Umbro’s answer to this experimental era was increasingly abstract shadow patterns and throwbacks to the early part of the century, whereas adidas began adapting their now-legendary three stripes across the shoulders and sleeves.

This was first realised in an asymmetrical design, with three chunky stripes down the right shoulder, with these being shadowed on the left leg of the shorts.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” springs to mind, as adidas’s traditional three stripes were the epitome of elegance and class and this experimentation began a lull in the German firm’s football shirts which continued for a decade and a half.

2018-20 Nigeria home

The first entry on the list that I was conscious of, the virality of this shirt is like no other football kit release I have witnessed.

As soon as the collection was revealed to the public (and before – no thanks to the endless leaks that plague the current football kit market), nobody could get enough of Nigeria’s new home shirt, which used a fluorescent shade of green reminiscent of their 2002 World Cup shirt.

This kit was another that felt washed out with the heavy use of white, and actually felt too restrained for what is what going for, especially with the power of hindsight.

Nike’s more recent efforts for Nigeria – specifically the home shirt used recently at the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations – felt more adventurous and in tune with the country’s culture, rather than a commercial shirt for mass appeal, as I felt was the case in 2018.

2022-23 Arsenal away

The last entry on this list is also adidas’s third, and with one of their most iconic and stylish all-time soccer collaborators: The Arsenal.

When adidas returned for a second stint in N5 in 2019, fans were excited at the prospect of throwbacks to the Anfield ’89 shirt and the ‘bruised banana’ (which are both honourable mentions for this list).

Adidas duly obliged, along with unexpected call-backs to the lightning theme that Nike introduced to the Gooners in the mid-1990s, but in 2022-23 they tried some new colour-schemes.

Along with a gorgeous if-not-impractical baby pink third shirt, a black and bronze away kit was instantly adored by fans. Perhaps aided by the team’s title charge, this shirt flew off the shelves.

At this point, black shirts with metallic colours (think gold, silver, etc.) are low-hanging fruit for best-sellers, and have been worn to death by most clubs.

Plus, the AFC shadow pattern in the design left a lot of empty space and added to the incohesive vibe of the whole effort.