A previous post looked at the six different configurations in which the France senior team wore their 1998 kits.
Surely the new set launched for 2000 couldn’t match that? It could, with five different looks appearing in the space of a month as they claimed a second successive major title, winnning Euro 2000.
The new strips were an evolution of their predecessors. While the blue shirt was less of an explicit tribute to 1984 compared to the 1998 offering, it did still have a small red stripe across the chest.
Adidas were experimenting with their portrayal of the famous three-stripe trim, with the outside stripes on both the sleeves and shorts continuing along the hems. Also notable was that the away shorts featured a variant – not seen on any other kits, as far as we know – where the stripes closest to the number and the adidas logo swept across the other two and cut them off.
France were drawn with joint-hosts the Netherlands, Denmark and the Czech Republic. Their first two outings, a 3-0 win over Denmark and a 2-1 victory against the Czechs, saw the default first- and second- choice kits used respectively.
Since the early 1970s, France had included match details on the crests of their shirts and that was the case for this competition too, though instead of the dates of the games, the bottom line simply said ‘Euro 2000’.
The Netherlands had also beaten the Czechs and Denmark, meaning that France’s final group game in Amsterdam would determine who finished top and who came second in the group.
France were technically the ‘home’ team for the game but the Dutch had their third blue change kit in a row. In 1997, a friendly in Paris had meant a one-off third kit but this time an easier solution was found – the Netherlands wore their orange and black kit while France wore their away socks.
With qualification guaranteed, France manager Roger Lemerre made a lot of changes and Holland won 3-2. For France, that meant a quarter-final against Group C winners Spain.
This time, France wore all-white, mixing the home shorts with the away shirts and socks as they came from behind to win 2-1.
At the base of the crest, though, instead of game details were simply the words ‘Euro 2000’.
Our best guess for this anomaly is that France had expected to be able to wear their tricolore kit – given that Yugoslavia had been in an identical strip as Spain beat them 4-3 in the final group game – and only brought a spare white kit as a contingency.
Whatever the reasons, when the all-white kit was used again in the semi-final win over Portugal – Zinedine Zidane scoring a penalty for a golden-goal win – the match details were back.
That meant a final clash with Italy. In contrast to their World Cup 98 meeting, France were able to wear their blue shirts, but again both sides made kit alterations.
Italy wore all-white and France switched to blue shorts (incidentally, in an U21 game the previous November, France had worn red shorts with with their away shirts to avoid a blue-white-blue against white-blue-white match-up). This time, the date – July 2 – was included on the crest.
Marco Delvecchio put Italy ahead in the second half and it looked like France’s hopes of emulating the Germany 1972-74 team by holding the world and European titles at the same time would be dashed.
Deep into injury though, Sylvain Wiltord equalised to send the game to extra time and David Trezeguet was on hand there to give France a second successive golden-goal victory. The blue-blue-red look had not been used by France prior to 1995 but thereafter it became commonplace when shorts-clashes arose (though now all-blue seems to be in favour for such instances).
At the top, we mentioned how the 2000-02 set had matched 1998-2000 for six different kit combinations, so what was the sixth?
Well, with no World Cup qualifiers to contend with, France were able to spread the net in terms of friendlies and in September 2001 they played Chile in Santiago. With the home side in their usual red shirts, blue shirts and white socks, France used their change shirts with the usual white shorts and red socks.
Those countries met again in the spring of this year – Chile’s new set has red socks as default and they changed to white shorts with France in their new change strip.
