A brief post so that the publication matches the day mentioned in the headline.
There are some clubs that are linked very strongly with a particular brand and other clubs who have never crossed paths with certain makers. However, given the length of the time they have been in operation and the breadth of their reach, almost every club has played in Umbro at some stage.
Middlesbrough may well have done so in the distant past, given the relative proximity between Yorkshire (though it always seems kind of strange that that’s Boro’s county) and Lancashire, where Umbro were based.
However, what we can say is that, since the first appearance of manufacturers’ logos a half-century ago, the double-diamond has never appeared on a Middlesbrough strip. If we’d had more time, it might have been an idea to do one Umbro set from each decade – perhaps we can revisit such a concept. For now, and for no particular reason, we’ve landed on 1999-2000.
The salmon-pink and navy Scotland away kit provides a good basis for a Boro home, with a white stripe across the front (and sometimes back) serving as a good identifier to separate them from other red-clad clubs. Often, the band will be low, housing the sponsor, but this serves as a call-back to the style first introduced by Jack Charlton, which had the club crest sitting on it.
The white, purple and black change strip uses a training-kit style that Umbro gave to a quite a few teams at the end of the last millennium.
Most strangely, it was used by Manchester United in the 1999 Charity Shield and not seen again that season but then promoted to away kit – with new Umbro logo and sponsor – for 2000-01.
In real life, the design of the actual Middlesbrough 1999-2000 away was recycled for use on the 2000-01 home kit.
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