In the summer of 1999, Tottenham Hotspur made a notable change on the kit-front, with adidas taking over from Pony as manufacturers.
Along with what was a big step into the unknown, there was a reassuring familiarity: Holsten returned as sponsors, succeeding Hewlett-Packard, whose tenure had coincided with the Pony spell producing the strips from 1995 onward.
Holsten’s second spell would be brief, mapping perfectly with adidas’s reign. The summer of 2002 brought Kappa and Thomson (but not the same as the Thomson sponsoring Paris Saint-Germain).
The German brewer’s name had first appeared on Tottenham’s shirts in 1983, back when Le Coq Sportif made the kits and so we wondered, what if the French firm had also returned to White Hart Lane in 1999?
In terms of logo synchronicity, it’s an ideal match-up, on a par with LCS’s dalliances with the France national rugby team. In terms of their 1999-2000 offerings, the words ‘uncomplicated’ or ‘uninspiring’ may spring to mind, depending on your viewpoint.
The home shirt takes the Charlton Athletic away style as its base – the Latics’ yellow strip almost seemed like a tribute to Tottenham’s Admiral away, coincidentally – while the yellow second strip utilises the design that Birmingham City had that season.
In real life, Tottenham only had two kits for each of the adidas seasons (excluding the one-off used in the 2002 Worthington Cup final), with each of the change strips having white shorts and socks for interchangeability.
We have essentially brought forward the 2000-01 navy away to become a third kit here, opting for the horizontal pinstripes of (almost totally superflouous, as it was white) Queens Park Rangers third.
As ever, feedback is welcome, along with requests for future FKFs – comment below or message us on Bluesky or Twitter.
