This is a piece I had been planning to do with ages, but thankfully tonight’s Champions League meeting between Monaco and Galatasaray coincided with sufficient free time to get everything together.
For an Arsenal fan, reading Arsène Wenger’s autobiography when it came out five years ago was a bit like sitting down to a meal of something you like only to find that your fork lacked any tines – lots there that you’d like to consume but not all of it forthcoming, leaving you feeling a bit under-nourished.
In that sense, My Life in Red and White provided more utility in terms of outlining his pre-Arsenal career and it was in the section about another of those red and white clubs, Monaco, that a little tidbit jumped out.
Having guided the club to the French title in 1987-88, Wenger led them into the European Cup, where their quest ended with a quarter-final defeat to Galatasaray.
He notes that, due to crowd trouble in the previous round’s victory over Neuchâtel Xamax of Switzerland, Gala champions were punished by not being allowed to play their ‘home’ leg in Turkey.
However, the choice of Cologne – a city with a large Turkish population – for the second leg meant that Galatasaray still ended up with a large backing, in a stadium twice the size of their own one.
“I took this defeat particularly badly,” Wenger writes, though no further context is offered. If he means that Cologne was a sore issue, that would overlook the fact that that game was a 1-1 draw and it was the home leg that Monaco lost 1-0, contributing to their elimination.
Of course, that is something of a side-issue to our focus here. On reading about the fixture, my first thought was to what the kit matchups would have been – and I wasn’t disappointed.
As anyone who listens regularly to The Football Kit Podcast will know, one of the hills I will happily die on is the idea that it’s not necessarily a bad thing for a team’s change kit to ‘clash’ with their home, once they’re able to solve any problems that do arise against the teams they meet.
During the period in question – captured so well by Joey Smith’s Cold War Classics series – both Monaco and Galatasaray tended to stick to their colours as much as possible and the 1989 quarter-final provided a fine example of this.
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On March 1 at Stade Louis II, the home side were of course in their Grace Kelly-designed diagonally-split shirts (made by Nike, incidentally) and, while Galatasaray couldn’t wear their usual red and yellow halves, they were clad in all-yellow trimmed in red.
Then, a fortnight later, Gala – not at home, but still the hosts – were back in their traditional look.
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Monaco wore a kit that followed their home one in terms of collar, fabric design and two stripes around the arms, all-white with red accents – they had an inverse available for when they played teams in white.
As mentioned, the 1-1 draw took Galatasaray through to the semi-finals, they were to exit the competition against Steaua Bucharest in the last four – while they were allowed back in Turkey for their home leg, it had to be played in Izmir.
