Fiorentina take on Como tonight in the last of the Coppa Italia’s last-16 ties, with the winners earning a quarter-final clash with Napoli.
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Presumably, like the league game at Stadio Artemio Franchi in September, which Como won, the visitors will be in all-white (assuming, of course, the home team wear their primary kit, but such expectations have not always worked for us).
For Cesc FÃ bregas’s side, such a look involved mixing the white shirts and socks from their second kit with the shorts of the home strip and they remain an exemplar of the beauty of mixing and matching, as evidenced by their other combinations worn so far this season:
It’s a practice that remains fairly popular in Italy – Milan are generally good for it, but have been guilty of doubling up shorts and socks of similar palettes in recent years; Bologna are excellent; Lecce will be worth their own article soon and others like Atalanta, Cagliari, Verona and Torino can be said to have change kits that reinterpret their colour-schemes. Napoli are something of a special case in that their domestic away kit has gold accents but the European one is a reversal of the home.
By contrast, Burnley are the only club in the current Premier League season who can be said to have two kits designed with interchangeability in mind.
Crystal Palace’s third kit is white with blue and red trim but, as yet, it has not been cross-pollinated with the home strip. Even Manchester United, for so long the gold standard when it came to mashups, have only practised proper mixing and match on occasion in recent seasons.
Instead, most clubs now have bespoke alternative shorts and/or socks for both their away and third kits and, while that is to be applauded in one sense, it does feel like overkill when a set of kits can be designed with an overarching view leaning towards the mixing of outfits.
What are your favourite interchangeable kit sets? Aston Villa 2011-12 ticks a lot of boxes for us but you may have other views – comment below or get in touch on Bluesky or Twitter.
