Tonight could be the final outing for Barcelona’s cup kit.
We appreciate that it’s quite an uncertain sentence – and the lack of clarity is not due to us being sagacious about a four-goal deficit being overturned against Atlético Madrid in the Copa del Rey.
No, rather than the ‘could’ suggesting that the kit will have more outings – unlike Borussia Dortmund, say, who wear cup kits domestically and in Europe, Barça’s has not been used in the Champions League (though you can buy it with the patches for that competition in their online store.
Instead, it’s allowing for the possibility that its lifespan has expired.
As you can see, the cup kit has red shorts and blue socks – Atlético’s primary outfit this season has blue shorts and socks and, when forced to change one element due to a clash, they have swapped both for red sets. The visitors in red and white striped shirts, blue shorts and red socks against Barcelona’s cup kit might be too much of a mish-mash for a referee – however, Atlético’s away is navy and their third is a brighter shade of blue, liberally trimmed with red.
Barcelona’s league kit has blue shorts and socks and so, when Atlético travelled for a league game at the beginning of December, their red shorts and socks with the home shirt worked without much trouble.
So just let Barcelona wear their blue shorts tonight, I hear you say: it’s an option, of course, but the red (or ‘grenadine’, officially) on the league kit is a pinkish hue whereas the shade on the cup strip is more of a traditional scarlet, like the club’s Kappa era.
Had there been a more cohesive palette between the two outfits, it would have been easier to allocate red shorts and socks to the cup kit and allow for interchangeability as needed; instead, for the derby clash away to Espanyol in January, bespoke change shorts and socks were used.
Perhaps there is a backup set of blue shorts for the cup kit and they will be pressed into action for what will surely not be a miraculous comeback; or there is a chance that the league kit is deemed to best option, to have as close to a blue block against a red one as is possible.
Maybe Atlético will be a in special one-off fourth kit (just hopefull not red, as at Celtic a couple of seasons ago); maybe Barcelona will have to wear their second or third kit; or maybe Atlético will change to blue shorts and it’ll be somewhat like one of their 2015-16 domestic clashes.
We shall see.
