If you were asked which was the best template of 2004, you’d most likely say the Nike Total 90 range.
There is absolutely nothing at all wrong with that: a couple of Christmases ago, along with our friends from The Shirt Union, we reimagined the 2004-05 Premiership as a T90 fest.
However, another strong offering from a major supplier that year was Puma’s style, which Chris Oakley recently featured at number 24 on his 100 best templates countdown on Kitbliss.
To our minds, one of the keys to a good template is having enough different areas of variability so as to allow kits with the same colour-scheme to still look distinctive – such a quality was tested due to the German firm having contracts with so many sides who wear red and white but they managed fairly well.
Another challenge of the strength of a design is that you can be able to apply it to any team and still have them looking like themselves, as it were. To that end, we have taken six of the non-Puma countries at Euro 2004 – avoiding any in red and white – and given them the Puma treatment.
Different contrasting areas have been utilised in order to display the versatility of the template: looking at them objectively, some work better than others but any failures are our fault rather than Puma’s.
As ever, feedback is welcome, along with requests for future FKFs – comment below or get in touch via Twitter, Bluesky or Facebook.
