20 Friday Apr 2018
Posted in Fantasy Kit Friday, Kit history
Another Ireland suggestion from Mikey Traynor, who had previously asked for 2002 Nike kits for the Boys in Green.
This time he has moved on four years and gone for adidas, with the home their stock style as used by Germany and on the aways of Spain and Argentina.
Then for the away he asked for something like France had had in their run to the final.
13 Friday Apr 2018
Posted in Fantasy Kit Friday
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adidas, Admiral, England, Fila, Hummel, Kappa, Northern Ireland, Patrick, Scotland, Umbro, Wales
The tardiness of today’s offering should hopefully be compensated by the fact that it’s a bumper edition.
It’s the melding of two independent requests – Paul Thomas asked for a 1976 Home Internationals mix-up and then David Morrissey sought something similar from 2000, so we decided to bridge the gap and do 1988 as well.
That meant that each country could have one kit from each of the others, and the easiest way to do that was to do two pairings per year. We wanted to avoid putting countries in kits by the same manufacturer as they had at the time, and though there are slight quibbles – like Wales ending up in Umbro in each each of the three years – we’re fairly happy with the outcome.
There has been a little bit of artistic licence taken with trim colours, but if you have a problem with that, then – like Lance Armstrong in his infamous podium speech – I feel sorry for you.
06 Friday Apr 2018
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Back in January, we did an Aston Villa/Birmingham City mid-1980s swap and in the comments section, Chris made a request to do similar with the two North London sides.
Last Wednesday marked the 25th anniversary of the sides meeting at Wembley in an FA Cup semi-final for the second time in three years, Tony Adams’ goal giving Arsenal a 1-0 win, and Chris wanted the kit designs from that game reversed.
The grey on the Spurs shirt is a little bit of a cheat as Umbro’s first strip kept up Hummel’s policy of only using white and navy, but the usual of narrow stripes gave the effect of grey.
The opposite challenge presented itself on the Umbro Arsenal kit, inserting navy in a design where only two colours had been used. The shorts kind of reference the 1988-90 style, as red panels would have lacked overall balance.
30 Friday Mar 2018
Posted in Fantasy Kit Friday
Due to Lee Hermitage’s birthday request a fortnight ago, we weren’t able to mark St Patrick’s Day with something Irish, so hopefully you’ll forgive the tardiness.
Instead of going with an Ireland kit though, instead we opted to do Dublin side St Patrick’s Athletic, who play in red and white. The best man to make the choice was Pat’s fan and all-round League of Ireland knowledge repository Dodge.
He asked for a Saints version of the adidas kit worn by Brighton & Hove Albion from 1985-87, and we have to agree that it looks very nice, a pity that the design didn’t have more air-time.
23 Friday Mar 2018
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This one could be divisive – or just plain unpopular.
The 1995-97 Newcastle United adidas shirt – the first made by the German company – is held in very high regard – voted the eighth-best ever a few years ago, for instance. We like it but feel there is an element of The Emperor’s New Clothes about it and rate its Asics predecessor just as highly.
Craig Stoddart is of an even stronger view, as he outlines:
Newcastle United’s adidas home kit from 1995-97 is hugely overrated.
There, I’ve said it. Sacrilege, I know, among kit aficionados to say such a thing, but it’s the truth.
And what’s more, it was not as good as the kit it replaced, the Asics strip used for two seasons from 1993, before adidas became their suppliers and gave them the aforementioned grandad-collared shirts.
Looking back, I would like to have seen adidas give Newcastle the template they used for Bayern Munich (and later Crystal Palace). Over to you, Denis…
A fairly straightforward brief, though still with some decisions to be made. Craig went for a black collar, like the 1993-95 shirt, and we moved the adidas wordmark from its central position on the Bayern shirt to the right breast, where Palace had it.
Bayern and Palace had the three adidas stripes in white but doing them in blue on this wouldn’t have looked great so we went for white trimmed in blue and the same on the socks – white socks like Bayern might have looked nice, but maybe not Newcastle enough (though Ruud Gullit did try to bring about such a change a few years later).
Better than the original, or a complete affront? Let us know…
16 Friday Mar 2018
Posted in Fantasy Kit Friday
Friend of the site Lee Hermitage (see here for the large collection of programmes and magazine he has for sale) is celebrating a significant birthday this weekend – let’s just say that Patrick might have been a suitable name – and he made a special request for FKF.
In 1984, Manchester United had adidas and Tottenham Hotspur had Le Coq Sportif, memorable kits on both sides, and Lee wondered if it would still be the case by switching makers.
One factor to take into account was that, while Spurs’ kits had just two colours, United’s had three, so there had to be some little bit of artistic licence. For United, that meant contrast necks, cuffs and stocking tops on the home and away.
For the third though, we stayed more faithful to the original, effectively just darkening the Spurs away and swapping navy markings for white.
For Spurs, Lee chose the away kit colour, sky blue, as the trim colour on the home, with white acting in a similar role on the away.
09 Friday Mar 2018
Posted in Fantasy Kit Friday
Last July, we did an Arsenal Fantasy Kit Friday which imagined how things might have been if they had stayed with adidas in 1994.
On foot of that, Anton Karlsson took it a step further and wondered how the Gunners might have looked in the style of kit used by Spain at the 1998 World Cup.
It’s a design which works fairly well with Arsenal – some white-sleeve purists may have misgivings, but it’s an evolution of the 1992-94 shirt – and the real Nike kit of 1998 had white side panels too. The Spain shirt had a stylised federation logo below the neck, so we substituted that with the classic Arsenal art deco crest.
The away shirt follows the same pattern, but we opted against full navy sleeves – Nike had done this in 1996-97 but the 1997-99 away had a navy hoop instead.
For Spain and France in 1998, adidas coloured the side panels on the shorts and doing this for Arsenal pays homage to the classic 1988-91 style.
02 Friday Mar 2018
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A bit later than usual, but hopefully worth the wait.
This was a request from a while back – unfortunately, despite a trawl of old tweets, I can’t for the life of me find who asked for it, and for that I apologise.
South Africa’s kit for the 1998 World Cup was an evolution of the distinctive style used prior to that – while Coventry City didn’t have as varied a palette, their willingness to combine sky blue with navy and white (previously explored in a 1992 Hummel style) lends itself to the design.
23 Friday Feb 2018
Posted in Fantasy Kit Friday
A while back, we did an FKF which imagined how Atlanta United might have looked had they been present at the birth of Major League Soccer.
Inspired by that, Jordinho came up with another what-if American request – LA Galaxy in the 1996-98 Umbro England kit. Galaxy had green and black stripes then and have white and navy now, but we cheated a little and used the in-between yellow, black and green colourway.
09 Friday Feb 2018
Posted in Fantasy Kit Friday
As far as we can see, St Pauli have never had adidas kits – too mainsteam, perhaps – so Matthew Ashcroft came up with suggestion for today’s edition.
Obviously, the style he refers to is one close to our hearts, given that it was also worn by Cork City, and it’s a template which is quite versatile. A shame, perhaps, that it wasn’t utilised more, but maybe if it had been it wouldn’t be so special.
St Pauli did have predominantly white home shirts back at the turn of the 1980s into the 90s, and Jack Daniel’s were not the sponsor until later in the 90s, but there was a guy wearing a watch in Ben Hur and that’s still rated highly.
