World Cup Kit Parade 2010: Adidas

In the first of a four-part series, Some People Are On The Pitch assesses the wide range of football kits you’ll be seeing during the 2010 World Cup, looking at the output of each manufacturer in sequence. 

Adidas

With twelve World Cup countries in its portfolio, Adidas is once again assured of maximum visibility when the competition gets underway tomorrow.

As is not uncommon, the German company has ensured a modest degree of individuality to creep into the designs for its top teams while others have had to settle for an off-the-shelf template outfit. France’s blue home shirt, for example, features red and white flashes in a nod to some of its former designs including those for Euro ’84 and World Cup ’98.

Germany’s white shirt for home games has an understated yet smart trio of pinstripes in the colours of the national flag running from top to bottom, dissecting the club crest as it does so. A nice touch and a world away from the bold, some would say ‘garish’ shirt of World Cup ’94.

Japan’s home and away shirts both feature a short red block appearing from the underside of the collar – something you won’t find on any other country’s shirt, but given its slightly mystifying nature, perhaps that won’t be regarded as any kind of tragedy.

Denmark, on the other hand, have a curious white band going across the chest of their shirt, made up of eleven rows of dotted lines forming an illusion of visual perspective. The lines are supposed to be a tribute to the efforts of the eleven men making up the Danish team – a distinctive design and one which does Adidas great credit.

Sadly not every team wearing Adidas at this year’s World Cup are quite so lucky. The home shirts for many teams such as Greece, Slovakia, Spain and Nigeria (as well as the away versions for others including Denmark, Argentina and Paraguay) look like the kind of thing your ambitious Sunday League team would be happy to wear given half a chance. Sitting somewhere in the middle of the Adidas World Cup range, however, are the hybrids – those shirts which look like they were taken one step on from the base-level design but no further than that.

For examples of this, see the home shirts for South Africa and Mexico, replete as they are with two strange under-arm blobs. We’re sure they would’ve been something more distinct, but perhaps the designer took an early lunch and never came back. Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all...

Taken as a whole then, Adidas have produced a smart range of shirts and kits which are understated in their style, but style there most definitely is. You won’t find anything wacky or beyond the realms of good taste – moreover, you’ll get style in abundance even if, at times, there occasionally seems to be a lack of imagination.

Coming soon: Part 2 - Nike go for the sublime and the ridiculous...

Our great thanks go to John Devlin from True Colours Football Kits (www.truecoloursfootballkits.com) for the use of his excellent football kit graphics. To see all of John's World Cup kit designs in greater detail, click here.)

Football Kits 2008/09: Who makes what

Before we press on with other matters, here's a final word on the subject of football kits.

Just before the current domestic football season started here in the UK, we carried out some research to see which kit manufacturers were the most popular among the 92 league clubs, and duly compared our findings to those of last year.

For 2008/09, we can confirm that Umbro are the most popular kit manufacturer with eleven teams in their portfolio, five of which are (somewhat impressively) in the Premier League. The next most popular is Vandanel - a name that may not be too familiar to you if you support a team playing below the Championship.

Vandanel are an Essex-based company who have been in the sportswear industry for about twenty years and are now the suppliers of kit for ten Football League teams including Gillingham, Notts County and Tranmere Rovers. As you can see from these three examples showing their current shirts for Port Vale, Northampton and Darlington, they're not at all bad either.



Puma and Nike are next with nine teams each, and here you'll find a slight difference in approach between the two companies. While Nike can claim to have secured the contracts of clubs like Arsenal, Manchester United, Aston Villa and Fulham, Puma have only Tottenham by way of a 'star name'. Instead, their portfolio focuses largely on numerous teams from lower down the leagues like Coventry, Plymouth and Leyton Orient.

Further down the list are Errea, best known as the long-running suppliers of kit for Middlesbrough - they provide for seven teams - and Adidas who, out of the 92 clubs of the Football League produce kit for just six. That said, three of them are Chelsea, Liverpool and Newcastle.

All in all, there are 26 kit companies plying their trade this season - down three on last season - and one of the names to disappear off the list is Southampton FC. That's right: The Saints have made their own kit since 1999, but not any more - they've decided to go with Umbro for the foreseeable future.

Also falling by the wayside for 2008/09 is Bourne Red, the name for Bournemouth's own football kit company, plus one of the most famous names of all - Admiral. Only Leeds United had an Admiral strip last season, but with Macron securing the new contract, the one-time England kit suppliers are now absent from the football scene.

Other well-known names on the wane are Diadora (five clubs last year, three this), Hummel (Barnet last year, no club this year) and Surridge (down from four clubs to two) while Champion burst onto the scene with Wigan's new kit and Carbrini make their debut with Bournemouth and Luton's new attire.

Full list of kits (by manufacturer):
Adidas: Chelsea, Derby, Liverpool; Bukta: Chesterfield, Millwall; Canterbury: Portsmouth; Carbrini: Bournemouth, Luton; Carlotti: Blackpool, Oldham, Rotherham, Scunthorpe; Champion: Wigan; Diadora: Preston, Stockport, Watford; Errea: Brighton, Bristol Rovers, Burnley, Cheltenham, Crystal Palace, Grimsby, Middlesbrough; Gazelle Sports: Chester; Jako: Leicester; Joma: Cardiff, Charlton; Le Coq Sportif: Carlisle, Man City, Sheffield Utd, Stoke, Wolves; Lotto: Barnsley, Crewe, QPR, Sheffield Wed, Swindon; Macron: Leeds; Mitre: Huddersfield, Ipswich; Nike: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Fulham, Hartlepool, Hereford, Man United, Milton Keynes Dons, Rochdale, Southend; ProStar: Accrington Stanley, Shrewsbury; Puma: Brentford, Bristol City, Colchester, Coventry, Leyton Orient, Morecambe, Plymouth, Reading, Tottenham; Reebok: Bolton; SHO: Exeter; Sport Italia: Aldershot; Surridge: Bradford, Bury; Swift: Walsall; Umbro: Birmingham, Blackburn; Everton, Hull, Lincoln, Nottm Forest, Southampton, Sunderland, Swansea, West Brom, West Ham; Vandanel; Barnet, Dagenham & Redbridge, Darlington, Doncaster, Gillingham, Northampton, Notts County, Port Vale, Tranmere, Yeovil; Xara: Norwich.

Shirts for 2007/08: The Final Verdict

You may remember between May and October last year, we gave you the chance to get an early look at some of the new shirts being released for the 2007/2008 season. Not only that but we also gave you the chance to tell us what you thought of them by providing an online vote in each case.

Well now the season's ended, we can tell you which shirts were the most popular amongst you, our fine and, may we say, rather smartly-dressed audience.

You'll recall we featured one new shirt per Premier League team so as to provide a fair balance throughout, and you were given the option to vote for either 'Excellent', 'Good', 'OK', 'Poor' or 'Terrible'.

All that taken into account, it gives us great pleasure to announce that on 'Excellent' votes alone, your favourite shirt was this one worn by Aston Villa away from home:



Out of all your votes for this shirt, 66% of you said it was 'Excellent' and based on 'Excellent' and 'Good' votes combined, it picked up 85%.

For your reference, here's the top 3 shirts in the 'Excellent' category:

1. Aston Villa (away) 66%
2. Portsmouth (3rd) 61%
3. Man United (away) 59%

...and in the 'Excellent' and 'Good' combined votes category, things were a little closer:

=1. Aston Villa (away) and Portsmouth (3rd) 85%
2. Tottenham (home) 74%
=3. Derby (home) and Man United (away) 72%

At the other end of the scale, Chelsea's new flourescent yellow away shirt proved to be the most unpopular. Out of all your votes cast, 56% said it was 'Terrible'. It also cleaned up when adding the 'Terrible' votes to the 'Poor' ones. Again, it was the least liked with 67% of the vote share.

Here's the three least liked shirts in terms of 'Terrible' votes:

1. Chelsea (away) 56%
2. Manchester City (home) 28%
3. Reading (away) 25%

...and when adding 'Terrible' votes to 'Poor' ones...

1. Chelsea (away) 67%
2. Reading (away) 41%
3. Manchester City (home) 40%

So congratulations to Nike who obviously tapped into the wants and needs of the Villa fan market perfectly, if not the Man United equivalent too. Points deducted for Adidas who thought a luminous yellow shirt would be highly popular outside of Stamford Bridge, and as for Puma, we have one piece of advice: 'Battleship Grey' is only a good colour for battleships.

Thanks to you all for voting and look out for some 2008/2009 shirt votes coming very soon...

A sign of kits to come?

It has recently come to our attention that Adidas, that bastion of sports apparel for so many years, has... well... how can we put it... adopted a corporate policy of giving free hallucinogenics to all its employees.

If you don't believe us, take a look at this shirt currently being worn by French rugby union club Stade Francaise...



It is, we think you'll agree 'different'. And to build on such colourful foundations, Stade Francaise have also adopted this as their 'Third' shirt:



Now before you go and book up that eye test you've been putting off for the last three years, we'd like to point out that Stade Francaise do have a second shirt amongst their repertoire as well, but it's pink and is more conventionally styled than the two above, so we won't concern ourselves with that for now.

So the question remains, what do you think of the above? Whether you like them or not, we happen to think it's going to be the next big thing in football shirt design too. Let's face it, many teams have jumped at the chance to adopt all kinds of new designs in the past, and this could be the leap forward that some clubs have been looking for to get ahead of the rest of the crowd fashion-wise.

It's a bold step by Adidas and one which, we assume, they should be congratulated on for coming up with something so incredibly alternative. The only thing we're not sure about is the effect a rugby player bearing the physique and body weight of a disused coal bunker wearing brown and pink would have on an innocent spectator. We're sure they've already tested that under scientific conditions, though...