Earlier last week, German sportswear company Puma have released the third kits of their 10 elite clubs for this season, which utilized a revolutionary design. And safe to say, the entire footballing fraternity was rocked to the core by the designs of the kits and even footballers themselves were being taken aback by how Puma had done things.
The 10 elite clubs in question are English champions Manchester City, Italian giants AC Milan, Spanish side Valencia, French clubs Marseille and Rennes, PSV Eindhoven of the Netherlands, Ukrainian behemoths Shakhthar Donetsk, German side Borussia Monchengladbach, Russian rising forces FC Krasnodar, and Turkish powerhouses Fenerbahce.
German aces Borussia Dortmund were set to join the 10 clubs however once fans got wind of the leaked design for Die Borrusien’s third kit, they went up in arms and universally condemned the design, prompting Dortmund to heed to their fans’ concerns and postpone their third kit release until the near future.
The outrage that the Dortmund fans felt was quite reasonable once we see how Puma’s new third kits look like. Eschewing the traditional layout, the kits removed the club badge entirely from the front of the shirt, placing them on the nape region of the outfit. In place of the badge was the name of the clubs being printed smack dab on the center of the kits, while watermarked versions of the clubs’ badge were printed on repeat in the shirts’ background.
The unique designs were soon met with fierce reactions from football fans worldwide.
GiveMeSport tore into the new kits especially the Man City one, stating that they look like training kits, while Twitter user @Audacity21 branded the kits as “the worst kits in football history.”
“Delete it, bin it, and try again,” said another Twitter user, @JosephMCFC, “There’s absolutely no way you’re trying to charge 70 pounds for what is essentially a pajama top.”
“Puma have to be stopped,” said @CheapPanini, while @thesefootytimes tweeted out an image of Man City’s new kit alongside an image of The Office US’s Michael Scott saying “Nope, don’t like that.”
YouTuber Michael Ramsay, better known as The Irish Guy, slammed Man City’s third kit in his video grading of this season’s Premier League third kits that was uploaded to the HITC Sport channel.
Grading the kit a solid 0/10, Michael condemned the kit as being “an insult to football fans” as well as ripping through the shirt’s appearance and its 70 pound price tag, noting that the multitude of faded-out badges in the kit’s background made it look like a “dark blue pepperoni pizza.”
“You (Man City and Puma) are asking the working-class people of Manchester to work 9 to 5 and then fork out 70 pounds for something that looks like a spat off Boohoo.com,” Michael said in his video, “This isn’t a football kit, it’s not. It’s a 70 pound T-shirt. This is dreadful, lazy, and an insult to the intelligence of football fans.”
Another YouTuber, Thogden, also had some choice words to say about Man City’s new third shirt in his own grading of this season’s Premier League third kits alongside his father.
“This should not be an official kit,” said Thogden, “It looks cheap. You know when you cannot afford a kit and you go to the club store and got those crappy little shirts? That’s what it looks like.”
“To me it looks like either a T-shirt or a training top,” added Thogden’s father, affectionately called Thogdad, “This is not good and I hope they won’t charge you 100 quid for this.”
Even footballers themselves were also shocked by Puma’s “revolutionary” design.
The first leg of the UEFA Europa Conference League play-offs was played over last mid-week with Fenerbahce taking on Finnish side HJK Helsinki at the Sukru Saracoglu Stadium on Thursday – a match that Fener won 1-0.
20-year old Muhammed Gumuskaya scored the winning goal of the match, with the youngster being brought on to replace Mesut Ozil. Gumuskaya scored a scorcher from some distance in the 65th minute before wheeling off to celebrate by kissing the badge on his shirt…only for him to be left dumbfounded as Puma had removed the Fenerbahce badge from their third kit and moved it to the back of the shirt.
Adding more to the awkwardness of the situation is that Gumuskaya, a Fenerbahce youth product who had spent a good chunk of his professional career at his club, had just scored his first European goal and had intended to kiss the Fener badge to show his gratitude towards the club.
Gumuskaya’s embarrassing situation and the overall loathing towards Puma’s third kits this season encapsulates the problem that the German company has – it’s good that they wanted to innovate with a new breakthrough in design, but sometimes changing things too radically can brought about negative consequences. The sport of football has become a profitable realm for corporations to flex their financial influences but one also must not forget the humble roots that football clubs can trace their heritage from. Altering one’s history too much can cause significant outrage within the fanbase.