The Kit Cupboard

You may have noticed that The Kit Cupboard has been promoted and now has its own place in the top level of the site:

http://www.truecoloursfootballkits.com/the-kit-cupboard

Hopefully this will be a better and easier way for people to view the kit selection here. The articles page will remain for lengthier features though of course.

This is the first stage of the re-organisation of the site that I hope will be finished before New Year.

If anyone has any kit they would particularly like to see in the Kit Cupboard please let me know.

23 Replies to “The Kit Cupboard

  1. John, how about using the kit cupboard area of the site for stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else ie the kits you’ve done for the Umbro website. Also Martinos’s idea above would be good.

    By the way any Scots among you might want to look at the excellent CD de Tenerife away shirt by Puma. It is Navy Blue and has a big white St Andrews cross all across the front.

  2. I spotted that last week as well. I think its based on their badge and the flag of Tenerife rather than any connection with Scotland though.

  3. It is indeed based on their badge Amir, rather than having any specific link to Scotland, but is an excellent shirt nonetheless. As is their red third shirt with a Tottenham like neckline.

  4. Working on the 09-10 kits page Martinos – fronts of the shirts only though and hope to include Premiership and Championship.

    Mark – thats pretty much my thinking on the Kit Cupboard too – initially kits that didn’t make it to the books. There will certainly be a few of those Umbro kits appearing soon!

  5. Rich – you’re spoiling my surprise! Seriously, though I am planning a World Cup feature that will grow as the kits are announced. I’ve been looking again at some of the adidas kits and as often happens my opinion is changing. I really like many of them now – its just that Playtex business that puts me off!

  6. Sorry John! Great minds think alike 😉
    I’m loving some of the new adidas designs, though the TechFit ‘bra’ does somewhat spoil the design on some of them…the Russian one looks messy as it is already pretty intricate, but the french one looks quite cool, the dark shapes of the techfit adding to the overall colour of the bleu (sic). Am seriously tempted at the mo by the authentic versions of the kits on kitbag.com…£100 tho! Still, they come in a box and the Argentina one has a captain’s armband…A CAPTAIN’S ARMBAND…AND A BOX!!! How can I not???

  7. John have you considered a wall where we can all post messages that don’t specifically relate to articles or blogs you have posted?
    I noticed this weekend that Rochdale wore their Purple away strip at home to Macclesfield and Bury switched to last seasons all white home kit for the game versus Barnet at Gigg Lane on Saturday.

  8. That’s what I was going to suggest Andrew, a forum or messageboard, though I remember on the old site that it was spammed :/

  9. Forums like that always get spammed…I was on the World Soccer one for a few years and nowadays hardly anyone posts on it, but you get tonnes of ads for fake rolexes / betting schemes etc. I do agree with the concept though as I too have found odds and ends that would be nice to share etc.

  10. Macclesfield should have known Rochdale’s kit is blue and black so in truth they should have turned up in either of last season’s change kits. Mind you Rochdale’s choice of purple for an away kit is a rather strange one considering blue and black is the home kit, though I do think they have a white third kit lying around (they wore it against Everton in pre-season).

    As for Bury, it wasn’t last season’s kit but a one-off special worn to mark the club’s 125th anniversary, with the shirts being auctioned off. This season of course they’ve worn chocolate and sky blue at home, based on their first playing kit, with red and white stripes (worn as a home kit in the late 1890’s) as the change strip.

    Anyhow talking of the new Adidas kits, one we won’t be seeing in the World Cup is the new Russian kit, after they threw away a good position to qualify by giving Slovenia an away goal then losing the 2nd leg to crash out. It’s a decent looking piece of work from Adidas with some fine detail on the front. The only oddity, and this could well be a good debate for other national teams and clubs is the sudden change of home kit colours. Since the breakup of the old USSR the Russians wore either all white, or white shirts, blue shorts and red socks as their usual first choice. However since Adidas started providing their kit, they’ve gone for a very deep red with gold trim.

  11. Yep…don’t get the switch at all. Even the last kit (the 1st one adidas did for them) had the home shirt still white, but this time round they’ve switched for no reason at all?

  12. Those box sets do look nice Rich – makes me wonder though whether replica sales are slipping? This may be a way of giving people more value for their money.

    Andrew – that is a great idea. I’m looking into it now – it will probably mean people have to register though to prevent the spam problem my publishers’ True Colours site had before. Watch this space…

    Jon, its a pity Russia won’t qualify as I loved that kit…

  13. Adidas have produced 3 great kits for Russia since they returned as suppliers. The last Away one (the red) was also great looking and the ecru coloured trim an interesting addition.
    As for the message board idea, I’m sure most peeps here would be happy to register 🙂

  14. Cheers Jon (no 12.), this is an ideal exapmple of having somewhere to share thoughts and knowledge about kit related things. From the short clip of the Bury game on TV I thought it was last season’s home shirt.

  15. I always felt that Russia worn their last few red Nike kits, season 2006-07 onwards, as though they were their home one even though they were actually their away. So I think this was something asked for by the Russian FA. Also it seems inkeeping with current Russian politics.

  16. Even though Russia did wear their red kit for the last few games of the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign the white kit was the designated home kit for the finals. However at the time I was rather intrigued as to why they wore red in the quarter final against Spain, and moreso when they played Wales in the World Cup 2010 qualifiers (I was wondering why the hell we turned up in Moscow in yellow!).

    Anyhow the switch from white must have happened officially between Euro 2008 and the World Cup 2010 qualifiers, but even so, a change from red with white trim (à la USSR) to an almost burgundy colour with gold trim is still quite a strange one.

    Come to think of it the Greeks are another team to go through a change, switching their home and away kits around after winning Euro 2004 whilst wearing their “lucky” white away kit. Now, blue is their away kit, whereas it used to be the home.

    It’s not a completely radical change at international level, Thailand, for instance, wore red for many years, then changed to yellow to honour their king. Austria infamously dumped the German-like white and black for a more patriotic red and white, and Turkey have finally decided red with a white chestband (Middlesbrough style!) is their home kit, after years of confusing the hell out of me!

  17. After the break up of the USSR, the resultant interim team, the CIS played in a red home shirt and white away. When the team became Russia, they seem to have adopted white as the official home colour from the off. At USA 94, they wore white home shirts and BLUE away. After this, they seem to have settled into wearing white home / red away. Interestingly, when their red (Cardinal to be exact) post Euro 2008 shirt was leaked, it was touted as the home kit, which was proved false when the white home one came out. Seems the recent switch is the first time ‘Russia’ will have worn red as their 1st choice kit.
    As for Poland, I think you’re right John. To my mind, they always wore red at home in the 80s, but for a while now their home kit has been white.

  18. Poland’s home kit is officially white shirts, red shorts and white socks, though they have worn all-red several times at home in the past, notably against England in qualifying matches as the two sides were regularly paired in the same group. I know whenever Wales played in Poland we’d either wear our home kit or switch to yellow or unlucky green.

    I remember post-USSR (and CIS), Russia’s first kit was by Reebok and was all-white assymetrical affair with a blue sleeve and red seperating the white from the blue. This was quickly followed by an all-white kit featuring a very large Reebok logo in blue and red. Then that WC94 kit that Denis mentioned with the chequered pattern and strange collar. It wasn’t a popular kit as Russia readopted their previous kit for the Euro 96 qualifiers, before wearing a rather pedestrian design for the finals itself. However they did introduce a red and white away kit to mimic the old USSR kit.

    They switched to Nike in late 1997 and had a number of kits over an 11 year period, before finally changing to Adidas and reducing white to a change kit.

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