Here is the third of four articles featuring the kits that are to be worn in Euro 2008.For me, Group C is the real pick of the bunch kit-wise with some great designs for some great teams. In my opinion these are the best strips of the tournament.
Adidas lead the way with their kits for France and Romania. The French of course playing in a change strip of red rather than their traditional white – a decision that got the purists hot and bothered. The home shirt features a dynamic chest graphic. As usual the shorts and socks have been designed to be interchangeable between the outfits. Whilst nothing spectacular, the Romanian kits are good solid designs that make the most of their dazzling colours.
The Holland strip features a masterstroke by Nike with the inclusion of ‘Nassau Blue’ – a colour traditionally associated with the Dutch Royal Family – in the kit. It really lifts the familiar orange and white colourway. The away shirt is another classic with the Dutch flag incorporated across the chest.
Finally, Puma’s typically elegant Italian kits make up the Group C selection. Although the designs are standard Puma templates the white and navy colour scheme of the away strip helps create a really classy looking strip.Part 4 of Euro 2008 kits to follow soon.
All illustrations are (C) 2008 www.truecoloursfootballkits.com and must not be reproduced without express permission.
The official Euro 2008 website has the Italy kit as all-blue. This could be an error, but they rarely seem to wear blue-white-blue in major championships anymore
I’ve noticed a few errors on the Euro 2008 website to be honest, they’ve also got Portugal’s home kit socks as being green with red trim when it’s the other way round.
Italy’s normal first choice is blue-white-blue, but they’ve been wearing all-blue whenever they play a team who turn up in all-white, because of some daft FIFA rulings on kits – I always thought the away team were the ones who should change shorts/socks in the event of a colour clash? France have done the same on a number of occasions also, wearing all-blue instead of the usual blue-white-red.
By the way that Dutch kit has won me over, even with the sky blue socks – I didn’t like the kit when I first saw it in the promotion photographs.
For some reason, FIFA and UEFA don’t like it when a colour is part of both teams’ kits, eg they don’t allow blue-white-blue against white-blue-white
Great stuff. Please add Group D soon. I’m in the States, and I’ve got two children who are psyched for Euro 2008. The kits have been a great way of adding to their interest level, and I want to let them see all 16 teams before the tourney starts. Romania and Holland are both hits.
i wondered why national teams have started wearing one colour kits(all blue,all white etc).What a load of nonsense! france are blue,white,red and italy are blue,white,blue!!! The italian strip aint a patch on the espana 82 kit either.
I’m not a fan of single colour kits being worn as an alternative to a regular combination (eg Italy, France). However, I think its going to become more common with FIFA’s rules on colour clashing becoming ever more draconian and a little daft. I’m under the impression that, for example, a team wearing white shorts and another team wearing white socks could not wear them during a match. One of them would have to change – i.e. there should be no clashing of colours AT ALL on the pitch. I guess the easiest way out of this is to sport strips that are all one colour – everything becomes easier. Combine this with the dark/light ruling and you have potentially bland arrangements of kits during a tournament.
On a similar note, I personally don’t like to see clubs changing from their regular strips for no real reason other than superstition for cup matches (eg Rangers wearing all blue in the UEFA Cup Final and Pompey similarly wearing all blue in the FA Cup.) Anyone know the origins of these cup traditions? Are they purely down to superstition?
I think these teams wearing certain kit combinations is merely down to superstition, they get forced into wearing them due to the colour clash, end up getting a fortuitous win and then deem the strip “lucky”.
Sorry to go into a bit of a tangent, but this draconian measure by FIFA is spoiling the tradition of certain teams’ kits, even in cases where BOTH teams have had to wear away shorts with the home kit just to ensure they are all wearing what are basically one-colour or all-light/dark kits. A prime example that comes to mind is that Brazil v Japan game in the 2006 World Cup, where Brazil were forced to wear a mismatched yellow-white-white combination against Japan’s all blue, yet the home shorts colours were vice-versa. It just doesn’t make any sense at all, especially with television pictures being a hell of a lot clearer than they were say 38 years ago when the first colour transmissions of the World Cup took place.
This bland uniformity of colours is like going back to the early 1960’s, when teams ditched tradition in favour of sporting one-colour kits just so they “looked good under floodlights”.
I wasn’t aware of that ‘looked good under floodlights’ story – was that true? You are right though about the ruling – all character and individuality will be squeezed out of the strips. It wouldn’t surprise me if one day every match will feature a team in a single coloured strip playing another team in all white!
Well it was kind of, going back through history the fashion in the 1960’s was one of simple, minamilist design, and with midweek games becoming common in that era as clubs erected floodlights, some teams felt that a single coloured kit would look better and arguably easier to pick out under floodlights.
Of course such a trend brought us some really classic kits like Liverpool and Chelsea, both of whom had previously sported white shorts, but now, in the 2000’s, it seems as if the tradition is being thrown away by some rulings dreamed of by some myopic penpusher in a cushy office. I’ve heard of matches having a dark strip/light strip in the past when people watched the game on television in black and white, but with the technology we have now, I can’t understand why FIFA and UEFA have gone back to the old days.
France in all blue against Romania, what a joke
I watched Austria/Poland last night and it was the third match featuring all-red vs all-white. It does get a little boring!