#AgainstModernFootball - new football kits

Not so long ago the revealing of a club’s new kit for the coming season was a distinctly enchanting moment. Like the launch of the new Panini sticker album or the mailing of season tickets, the unveiling of what your favourite team and players would wear for the next year or two was confirmation that summer was nearly over, football was once again on the horizon. Good times were coming.

The whole process seems rather more cynical now. The magic has gone. All that is left now is a money-making exercise designed to exploit fans for everything they’re worth. It won’t be long before clubs are actively picking up their own supporters and shaking them upside down, catching any loose change that falls out their pockets. The launch of a new kit every season is just a more acceptable way of doing exactly this.

Kit launches and the spectacles that are put on for the media to marvel at illustrate the true intent of a club’s new threads. When Manchester United launched their new kit for the 2016/17 season they did so not in Salford or even Manchester, but in China. They deliberately kept the reveal of their new look until they were on tour of the Far East, exposing their brand to the biggest audience and the fastest growing consumer market on the planet.

It’s all a little obvious. Clubs used to release a new kit every two seasons, at least giving their fans the chance to save their pennies for a new outfit. Now, however, they release a new kit more frequently than Now That’s What I Call Music releases a new album. Football clubs are better at squeezing money from their own fans than any boy band or pop group, with supporters snapping up new kits faster than Directioners snap up officially branded hoodies and phone cases.

Clubs should be a little more nuanced about why they feel the need to release a new kit every summer. They should come up with some spiel about how the biodegradable material used in their eco-friendly kits start to disintegrate towards the end of the season, with manufacturers making compost heaps from those left over at the close of the campaign.

Or maybe they should claim that by releasing a new kit every year, shaking their fans for every coin they have, football clubs are keeping the ailing post-Brexit economy afloat. New Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond is thankful for all the full-kit wankers walking the streets of the United Kingdom. When he stands outside 10 Downing Street to announce his first budget he might even have a football shirt stuffed in the red case he holds aloft.

But with manufacturers charged with designing different kits for every club in the land every single summer ideas are surely running dry. So many new designs aren’t new designs at all, with retro kits leered over like any flashback to a bygone age. Those that are truly original are lambasted for being too different or not different enough.

Indeed, kit designs are becoming more contrived with every passing season. Celtic’s new third kit for this season, for instance, is inspired by the club’s legendary Lisbon Lions side of 1967. Not by the kits worn by Billy McNeil and co. as they won the European Cup, though, but by the pink-colour of the tickets sold for the match.

What’s next? Will the Scottish champions next season release a kit inspired by the foil of the little dishes their scotch pies are sold in at Parkhead? Maybe they’ll release a mahogany-coloured kit in tribute to their manager Brendan Rodgers’ tanned complexion. The link would be just as tenuous as the one that resulted in the fluorescent pink kit they will wear this season.

But despite the better judgement of fans, there is still an excitement over the release of their club’s latest kit. Shirts might now be little more than just embroidered billboards, with sponsors the most prominent thing on any modern kit design, but supporters still consider the curtain drop on their club’s new kit as a curtain raiser on the new season. It’d be cheaper if they just bought a new sticker album.