Feature / Uncategorized

The Change Strip – Fall Update

Posted by on October 13, 2023 at 10:31 am

Photo: Courtesy of Barcelona

While The Change Strip has been on a bit of a hiatus, that doesn’t mean the world of football design has been. Let’s take a look at some of the most interesting soccer design stories of the last few weeks!

All Three Points

Barcelona X Patta

Barcelona announced earlier in the week, a joint collaboration between the Catalonian footballing giant, Nike, and Dutch streetwear brand Patta. 

The collection, which includes a track jacket, a warm-up jersey, a pair of Nike Air Maxes and a few other items, heavily features heart and artery imagery in Barcelona’s famous blaugrana color pallet. The inspiration for the collection is derived from “Barca-Blood” a “Metaphorical elixir that runs through the veins of fans worldwide, uniting us in a symphony of Blue and Red…” 

While the design of the merchandise may not be to everyone’s taste, with large hearts and arteries throughout, it is interesting to see Barcelona lean more into the streetwear side of football. While the brand of Barcelona has always been incredibly popular, the club has seldom gone out of its way to collaborate with brands outside of its primary kit supplier. The Patta collaboration, along with Barca’s new sponsorship with Spotify, has thrown the club much more into the non-football pop culture spotlight. It’s a move that could simply be coincidence, or could be a larger indication of Barcelona’s attempt to reinvigorate their image after years of bankruptcy and lackluster performances on the pitch. 

Fluminense Samba Kit

Brazilian side Fluminense have released their third shirt for the season and boy is it a stunner. The jersey is inspired by legendary samba figure Cartola, (Estação Primeira de) Mangueira, the samba school he founded. 

Partially ditching the club’s traditional colors, the shirt is primarily green, with accents of pink, the two colors synonymous with Mangueira. The words to Cartola’s song “Corra e Olhe o Céu” are sublimated on the shirt, creating a light hoop pattern throughout. The final homage to Cartola comes in the form of a hip detail that depicts a stylized image of the artists in a Fluminense shirt.

While the shirt itself may be a bit loud, with its clash of pink and green, the story behind the design is fantastic, and reiterates how special a shirt can become when it takes inspiration from the community and culture around the club. 

PSG Leak 2024/2025

While the European football calendar may just be getting started, that doesn’t mean we can’t look ahead to next season already. 

The 2024/2025 PSG kit became one of the first shirts for next season to fully leak earlier this week. While the shirt looks relatively standard for French outfit PSG, it is special in that it marks the return to the Hechter (the iconic red center stripe with white outlines) for the first time since 2020-2021. It will be only the second home shirt in the last ten seasons to feature the traditional design without major modification. 

(Image courtesy of Footy Headlines)

Some small tweaks do exist, with the stripe having a hand-painted effect, primarily at the top and bottom of the design, however the shirt does read much more as “PSG” than recent designs. The reversion to the Hechter can be partially attributed to PSG ultras groups, who have recently campaigned for a return to a more traditional design for the club.

From the Archives

It may be a bit of a throw away, but if we’re talking about center stripes, we have to talk about the Union’s inaugural home shirts.

(Image courtesy of Football Kit Archive)

The center stripe was iconic, and unlike anything else in the league. Here’s hoping there’s a return in the near future.

Extra Time

While the NHL has cracked down and banned specialty jerseys after the topic of pride jerseys got too hot for the league to handle, some within the league are taking a stand.

In focus in Philadelphia is Scott Laughton, who said he’ll still use pride tape on his stick, despite the league ban. Good for him.

 

 

Author: Thomas Hill is a senior at the Savannah College of Art and design, studying documentary filmmaking. He aspires to pursue his masters in sports journalism. He's been an avid fan of Philadelphia sports for the last 23 years, and regularly attends Philly away games in the south whenever possible. You can follow him on twitter @puertodelphian

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