So here we find ourselves in 2009. Happy New Year. I hope everyone got what they wanted for Christmas; I certainly did. Liverpool top of the league, Chelsea dropping points, Celtic winning at Ibrox (with the bonus of that allegedly adulterous Rangers-supporting swine Gordon Ramsay no doubt being banished to his shed to witness it) and finally my Christmas wouldn't have been complete without receiving an example of football design brilliance.
My (bespoke?) Liverpool/Marseille scarf went straight from the wrapping to my neck and that's where it stayed as I eschewed other presents. "Indoors" and what? I now need Celtic/Liverpool and Marseille/Celtic versions and three weeks' worth of 09/10 Marceltipool wintertime sideline elegance will be catered for.
But Christmas is also a time of turkeys. And not just the fat, stuffed variety that we consume. Every December 25th, kids and adults alike unwrap the current shirt of their favourite football team, regardless of whether it's a hit or a miss. There may only be five more months of guaranteed sycronicity with what the players are wearing but the football shirt/kit is a seasoned pro when it comes to the under-tree area. This season's aforementioned turkey is, in my mind, Manchester City's bright orange change number and surprisingly, despite the convenience of the poultry link, it's come from Le Coq Sportif.
Le Coq Sportif has a distinguished history of sports, fashion and particularly football design. Success on the field has followed the brand from their comparitively early years when they manufactured the kit of the first French title-winning Olympique de Marseille team through to their supplying to Tottenham Hotspur - including FA Cup victories - and the Argentinian (x2) and Italian World Cup winning teams of 1978 through to 1986. They could claim to have been world champions for 12 consecutive years as a result.
However, since Diego Maradona wore one of the most iconic shirts of all time, bearing the Le Coq Sportif logo, to lift the gold trophy, the company's fortunes haven't been so great. Whilst they've occasionally been there or thereabouts in leisure and fashion, their stock in the kit manufacture business has fallen. Until, that is, last season when they released three Manchester City strips to critical and popular acclaim. The award-winning home and gorgeous third shirts particularly showed a beautiful compromise of innovation and decidation to timeless subtlety. LCS even released a superb Gallagher coat to be worn on the bench. Le Coq was back.
So this makes one wonder why The Richest Club In The World™'s latest playing outfits are ugly, cheap (looking) 90s throwback abominations with shoddily laid-out printing and embroidery. The home kit is bad enough (redeeming feature? I kid you not: luminous drawstring on the shorts) but that's trumped by the bizarre mess of the black and red away and the sub-rate-design-bar-raising third. I recently wrote a piece on orange football shirts and left the City third shirt out. It wasn't an oversight. If Le Coq Sportif were deliberately trying to create something awful then that kit is their Springtime For Hitler. That said, just like the fictional musical, inexplicably, some people like it!
On the other hand: most people, mainly those with eyes, hate it. So if you received that thing for Christmas, I feel for you. Let's hope 2009 is a better year for Le Coq Sportif and if the manufacturers listen to the fans and keep an eye on the amateur design(er)s on sites such as DesignFootball.com they'll all up their games. When news broke that City were going to have an orange third kit, a mocked up design using the template of the home shirt was quickly posted online. That one actually worked! With consumers' voices being heard more than ever, 2009 should see much less in the way of backlashes as kits will be based more on what people are looking for. Money's gonna be tight over the next 12 months so Puma, adidas, Nike, Le Coq Sportif et al will have to get it right. It's making resolutions time...
