It’s kit leak season! As we head towards the mid-point of the 2016-17 Premier League schedule, now’s the time when hints, suggestions, and outright leaks of new kit designs start to appear from the hinterlands of the internet.
Today, this has been making the rounds on Twitter, showing what looks like new kit designs from Nike for Tottenham Hotspur’s 2017-18 season, and they’re pretty nifty. Check ‘em out.
These Tottenham Hotspur x @Nike kit designs are incredible #COYS pic.twitter.com/lei94MiAn9
— Talking THFC (@TalkingTHFC) December 9, 2016
First, the obvious question: Nike? Well, yes, probably. Spurs have been rumored to be in negotiations with the world’s leading sportswear manufacturer to make their kits for the past year now, with their current UnderArmor deal expiring at the end of this season. Nothing has been officially announced yet to my knowledge, but the Daily Mail had a throwaway line in an otherwise unrelated article about Steve Holland and England where they mention that Spurs have wrapped up a £25m/year kit deal.
Interestingly, both clubs have agreed new kit-supply deals with Nike starting next season. Chelsea’s is worth £60million a year and Tottenham’s £25m, which will be the subject of much angst at the north London club.
Less than half of what Chelsea is making? Sigh. I wouldn’t take it as gospel yet, though.
So, the kits. I quite like these, actually. Yes, they look like a boring Nike template that every other Nike sponsored club team in the world will be wearing next year, but as boring Nike templates go it’s a NICE boring Nike template. The home shirts are attractive, the navy away shirts are straight fire, and the cyan and yellow kits are, I assume, keeper jerseys and are similar to what we’ve seen from the club in recent seasons.
They’re nice. I’d buy one. They’re also probably fake.
For starters, the AIA logo isn’t red on the home kits. One thing we can probably take to the bank is that no matter what the home kit looks like, it’ll have a red AIA logo.
Secondly, the shaded cockerel thing is... well, it’s just weird. Spurs kits in years past have had very (very) subtle patterns on the fabric itself, but we’ve never had any kind of a shaded design on the shirts themselves that doesn’t spell out the name of the shirt manufacturer or the club.
Finally, this design hasn’t appeared yet on Footy Headlines, which is the place to go for football kit and boot designs that aren’t public yet. Last year, I publicly dismissed Footy Headlines when they said Spurs’ kits would have gold accents. They were 100% correct and I wasn’t. I’ll never doubt again.
I’m in the camp that thinks that, if we have indeed signed with Nike, we should brace ourselves for a few years of boring-ass kit designs that are in no way, shape, or form original or even particularly interesting. However, if Nike does end up sending us something similar to these designs, I think I’d be pretty satisfied.