:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/66279603/908460906.jpg.0.jpg)
Ever since Nike took over as kit manufacturer for Tottenham Hotspur, Spurs fans have had one major beef: the kits have been designed according to one of Nike’s football kit templates. That means that the Spurs kits end up looking a heck of a lot like every other Nike made kits — the same basic details, design, etc. The only difference usually is the color as well as some minor modifications.
You might recall last season that Tottenham’s away kits looked remarkably like the Barcelona’s warm-up gear, and as unique as the green thirds were they were just variations on a theme that Nike used for the majority of their big-name clubs.
Well, that ends starting next season. Nike is apparently switching away from templates to bespoke designs for the biggest of its clubs — Tottenham included — starting with the 2020-21 season. And, ironically, we have a Liverpool blog to thank for it.
Our SBN sister site, The Liverpool Offside, were complaining about Nike templates (or, more specifically, the lack of one again for Nigeria in their newly-released kits) on Twitter and actually got a response from the Senior Director of Global Communications for Nike, who promised tons of different options, meaning a Tottenham kit is going to look like a Tottenham kit, and not like anyone else’s.
We're ditching the templates. For the 2020 kits, Nike designers had 65 chassis options available to them across varying necklines, sleeves, cuffs, badge placement, etc. From hand-drawn prints to custom fonts, each team’s look will be its own.
— Heidi Burgett (@heidiburgett) February 5, 2020
I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. Having a library of kit elements and colors that a team can use to build their own design (plus whatever other special touches they want to add) is a huge step up from the cookie-cutter kits we’ve gotten from Nike over the past decade. I understand the appeal of templates — designs are often designed at least a year out and it takes time to ramp up global production so fans can get their grubby hands on the new gear every spring — but it’s super irritating when you walk onto the pitch and the other team is wearing your away kit. Oops, how embarrassing!
That doesn’t mean that fans won’t still complain about the design — fans bitching about the new kits is a time-honored spring tradition and I don’t expect that to end anytime soon — but at least we know we’re getting an ugly kit that’s unlike anyone else’s ugly kit.
And since we’re entering Kit Leak Season, let’s give a quick refresher on what we know about what Spurs will be wearing next season. According to Footy Headlines (which is almost always right when it comes to these things) Spurs’ homes will be (again) mostly white with navy accents, its aways will be two contrasting shades of green (!!), and the thirds will be at least partially yellow. No other details have been leaked at this time.