Manchester City (Away 2014/15)

Well, I want to get a little bit ahead and try to cover a few more shirts. Since I want to keep some shirts from (potential) quarterfinalists for later posts (hence no posts about Porto or Bayern, so far) let’s start with teams that are likely to be eliminated this week. And the odds-on favorite to be eliminated is Manchester City. Seemingly, the bookies see Barcelona as too strong of a team to lose at home – at least at the current form. And the loss to Burnley certainly did not help City’s odds. I do get a feeling that Manuel Pellegrini’s days are numbered. On the bright side, the shirt they played in against Burnley (which also has a slight chance to be featured in Camp Nou, although I doubt it) is a nice one. Let’s have a look.

Well, this dark blue jersey takes two recent Nike creations: the template for the Australia jerseys and the color gradient (which Adidas also brought out of late). So, we have dark blue jersey fading in hoops into a lighter blue towards the bottom. The jersey has a nice polo-style collar with a lighter blue triangle on front. Swoosh and sponsor are applied in yellow making for an appropriate contrast with the crest remaining unaltered.

The back is pretty much the same as the front with the same City wordmark as on the home jersey. The numbers are applied in gold in the Premier League, which actually may be a shade to dark. I assume if it was used in the Champions League (where City has only worn its home jersey, so far) we would see yellow lettering.

Honestly, if last year’s Argentina away jersey would have looked like this, it would have been a highlight and not a discgrace. I am still not a fan of the color gradient, but I do like the way it is used here. I also don’t quite buy the story that this jersey is inspired by the blue-yellow striped away jersey from the 1998/99 seaon. Too much difference there and too little yellow. If it truly was the case then the jersey should have faded from dark blue into yellow, which would have made for a horrible creation. This way, though, I am thinking quite favorably about this shirt.

My rating: 8/10 stars.

How do you rate this shirt?