With the new season already upon us, it is time to look at all the new jerseys out there. We have already covered reigning European Champions FC Bayern and Spanish champions FC Barcelona. Both of these teams revealed their jerseys rather early, with Bayern wearing their new strip in the victorious 2013 Champions League final and Barcelona during the last day of the season. Here is another jersey that was revealed last season: AC Milan’s new third jersey which was worn in their last home game against AS Roma.
After a string of black third jerseys (which the club actually started considering as their unlucky jerseys – in contrast to their “lucky” white away jerseys), a new color was seemingly in order: gold. Two thoughts immediately come to mind: (i) for a team not having won any trophy last season, this is a bold move; and (ii) didn’t we have that before? Yes, it is a bold move and yes, we had that before in the centennial year 1999 and also during the 2004/05 season. I remain that gold jerseys should only be worn by champions, but Adidas has oozed gold over all their marquee teams over the past two years starting with Real Madrid and Bayern in 2011 and adding Chelsea in 2012. So it was Milan’s time, seemingly. All the discussion about gold aside, I actually think this is the best looking of the three Milan shirts issued for the new season. The gold jersey has black patches running down the sides and the underarms as well as three black stripes on the shoulders. The round neck as well as the sleeves display a black and red trim appropriately displaying the club’s true colors. On the front everything seems well arranged with Adidas logo and sponsor also being applied in black. Now, the standout feature (if you like) is the inclusion of a small breast pocket on the right side which also holds the Adidas logo and somewhat proudly displays a thin Italian flag above. The breast pocket was already introduced on the 2012/13 third jersey, so it is not entirely a novelty. While it is a neat feature, I seriously question the functionality. Why do players need a breast pocket? To carry around spare change? To store notes on tactics? I don’t know …
The back is quite similar to the front wit Milan recycling previous year’s font for names and numbers. I like the red outline, but could do without the red Milan logos on the number. The numbers also seem oddly disproportional while the letters have weird endings – kind of pointy.
While gold is not quite appropriate, I still like this jersey as compared to its counterparts. As we will see this would have been a great template for the true white away jersey, but they decided to mess that one up – well I will leave those comments when I do cover that one.
My rating: 7/10 stars.
How do you rate this shirt?
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