Nike are ditching the templates from the 2020 football kits

The first three releases of 2020 have given us a great indication regarding the strategy that Nike wants to follow during the year as regards its own football teams: the Nigeria, South Korea and United States jersey just unveiled, in fact, in addition to being completely different in colors and patterns, were not designed on a 'catalog' template, but for each of them a separate graphic work was done. In the case of Nigeria, for example, the prints were made by hand in order to enrich the shirt with absolutely unique elements, deeply linked to the symbols and consistent with the traditions and heritage of the country.

The templates ditching is a move that will also concern club teams: one of Nike's Senior Director of Global Communications, Heidi Burgett, has confirmed on Twitter that in 2020 Nike designers will have 65 'chassis' options with different necklines, sleeves, cuffs, badge placement and fonts, so they can customize the jerseys to the maximum and obtain a 100% original product. If it's not a turning point, we are close to it, given what we had been used to in the past years, with the great national teams (think of France, England and Portugal in 2014 and 2016) 'forced' to use the same identical jerseys, different only for the colors. Evidently Nike has definitively become aware of the banality of the latest productions (and the dissatisfaction of many customers all over the world) remembering that once it was not like this: we had talked about it in an old article on the Italy 1995 shirt made by Nike, retracing the long and necessary process of creation of the kits by Nike designers, above all Drake Ramberg.

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

Burgett's statement came about the open debate of the numerous groups of Liverpool fans on the 2020/2021 jersey: the Reds will in fact start the Nike sponsorship from next summer and supporters are eager to know what the new kits will be like. What is certain is that the English team will be part of the Nike Elite Team of the 10 most prestigious clubs, in which the RB Leipzig has also recently been introduced, and that the Third Kits will be made inspired by the iconic Air Max models.