When clubs change social colours

Football clubs do care a lot about brand recognition as they’re always looking to increase their fanbase around the world thanks to their immediate recognition. Jerseys are the perfect tool to do so because no matter how much they dare on shapes, dimensions of vertical and horizontal stripes, shades and nuances, neckbands, and details, the colors don’t change. They always stay the same, it’s how it is supposed to be because they are instantly recognizable. Or at least this what fans hope because sometimes clubs have decided to go against their own fanbase, and they transformed the club’s identity by changing the colors.

The most emblematic case belongs to Cardiff: for the 2012/13 season, Vincent Tan, the Indonesian tycoon owner of the club, imposed a complete rebranding of the club as he obtained to change logo and team colors. Hence, a club that played in a blue jersey since it was founded and was commonly known as Bluebirds, had to play wearing a red jersey on which a dragon logo stood out. Doing so, Tan hoped to increase the club’s appeal all around the world, but things went differently and eventually, in January 2015, the board decided to backtrack, and Cardiff started to use blue jerseys again. As for the red, since 2017 there are no signs of it on any jersey.

adidas took a big gamble too when, in the early 90’s, decided to add some blue to the traditional Bayern Munich’s red jersey. First, they introduced some diagonal stripes then in 1995 they double downed on it and created a blue and red vertical stripes jersey and then in 1997 they went all in by creating a total blue jersey with just a horizontal red stripe in the middle of it. It was a slap for Bayern’s fans as they believe that red and white are the only social colors while blue, depite appearing in the club logo as a tribute to Bavaria, belongs to the other city’s club, Munich 1860. Complaints kept going every time blue came back on Bayern’s jerseys and the pression by the fans has been so strong that eventually the board was forced to release a statement in which they committed themselves to never use blue again for their jerseys.

Obviously there have been some successes and they’re all related to special celebrations. One example belongs to Arsenal as the club only for the 2005/06 season decided to leave the traditional red and white jersey to use a maroon kit to celebrate their last season in which they would have played at Highbury, the club’s ground since 1913. And this color choice was not accidental as that jersey was a modern replica of the one used in 1913 by Woolwich Arsenal, the first club’s denomination. 

In Serie A the most successful case belongs to Lazio as they, from October 14th 2000 to January 14th 2001, wore a white jersey rather than the usual sky-blue to celebrate the club’s hundredth anniversary. Fans remember with pleasure this shirt as Lazio in 2000 won the double, Scudetto and Coppa Italia. Those successes forced the club to make a choice as they did not expect to have two patches on the jersey. So, for the 2000/01 season they moved the PUMA’s logo to the center in order to put the Scudetto’s patch on the left with the Coppa Italia one on top of it.