Good, Bad and Ugly kits from the past – Stoke City
Good – home shirt 2008/09
My only reasoning for this shirt being in the ‘Good’ category is that it was the home shirt worn in Stoke’s first season in the Premier League.
It’s a nice design by Le Coq Sportif and although there is only a limited amount of things that can be done with a red and white striped shirt, this is a smart design.
Bad – away shirt 1992/93
Although Stoke won the Second Division title in 1992/93, they still had a rubbish away shirt that season!
Matchwinner’s purple and orange away shirt leaves a lot to be desired and it’s psychedelic fuzzy purple hoops looked terrible. However, it still isn’t as bad as the shirt below…
Ugly – home shirt 1983 – 86
Someone sitting in an office in the Umbro in early 1983 would have been given the task of trying to come up with a new shirt for Stoke City. I can only guess that they had little or no interest in football and were given the colours red and white and a timeframe to come up with a design!
Stoke City’s home shirts have been made up of red and white vertical stripes since 1908 and apart from this design in the early 80’s have been for the last 112 years. They did experiment with a multitude of different colours but eventually settled on red and white stripes.
This design is terrible in the eyes of a traditionalist like me. The away version of the shirt was a blue body with darker shade of blue for the pinstripes, collar and sleeves.
Let’s hope that someone doesn’t decide to return to this design but you can never say never when it comes to football shirts, as I have found out writing this series!
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