With much love to the clothing designers who may be among Chiesa di Totti’s readership, I’ve often felt that the easiest job in the world might just be designing Roma’s kits every year. The colors are so iconic yet simultaneously so unique to Roma that pairing red and goldish-yellow almost always results in a slam dunk of a kit, whether the distributor has been Adidas, New Balance, Nike, or even the club itself.
Roma’s first season as an Adidas club showcased this to a certain extent: the home kit wasn’t anything over-the-top, but it did the job well, letting the colors do the hard work of making the kit stand out. Add in an away kit and a third kit that were gorgeous and which brought the Lupetto logo back in full force, and most people gave The Brand with the Three Stripes five stars for its work with the Giallorossi.
This year’s kits are certainly… bolder, I’ll give the German sports supplier that.
While I’m a sucker for the true gold color combined with the traditional Roman red (I still regret not purchasing the Nike Derby kit all those years ago), I’m not exactly sure who decided stripes of any kind would be a good fit for a Roma kit. Stripes are for the Northern clubs, the Milans and Juventuses of the world. Roma is not a club for stripes, at least in my book.
Here’s what the club had to say about the home kit when it was announced:
I’ll admit I like the connection to the Campo Testaccio, and the colors themselves are some of my favorite potential colors for a Roma kit. The stripes, though, particularly combined with the Riyadh Season sponsor logo, makes the front of the kit look far too busy. If we only had the words “Riyadh Season” on the front of the kit, I’d probably be a much bigger fan of this kit.
The rumored away kit is not exactly inspiring confidence in me for this season, either. It looks like Adidas decided to turn the kit into an homage to that time you spilled orange gatorade on your favorite white t-shirt as a kid (not me, though, because I was always more of a Blue Raspberry or Fruit Punch man):
These… I don’t know what these are, to be honest with you. Maybe they’ll grow on me! (I’m pretty sure they won’t.) The most charitable thing you can say about this rumored away kit is that the design team took a big swing. If you’re feeling less charitable, well, go check Twitter for some of the more negative comments on this kit.
Of course, the kit only matters so much. What matters more are the results Roma’s squad gets in these new kits as opposed to how they look on the pitch. Still, I’ve always been proud to say that Roma’s kits are among the best in Europe each season, regardless of the kit manufacturer. That streak of excellent kits was bound to end at some point, but for it to end in such a mediocre fashion (or in a straight-up terrible fashion, when it comes to those away kit leaks) disappoints me.
As I said at the top of this article, sometimes I’ve thought that the easiest job in the design world might be making Roma’s kit each season. With Adidas making one half-decent kit and one absolute stinker this season, I might be wrong there. Maybe the real problem here is that you can only make so many good soccer kits; after some point, it is really just a colorful t-shirt. Maybe we’re reaching the point of oversaturation with soccer kits, and maybe releasing a new kit every year is more a sign of a need for ever-larger profits for clubs and kit manufacturers than an indicator that new kits will be an improvement on the old.
After all, so many of the best kits we see each year, for Roma or for anyone else, rely on old designs, old color schemes, and nostalgia. That melding of the old and the new can be exciting, and I’ve always loved figuring out which player I’ll get on the back of my kit each season. But eventually you reach the end of the road with being excited by new kit drops. Eventually, you realize it’s just another sweat-wicking t-shirt.
Still, you and I will have to watch Roma in these kits for a year, so with that in mind, let’s hope that the rumored away kit is a fake and the rumored third, which would go back to the navy/giallo combination Nike used so well in 2019/2020, is real. If not, this might be the first year in a long time where I don’t get another Roma kit to add to my closet. Maybe that’s for the best.
