Colouring outside the lines
This is the tension of Leeds and Radrizzani. We don’t want our club to conform to the corporate machine of the Premier League, and while it is subject to the whims of its owner, it won’t. But will Leeds United ever prosper if it keeps eschewing commercial sense to indulge the owner’s whims?
Since taking kit supply over from Kappa, Adidas have kept Leeds United’s return to the Premier League under a cloud of badly dressed dissatisfaction. The outfits have been, basically, fine, but never great, or even ideal. The best of them borrowed from Asics’ green and blue stripes of 1994, a result to make the Adidas design team sigh. It turns out what fans want is tradition, in the form of something that tore tradition to shreds when it was first unveiled.
The efforts to sell new designs mean those designers have their work put into words for the marketing campaigns, although whether the words accurately represent the design process is another question. This season’s away kit is described as ‘a contemporary tie dye explosion of Pulse Yellow and Deep Blue, challenging convention, but more importantly harking back to the sunshine yellow used in some iconic kits from the 70s’. Well, it’s a rationale, even if the words feel mushy, and we should be grateful for that.
There’s more clarity in the launch blurb for the black ‘n’ orange third kit, although the meaning is clearest between the lines. ‘Produced alongside our official technical kit partner adidas, the third kit is a sleek and modern design with the jersey featuring a black and carbon stripe with a flash of crew orange’. No mention here of designers challenging convention or linking icons. This one, it seems, was only ‘produced alongside’ Adidas. Hmm. By who?
By Andrea Radrizzani’s son, according to an Instagram story from Leeds United’s chairman, congratulating him after the reveal. Suddenly Adidas’ lack of ownership in that ‘produced alongside’ text is clear: they need to make a distinction between the professional design services that have made Adidas a multi-billion euro global clothing brand, and a shirt that a client’s kid drew.
One of Radrizzani’s strengths as Leeds’ owner is also his weakness, which is that he has the same urges and impulses while running the club as I would have if I owned it. I can’t be mad at him for meddling in shirt design, because in his position, I would absolutely want to do the same thing. Here at TSB, we just designed our own football shirts with Admiral, and we don’t even have a football club to wear them. We just have the same craving for felt-tips as many other fans, and we can indulge without anyone complaining about heritage colours. I am certain that if I took over a football club, I would not be immune to the temptation of a third shirt that reflected my tastes, rather than those of the Super League coined ‘legacy fans’. Couldn’t they be happy with the home and away? Why shouldn’t I express the desires of my inner child, or in Radrizzani’s case, my actual child, in some inconsequential part of the club I own?