Pre-season starts and Rodrigo wins own clothes day

There are always different urgencies competing for fans' attention when pre-season comes around. Transfers, sure, of the coming and going variety, that's one thing. Another big issue is always the kit. What will the team be wearing? When will it be unveiled? When can we wear it? Why does it look like that?

The latter question came up unexpectedly on the first day of pre-season, when Leeds United posted a clip of head of running repairs Rob Price greeting our players for medical testing at Leeds Beckett's Carnegie Sports Centre, wearing a hideous shirt:

Before hordes of angry fans could swarm the hills around Cookridge and tear this abominable fabric from his chest, someone at Leeds had the savvy idea of sticking a new signing in one of the new players' tracksuits, and posting a picture of him looking smart. Marc Roca in blueish, with highlights that are yellowish if you like them, piss-orange if you don't. All we could ask for. Almost, because the unpronounceable alleged bookies Essbeeoh-t'zero-pee still have their logo cluttering an arm up:

While the intention of teasing this might be to assuage thirst for the actual first, second and third kits, things don't work like that, so now everyone has seen one thing they all want to see the rest. All in good time, I'm sure, unless we're planning to kick off against Brisbane Roar down under in grundies.

The real action, though, was in the photos of players turning up. Driving out to the former nursing college to be poked, prodded, scanned and measured has something of the school trip about it for the players, because it's not a holiday, but it's not like going to work either, and most of all because they get to wear their own clothes. What clothes? These clothes:

Pascal Struijk first. That 'Art That Kills' shirt is by Gallery Dept., a Los Angeles brand founded by designer Josué Thomas, then closed down, then sort of opened again? Whatever, as the shirt indicates, Thomas wants people to think of his clothes as art, not commodity, so mystique is part of the package. As is £200+ for one of those shirts. Mystique is also part of Struijk's package, as with every season he grows more and more into a sort of Premier League cavalier, so until he starts turning out in a lace shirt and a large feathered hat, this will do.