Liverpool’s Premier League season is over.
A 4-0 win at home to Brighton secured a fourth-place finish for Jürgen Klopp’s men, who will now focus their attentions on their Champions League final against Real Madrid in Kiev.
The win over Brighton at Anfield on Sunday saw Liverpool debut their 2018/19 home kit for the first time, leading some to assume they will be wearing the New Balance strip for a second time when they take on the recently dethroned Spanish champions later this month.
This, however, is not the case.
Both Liverpool and Real will have to wear the kits they have worn for the rest of the 2017/18 campaign due to Uefa’s rules. As pointed out by the Liverpool Echo, European football’s governing body stipulate that clubs must make clear which kits they intend to wear at the start of a season and that no changes can be made to this for the rest of the campaign – including for finals.
It appears this hasn’t always been the case. In the 2008 Champions League final, Chelsea wore their 2008/09 home shirt as they lost to Manchester United in Moscow. Bayern Munich also claimed their fifth European Cup while wearing their new home kit against Borussia Dortmund at Wembley five years later.
Real defeated Celta Vigo 6-0 at the Bernabeu on Saturday and now sit third in La Liga ahead of their final game away to Villarreal next weekend. Atletico Madrid are three points ahead of them in second, whereas Barcelona were confirmed as champions prior to last week’s El Clasico at the Camp Nou.
Having drawn that game, many Barca fans might have expected their side to have overcome the last significant hurdle in going an entire La Liga season undefeated. However, a surprise 5-4 defeat in their penultimate fixture against Levante saw them blow their 43-game unbeaten run.
