With the end of the season in sight, new kit designs are coming at us thick and fast.
Nowadays, with pretty much every professional club around releasing (at least) three new kits a season, we’d imagine it’s difficult for the people tasked with designing them to come up with something new.
When they try and think outside of the box, especially when coming up with new home kits, they get stick for being too adventurous and not respecting tradition. Play it safe and they’ll be accused of being boring or of simply copying an old design.
Take the new Juventus home shirt for example. Along with their brand spanking new home crest, Adidas’ latest offering for the Italian champions does, of course, feature their famous black and white stripes. And not for the first time in recent history, the latest Juve shirt has been compared to a design once worn by Newcastle United.
To be fair, if Adidas were going to draw inspiration from any of Newcastle’s old home shirts (and we’re not saying they definitely have), the one they wore between 1995 and 1997 would definitely be the one. If you’ve read / looked at the pictures in our 20 Greatest Football Shirts of the 1990s piece, you’ll know that we here at JOE think a lot of this particular shirt.
Here, have a look…
After their current kit experimented with the white pinstripes in the middle of black stripes, Adidas appear to have adopted a similar template to the old Newcastle shirt for next year’s Juve home strip. Not only is that aspect of it similar, but the design of the button-up collar also appears to bear a resemblance, as pointed out by the following tweet.
Juventus' 17/18 Kit looks familiar 😍😍😍 pic.twitter.com/pE1chGqStb
— ⚫️⚪️ GEORDIE ⚫️⚪️ (@MarcTaylor7) April 29, 2017
As we’re sure Newcastle fans will agree, not bad at all. Not that they’ve any need to feel jealous…
