Hierarchy failing to put its shirt on club’s fine history
New away kit’s the downside of Saudi takeover
NEven Newcastle’s garish custard cream offering of 2009 was a nod to yellow kits of the past. This feels the complete opposite
EWCASTLE United have worn white and green before you know. However, no matter how this latest offering is packaged up, it certainly does not feel like an ode to the Sir Bobby Robson era.
Shirt manufacturer Castore pride themselves on creating ‘bespoke’ items but there is little to differentiate Newcastle’s new change shirt from the away kit Saudi Arabia wear.
At a time when the club is understandably trying to increase its footprint in the kingdom, that is far from a coincidence - but it’s just a shirt, right?
PSG’s third kit sampled Qatar’s colours last season. Newcastle had payday loan firm Wonga splashed on the front of their kits only a few seasons back. Arsenal had Visit Rwanda as a sponsor not so long ago.
Sheffield United, who are also
Saudi-owned, had a green and gold third shirt last season yet that barely caused a ripple.
Put simply, don’t the club’s owners have the right to sign off on whatever design they want?
They paid £305m for the privilege, after all, last October.
Yet for me that misses the point. Although the hierarchy are merely the custodians of this proud institution, Newcastle will essentially be lining up in Saudi colours at various points on the road next season.
It is no longer the case these days – it can’t be given a new set of kits are produced every season – but shirts were once a symbol of the history and tradition of football clubs.
Even Newcastle’s garish custard cream offering in 2009 was a nod to the yellow kits of the past. This feels like the complete opposite.
It’s all about the badge on the front? Well, even Newcastle’s crest is in the same light green shade as the Saudi shirt.
This is the flipside of Newcastle’s takeover.
The renewed ambition and arrival of internationals such as midfilder Bruno Guimaraes and full-back Kieran Trippier has brought with it uncomfortable questions for supporters about the Saudi regime and the kingdom’s appalling human rights record which simply cannot be ignored.
With this in mind, signing off on the design feels a little tone deaf when the owners should already be well aware of how every gesture counts.
Amanda Staveley may have said ‘we have to hold all our relationships to account’ in March, but what was seized upon was a failure to read the room when the part-owner bizarrely revealed a few seconds earlier she was ‘really sad’ owner Roman Abramovich was going to have his club Chelsea ‘taken away because of a relationship they may have with someone’.
The hierarchy have previously insisted they do not want the club to sell products to fans which are not suitable, that they really want to think about what supporters want, and it is important to stress that match-goers just want to back the team and will understandably buy this kit to show that support.
However, there is a difference between doing just that and defending the regime at all costs.