Manchester City 2019/20 First New Kit Items Revealed

New Merchandise From Puma Leaked

Although there has still been no official announcement from Manchester City it has been widely known for some time that the current Nike kit deal expires next summer. The Nike kit deal was worth a reported £20 million a season, a sum which has been eclipsed significantly by the new kit deals signed by Manchester United and Arsenal in recent years.

Despite a lack of any official announcement, presumably so as not to invalidate any part of the current Nike contract, it has been widely reported in the media that Puma have signed a new deal with Manchester City Football which comes into play from next summer. This new deal apparently is worth in excess of £50 million a year – a massive increase on the current deal with Nike.

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The new Puma deal also apparently includes some other teams within the City Football Group, although exactly which ones is not yet clear. It has been reported that Girona is included in the new Puma kit deal.

The Nike kit designs over recent years have not been wholly popular amongst Manchester City fans. Whilst the prices alone have caused some disquiet, it is the nondescript template style designs which have have had fans moaning most. Nike have become accustomed to supplying the same template kit designs to a wide variety of different sporting teams, which are simply in different colour hues.

Fans tend to view their own particular club as iconic and templated designs have undermined that. It should be noted that the most popular kits Nike have designed for Manchester City have not been template designs – but the commemorative sash kits and Wembley 1999 inspired away kit – both of these reflect iconic moments from Manchester City history and crucially stand out from all other Nike designs for other teams.

The leaked Puma merchandise includes a backpack, football and a cap. What the leak shows is the exact colours being used in the palette of design and also some pattern details which are likely to be repeated throughout the range. The pattern seems to be a kind of 1980’s design to me, in part made up of broken football pitch lines.

The leaked design seems to confirm Puma certainly have the contract and are seeking to make a fresh take on recent merchandise. That all sounds positive, although its fair to say Nike have set the bar pretty low in recent years. So there is some excitement amongst fans looking forward to seeing the new Puma kit and no one yet seems to have been scared off by the leaks released so far.