Manchester City New Kit Design for 2020/21 “Leaked”

There are few things that clearly illustrate you are getting old more than the furore over the launch of a new Manchester City kit.

Every year the “leaks” about the new Manchester City kit launch seem to get earlier and earlier. It is like when Easter Eggs start appearing in supermarkets on New Year’s Day, or Christmas decorations go up in August. Whilst I personally like both Easter and Christmas, I find it difficult to maintain the excitement about them for 6 whole months.

As fans though there are a few givens. Every year there will be at least 3 new football kits for the club you love. It is a long time since those days in the 1970’s when replica shirts were few and far between. Now they appear in almost every high street store and leap at you from passing billboards.

As a 50-year-old bloke though my days of the replica shirt are receding into the distance, partly driven by not wanting to go out looking like an oven ready turkey and partly because these new shirts seem to come so quickly I no longer have the inclination to keep up.

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I recognise that fundamentally I am not the target audience of the kit designers – that is the young men and kids who must hoover up 90% of the products. So in many ways my ambivalence about designs is not to be taken as some bell weather event. Quite simply, I get that my views don’t count.

So, given all of that, yesterday there was a “leak” about the design of the new Manchester City kit for 2020/21 season which came from Puma via the Footyheadlines.com website. That site specialises in releasing advance details and is obviously fed directly by the manufacturers. Every single bit of info they release is 100% accurate.

They report firstly that next season the colour template of light blue is the same as this year but that the purple contrast colour is gone and will be replaced by a dark navy blue, which they describe as ‘traditional’. I am not sure about that, but it would seem to be the same navy blue as is the band around the current home socks.

The fabric of the shirt though is totally different next year. Apparently, it will have a mosaic pattern referencing the cultural and historical significance of the City of Manchester – from Danger Mouse, Vimto, Top of the Pops, The Smiths, Granada TV, Rolls Royce, Alan Turing, factory records, the Sex Pistols and Colin Bell – all of whom appear to be immortalised or represented in the tile mosaic pattern.

Quite what the Sex Pistols have to do with Manchester other than playing gigs at the Free Trade Hall in the 1970’s I am unclear! Anyway, you get the idea.

The release of this “leak” will no doubt start to pique the fan interest and allow that to carefully build up to the eventual release next summer. I am sure the “leak” was carefully controlled and timed by various marketing experts to fill an otherwise quiet week of international action.

The kit design may well be iconic and from the description appears to echo the late 1980’s kit with its pattern in the fabric. It also clearly riffs upon the success that Puma have enjoyed with the away kit this year and its “Madchester” theme. Certainly, on the terraces it would appear that the away kit has outsold the home kit by about 2:1.

So if you like this sort of thing – prepare yourselves as there will no doubt be further leaks in the coming weeks about what will be our random flamingo inspired away kit and York away homage shirts and training kits! If you don’t like this sort of thing, then probably best to just chunter to yourselves.