Shirt Focus – Liverpool 12/13 Home

Imagine for a second that you are a journalist. The newspaper you work for has set up an interview with a first time author, who is very excited to tell you about their new childrens book. You talk for a while and at the end of the chat, as a thank you, they give you a signed copy of the book to keep. You get back to the office and give it a quick skim through. You’ve interviewed plenty of authors over the years, read tons of kids books and you don’t really see this one catching on, so you toss it in the bin and go home.

This is what happened to Telegraph art correspondent Nigel Reynolds in 1997. Trouble is, the unknown author turned into JK Rowling, and the autographed first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone now buried in a landfill somewhere is worth in the region of ยฃ30,000. Think about how devastating it must feel to throw away something so valuable without even knowing it. Like Adidas did in 2012.

Its fair to say, Liverpool had a disastrous 2011/12 season. Even King Kenny in charge couldn’t save the Reds from finishing 8th, and after failing to qualify for the Champions League for the first time in 12 years, kit supplier Adidas decided they were getting short changed and pulled the plug on their sponsorship of Liverpool.

Adidas and Liverpool have a rich history together. They supplied some of the most memorable kits of the 80s and 90s (which we’ll take a closer look at in the future) but had seemed to be phoning it in for their second coming in the 00s. They designed kits with all the enthusiasm and energy of hitting the snooze button on a 6 am alarm, going through the motions with lacklustre styling, template designs, culminating in an unforgivable blue – sorry, cyan– highlighted third kit for their last year. But bad kits don’t make bad performances, or do they?

Warrior Sports certainly thought so. Thats why when they took the reigns at LFC they promised the new kits would instil “Confidence, dominance and intimidation” to prime the team for future success. This was a transitional period for Liverpool, they needed something concrete to build the team upon, and it seemed like Warrior were going to provide this with their new kit which claimed to embody ‘modern tradition’.

Their first release was this, the 2012/13 home kit. With the benefit of hindsight, this was a very classy, subtle effort by Warrior, a calm before the storm of tribal patterns and messy graphics. There was a lot of praise for the kit at the time, with Steven Gerrard himself stating that it was “Retro, comfortable and good on the eyes”. It seemed like this could be the turning point, to usher in a new, confident, dominant, intimidating Liverpool.

They promptly lost 3-0 away to West Brom on the first day of the season. To add insult to injury the manager of West Brom at the time, Steve Clarke, had been given the boot as head coach from Liverpool the previous season. And what were the Baggies wearing during this drubbing?

Thats right, the three stripes of Adidas.

This was a disheartening start for Warrior and the home shirt wouldn’t actually record its first win until October of 2012, with a 1-0 over Reading, but it wasnโ€™t all bad. A certain Jordan Henderson was wearing it when he scored his first European goal as Liverpool beat Udinese 1-0 in the Europa League. And, of course, Jonjo Shelvey was wearing it when he famously branded Alex Ferguson a ‘grass’ as he was sent off against Manchester United.

By the end of the 12/13 season Liverpool ended up finishing higher than they did the previous year (by one place at least) and it did seem like there was a change in the air. Adidas hadn’t realised their mistake yet, but they would soon.


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