The Puma logo may no longer grace Arsenal’s shirt, but the Big Cat will continue to have representation within the Premier League’s big six in 2019-20. After seven years of wearing Nike swooshes on their chest, Manchester City have switched to the German supplier in a deal worth £650 million over 10 years.
It’s a significant increase on the £12 million per year they were receiving from Nike, but it’s worth noting the deal covers six of City Football Group’s seven teams (the outlier being New York City FC, who are impugned to stay under MLS’ league-wide Adidas deal).
Rather than cut City’s kits directly from a template—as has been their wont for other clubs—the new designs, which celebrate the club’s 125th anniversary, feature details that specifically reference Manchester’s cultural history. The home shirt features a “jacquard” woven pattern associated with the looms that powered the industrial revolution of the late 19th century. The away shirt, meanwhile, features day-glo details that pay homage to the “Madchester” era of the late 1980s and early ‘90s, typified by bands like the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses.
(Puma)
“I wasn’t a huge fan of the kits when I saw the leaked images but they have grown on me,” said lifelong City fan Ollie Chapman of Classic Football Shirts. “The thought process that has gone into them, and seeing Puma taking an interest in the history of the city and club, is exciting.”
As is customary with any shirt release, the new Puma collection has drawn mixed responses:
Fair play to Puma, that Man City away kit is 🔥
— Ben Moxham (@BenMoxham_) July 1, 2019
I like our new away kit by @PUMA I’ll have a shirt, please. Take my money @ManCity
— Cathryn (@Calvinotis) June 30, 2019
Man city days of winning trophies are over now that they’re with puma. You cannot win with puma as your kit sponsor mate.
— Faizel GUWOP Smith (@FaizelSmith) June 30, 2019
We’ll done @ManCity. You’ve got @PUMA in to ruin our 125th anniversary kit. Should’ve stuck with Nike. They do kits like this one: pic.twitter.com/aTnBktDOEL
— Imran Manjra (@IM4NJRA) June 28, 2019
As a club who have gone from the third tier, and near financial ruin, to Premier League dominance in the space of 20 years, City have had some ups and downs. And the same can be said about their livery. Here follows a look back at their best and worst kits of the past few decades.
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1993-94 Home
#MCFC #BLUES #CMONYOUBLUES pic.twitter.com/1pdFmS1ufD
— RACH / ♡ (@rach_griff) December 10, 2017
In the second-ever Premier League season, City finished three points above the relegation zone and striker Mike Sheron was their top scorer in the league with six goals. Yes, six.
But they earned plenty of cultural cachet for their home strip with polo collar and diamond sleeves, because it was worn by Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher in a famous photoshoot. The 1993-95 third strip, worn by brother Liam in the same photos, was in similar demand.
Chapman says both remain among the sought-after City strips on the market, though the third shirt worn by Liam is more elusive.
1996-97 Away
Strong contender for worst ever Man City away kit pic.twitter.com/bsWboomI9M
— Definitely Maybe (@Def_Maybe_33) January 5, 2014
Even a peak-fame Noel Gallagher couldn’t make the last shirt of the iconic Brother-Umbro partnership look good. It was worn by great players such as Uwe Rosler and Georgi Kinkladze, but it was also worn in the English second tier, during a season in which they went through three managers.
City switched kit suppliers to Kappa the following season.
1998-99 Away
(Alex Livesey/Allsport)
The 1998-99 season represented a nadir for City, as they slipped into the third tier of English football. The nature of their drop was also humiliating: they were relegated on the penultimate day of action, courtesy of a terrible own goal from a defensive midfielder who had only been signed a month earlier to shore up the backline.
They immediately climbed back into the second tier via the 1999 Football League Second Division playoff final: a game viewed by many fans as the greatest in the club’s modern history.
City were 2-0 down to Gillingham going into the 90th minute, but managed to pull it back to 2-2 in injury time. They proceeded to win on penalties. The strip they were wearing that day instantly became one of their most iconic.
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“The shirt itself is everything you look for in a classic City shirt,” said Chapman. “The ‘Brother’ sponsor, the collar, the bold colors, the extremely ‘90s design. The sky-blue trim is the cherry on top of the cake!”
Despite its massive significance to the club’s history, kit makers have thus far resisted the temptation to revive the design.
2000-01 Away
(Ross Kinnaird/ALLSPORT)
City were promoted twice in succession to return to the Premier League in 2000-01. But their stay in the top flight was short: they dropped into the relegation zone on Boxing Day 2000 and never climbed back out.
In that campaign, their away shirt was shiny silver, with lime green and black racing stripes running down the middle.
“That’s probably their worst-ever shirt,” said The Independent’s Jack Pitt-Brooke.
He’s probably not wrong.
2006-07 Away
(Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)
“My least favorite kit would have to be the 2006-07 away shirt,” said Chapman of the Reebok strip (modeled above by a hirsute Stephen Ireland). “I’m not too sure what Reebok were going for the weird six-pack effect. Any kit that reminds me of a season that ended with Joey Barton as our top scorer, with six league goals, is one that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.”
2006-07 Third
(Jon Buckle-EMPICS/PA Images via Getty Images)
The aforementioned second-choice shirt of 2006-07 may not be remembered fondly, but its seldom worn third-choice sibling was a hit with at least one fan.
“There are a few away kits that stand out,” said David Mooney from the Blue Moon Podcast. “I actually loved the yellow third kit from 2006-07, which had a black details on the sleeves.”
Sadly, its luminescence didn’t seem to help too much in a season where they lost the majority of their away league performances.
2007-08 Third
(Ian Walton/Getty Images)
“I loved the white third kit in 2007-08 with a blue stripe on the shoulder,” said Pitt-Brooke. “It was so simple and beautiful.”
City switched kit suppliers from Reebok to Le Coq Sportif in 2007-08, a change that gifted us this classy effort. However, due to the fact it used the exact same colors as the home shirt, it wasn’t worn too frequently. It did receive an airing for a goalless FA Cup match at West Ham in January 2008 (even though the home side also sported a similar shade of blue). Presumably, the purple second-choice strip would have been even more of a clash.
2008-09 Third
(Christof Koepsel/Bongarts/Getty Images)
After reaching so high in the third-choice kit stakes in 2007-08, Le Coq Sportif appeared to drop the ball the following season with this puzzling use of polyester.
“It was utterly atrocious,” said Mooney. “It looked like it’d been phoned in at 4:30 on a Friday.”
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The orange kit—with an unsightly asymmetric yellow trim running down one side for no good reason—enjoyed its high point in a 2-0 UEFA Cup win over Schalke in November 2009. However, it signalled the end of Le Coq Sportif’s reign, and may have helped herald the return of fan favorite Umbro.
2009-10 Home
(Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)
“This is my favorite City kit,” said Richard Burns of the Blue Moon Podcast. “To me, that sky blue is City. It’s a beautiful shade and it’s nothing too fancy. It will always be the benchmark to me of what a City home kit should be. That was the thing with Umbro: we knew we were getting something original—not just something in a different color to every other Nike kit.”
2009-10 Third-choice
(Tony Marshall-EMPICS/PA Images via Getty Images)
The simple 1960s designs of the 2009-10 season, informed by Umbro’s “tailored design process,” also produced a fan favorite third-choice shirt.
“It was just a cool design, that really stood out at that time,” said Aaron Lavery, who spent nine years working at Umbro on their digital content. “As one of the first kits from when Umbro returned to City it was a real statement of intent.”
2011-12 Home
(Ed Garvey/Manchester City FC via Getty Images)
Lavery: “I would think the most popular kit during the Umbro era would be the Aguero title-winning goal one. The home shirt that year featured a graphic that was a soundwave of the fans singing ‘Blue Moon,’ which I always thought was a nice idea.”
Chapman: “This shirt has everything. It’s a classic City Umbro shirt with a great collar and, of course, as soon as you look at it you instantly think of THAT last-minute Aguero goal.”
2011-12 Away
(Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Mooney: “For me, one of the best was affectionately nicknamed the ‘Edin Dzeko kit’ because City wore it when the Bosnian scored four at White Hart Lane in an extraordinary performance. That was a lovely outfit. Red and black are City’s classic away colors.”
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2012-13 Away
Vincent Kompany at Manchester City:
11 years
360 games
20 goals
1 kit launch with Noel Gallagher pic.twitter.com/xFp7d8KVts
— Kit Crimes ⚽️ (@KitCrimes) May 19, 2019
Lavery: “When Noel Gallagher and Vincent Kompany were shot together for the 2012-13 away shirt launch campaign, Kompany loved that shirt and wanted to keep it on afterwards! Players would always be positive about the kits at photoshoots, but then they knew they had to be on their best behavior on those days!”
2015-16 Third
(Tim Goode-EMPICS)
Mooney: “I have guilty pleasures. For absolutely no reason, I loved the third kit from 2015-16 (though I know many, many fans didn’t like it). It was officially named ‘ghost green,’ but it was actually glow-in-the-dark yellow.”
2016-17 Third
(Stu Forster/Getty Images)
“The vibrancy of the 2016-17 third kit reflects the club’s and the city of Manchester’s creativity,” read a press release announcing the violet-and-orange strip that City wore in EFL Cup, FA Cup and Champions League away games during 2016-17. Unfortunately, City didn’t have much success in the strip. After scraping a win at Swansea in its debut outing, it saw no more victories—but it was worn when Barcelona dished out a 4-0 shellacking.
By the time City reached the FA Cup quarterfinals at Middlesbrough, they dumped the strip for their more appealing black-and-maroon second choice colors.
The 2019 Nike celebration shirt
(Nike)
In celebration of their stint as Manchester City’s kit suppliers, Nike released a mash-up of all their “best-loved designs.”
How did it go down? We’ll let the good people of social media give their verdicts:
This might be the worst kit I’ve ever seen
— Jacob Keppen (@J_Keppen) March 25, 2019
I love City but that is honestly the worst shirt I’ve seen in my life 😩🙈
— Colin Ball (@Colinball1984) March 25, 2019
Thank god we’re getting rid of Nike
— Andy Pearson (@AndyP1693) March 25, 2019
Good news, Puma: the only way is up!
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