Puma Launch Third Kits For 2021-22 Football Teams – Fans Are Not Happy With The Design!

The football internet went into meltdown a couple of days ago, when Puma launched their third kits for some of the teams that wear their brand.

Clubs including Man City, AC Milan, Marseille, Valencia, Borussia Monchengladbach and Fenerbahce will be wearing these new 3rd kits.

Fans of the clubs and football fans in general weren’t too happy with the design. Here’s what they look like and what I think.

I’ve already covered the best football shirts 2021-22, and by the looks of the reactions these 3rd kits are getting, they’ll not be in there.

So what’s the big problem? One word, badge. Or actually, the lack of it.

You’ll be aware that football shirts have almost always had a traditional design element, that was the badge of the club on the shirt. This is usually on the side with the brand logo on the other, or sometimes this has been centred for design purposes.

Puma have broken the rules, and the clubs don’t have their badge in a traditional placing. In fact they have branded all the shirts with their team name, in large letters.

According to Puma, they say they have rewritten the rules, and that “yes the badges are there (all over in fact)“. That’s true, they are. They are all over most of the kits, in a tonal design embedded into the fabric of the shirt.

Here’s each shirt.

Man City 3rd Shirt 2021-22

This is the Manchester City 3rd shirt, and I think it looks the best. I love the colours, and you can see that the badges are there in the repeat pattern, built into the design of the fabric of the shirt.

I love the colours, and the font of the Man City wording is pretty nice too.

AC Milan 3rd Shirt

My 2nd favourite has to be the AC Milan Shirt. Once again I don’t think this is a bad design at all. The colours look really nice, and everything just seems to work well.

Borussia Monchengladbach 3rd Shirt

Again, I don’t think this is too bad at all. It has a different style of text which is striking, and the badge in it’s tonal pattern works well with the shirt.

Valencia 3rd Shirt

When we get to the Valencia 3rd shirt, there’s signs of problems. I think it’s too plain looking, and as fans have mentioned about all these shirts, they look more like training t-shirts rather than game jersey’s.

Fenerbahce 2021-22 3rd Shirt

Here’s when you get more problems with the design of the shirt. The team text and the sponsor just doesn’t seem to sit right.

To my eye, the sponsor name just looks too big. There seems to be too much text on the front of the shirt, which isn’t to my liking.

Marseille 3rd Shirt 2021-22

Again, the same problems arise in the Marseille 3rd shirt. The sponsor name looks pretty big, possibly because of the text of the team name.

The Internet and social media seemed to be absolutely shocked about the design. But I wasn’t, as we’ve seen it all before. In fact, we seen similar things from Puma this summer…

What about this – It’s the Austria away shirt for euro 2020.

I first noticed this in their friendly match against England before the Euros. The first thing I noticed: Where is the nation crest?

It seemed to have been replaced by just the wording. I didn’t like this as I like the tradition, but I did get used to seeing it.

It was a similar story to the other teams in Euros. For one of their kits (home or away) the tradition of the crest was gone, only to be replaced with the nation wording. Italy did has a small logo to the front of their away shirts as well as the wording, and Switzerland had a small flag.

Other Puma teams in the Euros such as Czech Republic also sported this template, with the team name to the front of the shirt.

I think that for some of the teams, the “Euro 2020 template” should have been used – i.e. smaller text. I think that gives it a more modern look, and isn’t as in your face as the larger text.

I have to say, I do like when kit manufacturers push the boundaries. Fans are always complaining that kits and shirts always look boring or the same year after year.

It is good to see some of the design and innovation we’ve seen from all the kit suppliers in recent years.

Let me know what you think of the Puma third kits.