How are football jerseys changing? Trend analysis after the first releases 2020-21

Within two days, two of the sportswear giants such as Nike and Puma have launched the first kits for next season. In rapid succession the home jerseys of Inter Milan, Borussia Dortmund, PSV, Chelsea, the Rangers of Glasgow, Salzburg and Leipzig were launched. Instead, adidas moved slightly in advance, which structured the strategies and the release period of the new uniforms differently. Bayern Munich and Ajax are the only top clubs of the German brand to have already made their debut or revealed with the new shirts. There is, therefore, material to understand in which direction the new soccer jerseys are going and, in stylistic terms, what are the most common trends and directions.

Designing a football shirt is perhaps one of the most complex things for a brand. Being able to combine the rules imposed by FIFA, the stylistic desires of the club and temporal spam in a single large project - the designers are already working to present the mockups for 2021-22 to the teams - which obliges to foresee the designs of the future is a titanic work.

In more strictly stylistic terms, the predominant approach remains that of performance and not streetwear. One of the main signs comes from the choice of bran on the collars. The various experiments (often unsuccessful) of V-collars are definitively set aside, the tendency is to return to the crew-neck collar, an element common to almost all the shirts before the advent of the classic collars.

One of the trait d'union of the new kits for the 2020-21 season concerns the aspect of marketing related to the launch of a shirt. In the past, clubs have always invested heavily in the creation of mostly social content intended to enhance the distinctive features of the new uniform: Skriniar who perforates the marble for the shirt of his Inter, the storytelling of Ian Wright to remember the story there is behind the Arsenal shirt, the Real Madrid led design or the mix between footballers and fans proposed by Chelsea. For the 2020-21 kits, however, no presentation is still noteworthy, perhaps a symptom of a trend that is reversing course. compared to recent years. The only noteworthy case is the presentation built by the Leipzig marketing office, probably also driven by a type of alternative creativity that Red Bull proposes.

Ultimately, for now launches and jerseys have not fully convinced, neither stylistically nor about the brand/club strategies to present them. Many jerseys remain to be seen, hoping that those that arrive will raise the level again.