Man Utd’s away kit ‘leaked’ for next season and it’s a throwback to THAT ‘jinxed’ grey strip of 1996
MANCHESTER UNITED’s away kit for next season has been “leaked” online and it appears to resemble the infamous grey kit from 1996.
The Umbro kit worn by David Beckham, Eric Cantona and team-mates in the 90s proved to be a flop on the field for the Red Devils.
Sir Alex Ferguson‘s side only picked up one point in five matches wearing the strip.
United‘s legendary former boss famously made the players change out of their grey number when 3-0 down at half-time against Southampton suggesting they could not pick out each other in the sunshine.
The FA fined the club £10,000 but now an image posted on Reddit allegedly showing United’s away kit for 2020/21 bears a slight resemblance to the infamous grey kit of the 90s.
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Initial reports suggested that the Old Trafford club’s change strip – manufactured by Adidas – would be a distinct shade of green for next season.
The colour – known as “legacy green” – is thought to also be incorporated into German giants Adidas’ latest pair of Predator boots.
However, the rumoured first look appears to show the future kit to be a shade of grey rather than dark green with the club badge and Adidas logo standing out in orange.
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In the render posted online the shirt is paired with a combination of dark black shorts and matching socks with black Adidas tramlines running along the sleeves.
Fans on Reddit had their say on the rumoured kit, one supporter said: “I like the simple design but the colour scheme is not my cup of tea.”
Another added: “That is clean. Actually really like this kit.”
Gary Neville on science behind changing 1996 grey kit
The boss (brought it up). He hated that kit, but there’s a bit of science behind this.
People to this day always joke that ‘it was because we were losing, because of this, because of that’, but Sir Alex had employed a professor from Liverpool University around sight – a vision specialist called Gail Stevenson.
She would come in twice a week. And you know how people talk about being ‘match fit’ or he’s ‘not got his sharpness back’ – he and she never believed that it was anything to do with physical capabilities. Physically, you always worked hard to come back from injury, you tried your best and were physically fit anyway.
Sharpness was the alertness, and your vision. It was about how quickly you could pick up your teammates. So when the ball arrives into you and you’re playing well, you know where your next pass is before you’ve started. That’s not a physical failing – it’s an awareness thing.
She brought in a lot of eye exercises, and alertness exercises – about eye muscles. She said you stop using your eye muscles when you’re injured, in a football sense. You wouldn’t be looking around you all the time, you wouldn’t always have that ‘picture’ when you receive the ball.
She actually said to Sir Alex – this was the detail that he would go into – ‘imagine you’ve got this crowd behind you – there are colours that you can see quicker than others, that stand out more than others’. It’s obvious. The reason people wear bright yellow on a motorway is so people can see them. People don’t wear grey on a motorway!
She’d said to him ‘this is not right. the players will not pick it up, in a crowded atmosphere, the shirt, as quickly as the other ones’. This is something that had been going on for months. He’d rejected this kit a couple of months before – he was not having it at all.
The vision specialist then started to work with our kit manufacturers on how our kits stand out the most. There was a bit more science behind it than ‘the gaffer didn’t like the kit and that’s the reason why we were losing’.