The Rotterdam club are back with Adidas, and Feyenoord recently unveiled the home jersey for the upcoming 2014/15 season. With mock-ups of the leaked away shirt floating around the web, it is safe to assume both designs are final, thus beginning an exciting partnership between the club and Adidas.
- By Oliver Fisher
- Follow Oliver on Twitter
When Adidas were announced as the new kit manufacturers of Feyenoord, the majority of supporters rejoiced, thinking back to the great shirts they produced in the successful period of the ‘90s in which the Rotterdam club won a total of two Eredivisie titles and four Dutch Cups.
The sense of anticipation leading up to the kit launch was intense, and when the club posted Twitter pictures of the location of the unveil, people flocked to Centraal Station. Once they arrived, they would be greeted by a red container, almost like a shop window in appearance, in which the new Adidas jerseys sat pride of place. However, to make things interesting, the club created a game in which contestants (which was anybody willing to give it a go) would sing along to famous club anthem “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and, similar to Singstar, if they hit enough notes correctly they would win, only this time the prize was a new jersey rolled up into a poster tube and dispensed like a vending machine.
In my opinion, it’s quite a creative and unique way of doing a kit launch. Often teams are seen to be just unveiling via Twitter or other social media, or at the club shop. My team, Huddersfield Town, had the inventive idea a couple of seasons back of beaming an image of the new shirt onto the station building, which worked well as a visual while simultaneously connecting with the town’s heritage and history.
Back to the new shirt however, and my thoughts on it. For starters, the Opel branding is very prominent. A lot of supporters have argued it is perhaps too prominent for their liking, but such is the nature of sponsorship agreements nowadays. Besides, it isn’t as if Philips are sponsoring the shirt, and Opel have a historic connection with Feyenoord, so it is nice to see it embraced in a way.
The red and white halves remain a constant and have since the early years of the club’s history, so it’s good that Adidas haven’t tried to be too edgy and alter anything significant. Other features include the Adidas tri-stripe being black on the shoulders, which I have seen people complain about but the only other possible colour is white, which in my opinion wouldn’t look as good. The sleeve trim (white on the red sleeve and vice-versa) looks very classy and adds a small but nonetheless extra dynamic to the jersey, and overall I think Adidas have done a fantastic job with the new home shirt.
Supporters must agree with me, as hundreds queued up on release day at the Feyenoord Fanshop to get their jersey.
The release of the away shirt for the 14/15 season was far less glamorous. The first I saw of it was a leak on twitter of the mini kit (to stick in a car window) and from that somebody quickly created a mock up of the real kit. Then, an account called FR12live tweeted the shirt with seemingly a model (perhaps a player, the head was cut off) wearing the new black and green away shirt. This hasn’t yet been unveiled officially by Feyenoord as the away jersey, but it looks pretty certain to be it.
For starters, I really like the pinstripe effect on the main body, and the colour scheme of black and green is one which works well. For me, the benchmark of away shirts recently has to be last season’s green and white kit manufactured by Puma, as the colours really connected with Rotterdam tradition. The green returns, which is a positive, but paired with black it is slightly lost. The white trim is a nice touch adding to the class from Adidas, but overall after the success of last year’s away jersey I feel it is slightly under that benchmark.
Nevertheless, it is a certainty that the club will sell both shirts incredibly well, as Feyenoord supporters will buy the shirt to support their team so long as it isn’t white with a central red band. It is a very good effort from Adidas, and hopefully the start of a long and successful partnership between two of football’s most historic organisations.
Follow
Aspiring Sports Journalist and huge football fan, from Leeds, England. Follow @olifisher on Twitter
