adidas used the same template for all the goalkeepers' jerseys

We arrived in the middle of July and adidas has unveiled practically all the jerseys that its top clubs will wear next season: starting with Juventus and Real Madrid, passing through Bayern Munich, Arsenal, Ajax and Manchester United and ending with Leicester City. We actually knew it for almost a year, and now we have looked at them several times, we have seen them worn and we are starting to imagine what effect they will have on a football pitch. The thing that struck us most, and that unites them all, is the goalkeeper's shirt: for all the teams just mentioned, in fact, adidas has chosen to use the same model, the AdiPro 19. And so our reaction could only be: how is possible that adidas has reserved this treatment for its major clubs?

Although the German brand has tried to differentiate colors and references, the end result has been that of a banal homologation, which is also badly justified, and which has completely deprived us of the surprise effect of knowing the fantasy of goalkeeper shirts when revealed. Not for wanting to be nostalgic at all costs, on the contrary, but it is precisely such choices that make us regret the beautiful goalkeeper shirts we used to see in the past.

But on the other hand, although adidas has seen steady growth in recent years that has consolidated the brand at the top of the world scene, reaching and sometimes overcoming the sporting aura of Nike, some latest choices concerning the teamwear have left much to be desired. The new Juventus Home Kit, for example, so revolutionary as to have forced the Italian club to abandon the vertical stripes (for the first time in history), turned out to be nothing but the adaptation of a model already in use, from Fulham and Watford. Shortly, anything but unique. Not to mention the new Striped 19 template, another catalog piece that adidas has used indiscriminately for both the new Ajax Away shirt and the River Plate shirt designed to celebrate the old friendship with Turin FC. And the list could still continue, given what happened with other universals models such as Campeon and Tiro, adapted from time after time with the colors of different team.

But let's get back to the topic that troubled us the most, the one related to goalkeeper jerseys whose entire color sample was used, made by six different tones: is it ever possible that Ajax's Andre Onana will wear the yellow kit as well as his Real Madrid colleague Thibaut Courtois? And how can we accept that the Juventus players Wojciech Szczesny and Gianluigi Buffon, on the other hand, will wear the same away shirt of the Manchester United's goalkeepers, for example David De Gea? In this regard, it's already more understandable but still decidedly absurd that the goalkeepers of all the 23 MLS teams wear the same jersey, as happened last season and based on preliminary agreements according to which all the American franchises are all sponsored by adidas. Despite the motto 'Creativity Is The Answer'.

In addition to the problem related to color sharing, another question that is currently unresolved is related to the interpretations that have been given to the template: officially, a unique version of what it represents has not been given, but the fantasy used has been associated with a different explanation, team by team. In this case, rather than providing a simple description of the design, adidas has tried to "justify" itself by arguing about rather dubious inspirations, all of which contradict each other. Are they mountain ranges or sea waves? Is it a tiger-striped graphic or a new camouflage experimentation?

In the case of Manchester United, for example, the mess was even greater: initially it was announced that the 2019/2020 kit was a clear reference to the shirt worn by Peter Schmeichel in the year of the Treble, only to be rectified immediately as the link between the two jerseys he was absolutely forced, not to mention non-existent.