The classic Mainz 05 jersey for the Carnival

To celebrate the Mainz Carnival, one of Germany's best-known holidays, as every year the local Mainz 05 team presented a new uniform (signed Kappa) that will be used for the rest of the season. The new jersey will replace the regular red suit that the club's players usually use, featuring a check template on the shoulders and sleeves. The uniform, called 05ER Mardi Gras, was produced in limited numbers - only 1905 versions, as the year the club was born. But Kappa's new design will not only be a reference to the Mainz Carnival - which will be celebrated, this year, from 11 to 17 February. 

In fact, mainz's special jersey also contains references to its fans. In the flanks and on the back of the uniform, on a white space, the names of all the fans who had signed the subscription last year but who, this year, due to the pandemic and the closed stadiums, could not support the team in home games, are printed in red. These supporters did not apply for a refund and, in fact, left the money to the German club, who thanked them by inserting them into the shirt. But this reference, important as it is, is not the most impacting aspect of the new uniform, whose colors, on the other hand, stand out in the front template. Being a uniform that enhances the carnival tradition, the typical colors of the carnival such as blue, red and yellow are displayed, interspersed with white that is the basic color of the template. The model is crew neck, while the shoulders and sleeves are all red, except for the white edges; The Kappa logo and mainz coat of arms are kept in the usual position. In addition, explains the club on its website, 11€ of the price of each jersey sold will go to the pubs of the city, which as in general all food and wine establishments have been affected by the crisis following the coronavirus. 

Mainz's colourful jersey was presented, curiously, after friday's away game against Stuttgart F.C., in which the opponents had played in a new game uniform and characterized by the colors of the rainbow. The Mercedes club's references were on a much more sensitive issue - LGBTQ+ communities persecuted during Nazism - but this sequence of new designs with references to extra-football moments or events place the Bundesliga's aesthetic towards a new landscape. No longer an aesthetically flat tournament, but a reservoir of original ideas.