Should the Italian national team wear white shorts?

For decades, the jersey of the Italian National team has remained almost identical, while fashions, materials and styles changed all around, with the jersey in blue and the playing shorts in white. An outfit that, in its unchanging nature, has traversed the history of our football and unites the identity of a nation that lives football like few others in the world. And if light blue has always remained the unmistakable color of the Italian representatives in every sport, in football the combination with the white shorts has guaranteed the right balance between the first color used by the national team and the later Savoy blue that came into fashion in 1911.

A balance that was changed on a few occasions in the middle of the two world wars, more by accident than design, but then became more and more established in the new millennium. Who does not remember the Azzurri running all in blue for Grosso's penalty in the 2006 World Cup final, or Cannavaro lifting the coveted trophy into the sky in Berlin. From then on, PUMA decided to use the jersey and trouser suit in various even shades of blue for every major call-up to the Italian national team, from the 2008 European Championships in Austria and Switzerland to the 2010 World Cup, the 2012 European Championships and the World Cup in Brazil, without having the same luck as the first call-up.

Paradoxically, after wearing the same color combination for more than sixty years, the national team has recently been using the jersey and shorts combination with great consistency, both with PUMA and with the new technical sponsor adidas. In the first two matches of the new jersey, signed by the German brand, Roberto Mancini's players competed in an all-blue outfit with a marble vein to add vibrancy to the design chosen in Herzogenaurach. This choice was not welcomed by all Italian fans, however, who accused the brand of poorly balancing the clash between tradition and modernity, especially when it came to the playing shorts.

In fact, it is no secret that adidas opted for jerseys reminiscent of the aesthetics of the 1970s, when the company was the first technical sponsor of the Italian national team, updated with a marble pattern. Back then, however, the blue jersey was always combined with white shorts, creating the characteristic contrast that has always distinguished the Italian national team from the many other selection teams that use blue as the main color of their jerseys. In this case, the choice of the light blue hue combined with the many details in white, from the three stripes on the shoulders and sleeves to the match numbers, makes the first jersey an uncharacteristic part of the Italian identity.

A change that may seem subtle, but helps us understand how a design as codified as football jerseys is sometimes enough to create conflict and produce a jersey that has drawn some criticism from those who consider it similar to that of Greece or Bosnia. After the first two qualifiers for the upcoming European Championship, will adidas decide to back down and add white shorts to the home jersey as well, or will it continue this monochrome trend that has dominated the national aesthetic since 2006?