The nine worst new kits in world football - including Chelsea, Man Utd, and Tottenham

‘Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months’, Oscar Wilde once said. At least professional football clubs have the decency to wait twice as long before discarding their unwanted threads.

Every summer, timelines across the globe are awash with melodramatic announcements lit in moody hues, with patently uncomfortable players lounging across chaise longues in neutral tones, with keen-eyed memes drawing cutting comparisons like nib and ink satirists of yore.

Already, my esteemed 3 Added Minutes colleague, Matt Gregory, has eulogised the very best that the sportswear industry has brought forth of late by reviewing the 10 best new kits of the upcoming 2024/25 campaign. (Frightening lack of Sunderland, but we move.) And now, like the Hyde to his Jekyll, it is my duty to skulk menacingly out of the shadows to bludgeon you across the temple with the very worst; the shockers and the shames, the shirts that should be chained up in an attic and fed a bucket of fish heads once a week for meagre sustenance. I take no pleasure in this sombre duty. Nah, who am I kidding? I take every pleasure in it. Avert your eyes, folks, we’re going in...

Maybe the most maligned kit of the summer, and with good reason; the swirling ‘melting pot’ motif, the holographic badge, the vast expanse of azure nothingness, like an eerily becalmed ocean in the eye of a cyclone. Over the course of a needlessly long and verbose announcement statement, Chelsea talk about the club’s ‘legacy with the ever-hot youth culture of the city’ and ‘the burning passion to unite the entire club behind a shared ambition to succeed on and off the pitch’. In truth, this shirt looks more like a sink full of back-washed Listerine.

This is a cricket shirt. I’m sorry, but it is. Less befitting of a Premier League clash at Old Trafford and more suited to an ODI at (the other) Old Trafford. Casemiro chugging about in the centre of the park in this little number is going to look like a veteran spin bowler clinging on to the last vestiges of his international credibility. Not the worst kit you’ll be subjected to here, but perhaps the most jarring.

I’m a Barnsley girl, in a Barnsley world. Who doesn’t love a dash of neon pink here and there? Fuchsia from head to toe, however, is quite the sartorial choice, and you just feel that a pair of black or white shorts would have broken up this assault on the senses rather nicely. Instead, every time that the Tykes come up against a side in red, white, or both, there’s a strong chance they’ll be running around vibrantly like a flamboyance of flamingos. Good collective noun, that one.

Do you remember the Bananas in Pyjamas? Spurs have taken the classic design that served those potassium-fuelled lads so well, dialled up the ‘Prohibition Era Nightwear Collection’ vibes by about 45%, and set this sorry excuse loose on the world. Not great.

How many kits is too many kits? Judging by this leak of Man City’s proposed fourth shirt ahead of the new campaign, the answer is, well, four. The whole drab endeavour is a 30th anniversary nod to Oasis’ iconic Definitely Maybe, featuring Noel Gallagher’s very own handwriting and a colour palette taken from the album’s cover. The end result looks more like a graphic from an advert for a topical pain relief gel than something worthy of a Rock ‘N’ Roll Star.

Apparently, Leeds United supporters have been asking for an away kit in this particular shade of sunflower yellow for quite some time. How unfortunate that the year they are finally granted their wish coincides with a chest sponsor that makes the whole ensemble look like a cartoon of Salvador Dali’s smiling mush. Still, plus points for the retro badge, I suppose.

Look, I’ll level with you, I don’t know a great deal about the ins and outs of Austrian football finance, but I do know that I am worried for Wolfsberger AC. The front of their home shirt this season has no fewer than seven sponsors, and that’s not including logos on the sleeves, or the Austrian Bundesliga badge on the right collarbone. How desperate are they for money?! It’s less a garment, more a series of malware pop-up ads made physical. Maybe there is a half-decent shirt under there somewhere, but I don’t have the time locate and click all of the little crosses needed to find out.

Some people will adore this shirt, and more power to them. Umbro themselves state that the kit ‘is inspired by the water lilies running along the River Cam and features an all over unique blue aqua-inspired floral design on a white jersey’. I just think it looks like something Noel Edmonds would have worn on Deal Or No Deal.

One last offering from the continent, and Girona appear to have gone with a recurring pattern borrowed from the wallpaper in Austin Powers’ downstairs bathroom. It’s like somebody spiked the espresso machine at Puma HQ with LSD then forced the designers to draw a Croatia kit from memory. I am reliably informed that it is actually based on the city’s coat of arms, and to that I say, ‘groovy’.