A future for Stoke City without Macron kits has been shown to fans this week, with Koncept Kitz offering a handsome alternative.
The Twitter account dedicated to modifying football strips has decided to swap out the Macron design on the existing Stoke kit and replace it with a classic Hummel template, and the results have been extraordinary.
Stoke have had an unfortunate record with kit manufacturers in the recent past, with neither Warrior nor New Balance quite able to replicate the simple beauty of the Adidas kit worn in the Tony Pulis era. That shirt of course has plenty of associations beyond its actual design, but in my view that remains the best strip of the modern era for Stoke.
With the ugly Macron logo removed, the Hummel symbol balances the whole shirt better, while the iconic arrows on the sleeves add a sense of excitement that is not present with the current strip. While the image shown above offers one option, the account made a few variations too, just to show the different angles Hummel could take if they became the Stoke kit manufacturer.
We were asked to mock up what a @stokecity shirt might look like if they were made by @hummel1923. We've got a couple of variations we'll post another time but, if you like these, please share or drop us a follow 🙂🙌#Stoke #StokeCity #Stokies #Hummel pic.twitter.com/kgtQ66U2jN
— KonceptKitz (@KonceptKitz) January 9, 2020
The Hummel design is classic too, with its most famous wearers perhaps being the Danish national team on their way to European Championship glory back in 1992. That kit, donned by Peter Schmeichel and Brian Laudrup, has been immortalised through the images of the Danish players celebrating after the final, but it was also a beautiful kit in its own right.
Hummel designed a tribute kit for the team to wear in 2017 and that too looked great.