Espanyol received a special birthday present from Kelme as they celebrated their 120th anniversary this week.
Los Periquitos’ (or the Budgerigars to the uninitiated) originally wore yellow shirts with each player deciding on the colour of their own shorts, before settling on the more uniform Blanquiazules (White and Blue) stripes they’ve become famous for in 1910.
Reial Club Deportiu Espanyol from the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district of Barcelona, have since won the Copa del Rey four times and been UEFA Cup runners-up twice, but were relegated from La Liga’s top flight last season.
Espanyol’s men wore their one-off kit on Wednesday night as they recorded a 2-0 victory over SD Ponferradina to continue their fight back in Spain’s Segunda División.
Kelme have disrupted the club’s familiar colours by giving the anniversary shirts a mosaic-style jacquard effect, with an artistic distortion of their stripes presented in shades of blue and white.
Aside from the placement of Betway on a quite clumsy looking white banner, we’d certainly have no objection to finding the bathroom at Sartorial.Soccer Towers had been tiled in this modern and colourful kit’s pattern.
The club’s women have received their own version of the shirt, with the same brilliant, eye-catching design, but with the presence of their own sponsor Miro in place of Betway.
If only those sponsors had agreed to taking a day-off for the big occasion eh?
Gripes aside, this delightful distortion of Espanyol’s colours by Kelme is exactly the type of design we look for in our Kit of the Week feature.
Sartorial Soccer 