First picture of the new Nike 2018-19 Chelsea home kit

The first full, probably true picture of Chelsea’s new home kit for next season is making its way around Twitter today, and while such things always pop up, especially at this time of the year, the endorsements by ‘Todo Sobre Camisetas’ and by ‘Footy Headlines’ of the leak posted by @hazardisti makes this probably not fake news.

The supposed real sample of next season’s home kit also matches every leak so far, so at worst, it’s a very good approximation of what Chelsea will be wearing in most games next season.

The red accents have been rumored since the fall, with Nike taking inspiration from classic kits of the 1980s after using the 1970s as inspiration for this season’s home shirt.

This season’s effort, Nike’s first as Chelsea’s official kit supplier, was classic and minimalist, which I really liked personally, but it looks like Nike are jazzing it up for next season, which might please those who claimed that Nike phoned it in or played it too safe in their first effort. Can’t please everyone of course, and the collar on the new one is certainly uninspiring ... but that’s about my only real criticism of it. It’s fine otherwise.

As far as the other two kits, Chelsea aways will be yellow next season (always a good choice), though I have plenty of reservations about the color and design of the third kit, which is once part of Nike giving all their big accounts the same third shirt in a slightly different weird shade.

To complete the kit leak round-up, we have leaks of the training range with a fancy shoulder design...

...and Croatia-esque pre-match warm-up shirt with a bold blue-white big check pattern. Whoa!