Nike bringing yellow back for next season’s Chelsea kit — report

Next season will be Nike’s fifth (of fifteen) as Chelsea’s official shirt and kit supplier. Their efforts so far have ranged from the minimalisticly sublime and reverentially classic, to the lazily templated, to the overthought and overwrought (and overpriced, but that’s another story). And everything in between. And then there’s this season’s third kit. Let us never have to deal with that abomination again.

So what’s in store for us next season?

According to the ever reliable folks at Footy Headlines, next season’s home shirt will ... wait for it ... blue! That’s right, blue! You never would’ve guessed.

But, there is an interesting little tidbit in their initial “colors” leak for the upcoming design, claiming that in addition to the blue, Nike’s second color will be yellow.

That may not mean much, but it fills me with great hope that we’ll either get yellow accents on the home shirt — like my all-time favorite 2008-09 home kit, or the centennial-marking 2005-06 shirts, or even going back to Umbro’s mid-90s designs — or maybe even get yellow away kits, which is always my preferred choice. Last time that happened was in 2018-19, though those were not nearly as good as the previous time before that, adidas’ 2014-15 effort for the aways.

That said, F-H’s report claims that Nike will “combine” the blue home shirt with yellow shorts and blue-and-yellow socks, which would certainly be a departure from the norm (blue shorts, white socks). Chelsea have worn blue shorts at home since 1964 (white before) and paired white socks since 1992 (blue, white, yellow, or black before).

The new home kit isn’t expected to come out until May, though it will be probably spoiled many months before then, as usual.