Red and blue are passé for football team colours. What you need is an unusual, punchy combo like claret and sky blue. No, not West Ham. Not Burnley either! We’re talking about Football League founder members, seven-time FA Cup winners, and Prince William approved: Aston Villa.
They were the first to sport the colours after all.
A not so colourful beginning
Prior to founding the Football League in 1880, Villa played in plain shirts in a number of colours but mostly sported white and brown. Even when they added sky blue to the left side of the kit, it was set against chocolate brown on the right. In true Midlands thriftiness, it was seconded in the club’s minute book on 8th November 1886 that they be supplied with two dozen kits ‘at the lowest quotation.’ Brown would be a colour they wouldn’t replace with claret until 1894 when they sported a solid claret body and long sky blue sleeves, which was the permanent design until the 1950s.
Pinstripes at Wembley
The introduction of televised football informed the design of strips up and down the UK, and Aston Villa was no exception. Teams mostly wore their colours with a fairly plain design, but with black and white televisions it was hard to distinguish who was who on the screen. Villa’s answered that problem in 1956 with a sky blue shirt with claret pinstripes which popped on even the smallest televisions. This strip was seen by thousands at the 1957 FA Cup final when Villa beat Manchester United at Wembley.
Why all the yellow?
The Aston Villa away kits were always a tasteful white for representing the club when they were being hosted at other grounds. That changed in the 1970s.
Wanting to stand out among the sea of colours that didn’t make your eyes water, the 1970 away kit was introduced in lemon yellow. It took only four years for Aston Villa to return to their usual white, but every few seasons they forgot their mistakes and released a new fluorescent away kit. Particularly memorable was the 2003 away strip from Diadora which seemed to be modelled after a highlighter. A few years of the fans chanting ‘We are Aston Villa! We glow in the dark!’ was enough to bring back the classic white with claret trim.
A change of colour to conquer Europe
The 1982 European Cup final in Rotterdam is seared into the memory of all Aston Villa fans, and so is the strip that that took there. Villa ran onto the pitch wearing a departure from the usual design in white V-necks with claret pinstripes manufactured by Le Coq Sportif. Fans had a fraught beginning with the injury of Jimmy Rimmer early on and it was a tense game with goalkeeper, Nigel Spink, keeping Bayern Munich’s attacks at bay. Villa found their feet in the second half culminating in Peter Withe securing their 1-0 victory. Most Villa players left the pitch wearing Bayern Munich’s red kit after celebrations that saw lot of shirt swapping.
A touch of class for the Premier League
Aston Villa had been at the forefront of English football for over a century, so they were going to mark that proud history with a special kit for the first ever Premier League in 1992. Umbro provided a shirt that married the past and the present with modern synthetics and a traditional drawstring collar for a clean and classic look. Dalian Atkinson and Paul McGrath, players who still get a namedrop in chants on the Villa stands, wore this great in a closely fought final against Manchester United. That year Aston Villa had to settle for second place.
All the awards for Aston Villa
For the 2018/2019 season, Aston Villa seem to be making up for a few frustrating years with a kit that has been catching more than a few eyes. This strip, designed by Luke 1977 and Fanatics, tries something new with a claret shirt with wide stripes in an even darker claret, tied together with sky blue trims on the collar, sleeves, and flashes down the side. When the strip was announced, there was lots of early interest with sales up 750%, blowing the last five season’s kits away. The love just kept on coming with two awards from GQ and the EFL, making Aston Villa officially the best dressed club in the whole of Europe.
