The Football Kits With The Biggest Curses
Footballers can be a surprisingly superstitious lot sometimes, and one aspect of the game every player dreads is the idea of a curse on them.
There are a surprisingly large number of football team kits that are allegedly cursed, some of which were caused by other factors of the design, some have been blamed for one traumatically bad result, and others were not only cursed but controversial for other reasons.
Here are some of the biggest football kit curses out there.
England’s Indigo Blue Kit
Often known as the Euro 96 Grey Kit despite neither being grey nor exclusive to Euro 96 (they played one qualifying game against Georgia in them for the 1998 World Cup), the grey kit has become infamously connected to one match and one tragically missed penalty.
In every other match at the tournament England starred in their white kits, but after being drawn as the away team against Germany, history ended up repeating itself on penalties.
It often gets called cursed but England only lost one game whilst wearing it. It was a big one, mind.
Manchester United 1996 Grey Kit
Infamously known as the kit taken off at halftime, Manchester United’s alternate away kit was intended to be their contribution to the then-nascent athleisure market that sees nearly every major team sport a fashionable, impractical shirt design.
They had not won a single match whilst wearing it, and after changing into their blue and white third kit at halftime, never wore it again. It did not stop them from beating Newcastle United for the Premier League that year, causing one of the most famous rants in football history in the process.
Brazil’s White Kit
In 1950, the first year England competed in the World Cup and the year they sensationally lost to the United States, Brazil was unsurprisingly in the final match against Uruguay, the first-ever hosts and winners of the tournament.
Famously known as the Maracanazo or the “Blow of Maracana” after the gargantuan 200,000-seater stadium this match took place in, Uruguay shockingly upset Brazil in a match they only needed to draw due to the bizarre round-robin nature of the tournament.
The result was blamed on the white football kit they had borrowed from Las Blancos, Real Madrid, which was described as “unpatriotic”. A new kit was designed with yellow, blue, green and white, which became the legendary Canarinho kits associated with success, brilliance and The Beautiful Game to this day.