The 2023/24 Kit Awards

August 16, 2023 Louis Ostrowski 2. Bundesliga, Bundesliga, Headlines, Uncategorized 0

Welcome to the 2023/24 Bundesliga Fanatic kit awards. Here’s a look at the best, worst and weirdest from all this season’s kit launches in Germany ahead of the Bundesliga’s opening weekend.

It’s a game of opinions, and you may not agree with all of these…

Click the arrows or swipe from side to side to go through all the kits in the gallery.

Best home kit award: Borussia Mönchengladbach
Best home kit award: Borussia Mönchengladbach - Borussia Mönchengladbach’s home kit by Puma is a brilliantly classy shirt, making use of all three of the club’s main colours on the collar and cuffs. Puma have also evoked the classic Erdgas sponsored kits of the late 70s with the shorts, which goes nicely with the retro block numbers too.
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Worst home kit award: SC Freiburg - Nike teamwear rarely looks amazing, but Freiburg’s home kit is on a whole new level of bad. The white pattern is terrible and even continues onto the lower back, making it even worse. The sponsor logo is upsettingly big and the sleeve shape, as usual for Nike, is just weird. An abomination of a shirt.
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Best away kit award: Hamburger SV - HSV’s home kit isn’t great, but adidas have redeemed themselves with the beautiful light blue away. Features a subtle Raute pattern in the fabric, and the traditional Hamburg socktop design looks great on top of a light blue sock.
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Worst away kit award: VfL Wolfsburg - Nike have tried to come up with a marble pattern of sorts on Wolfsburg’s sleeves, but it looks like the shirt has been infected by something (or somebody’s thrown up all over it.) A poor combination of design and colours that you could definitely make a nice kit with.
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Best sponsor award: FC Schalke 04, Veltins - It looked like Schalke would have “Hydrogen Deutschland” as a sponsor, but that fell through. They launched their kits with Schalke 04 written across the chest, which didn’t look great. One day before the season began though, they announced that the iconic beer sponsor Veltins would be returning - bringing back memories of better days.
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Worst sponsor award: Hertha BSC, CrazyBuzzer - Opening the season in blank shirts, Hertha controversially then signed with gambling site CrazyBuzzer (who also sponsor Mannheim). This not only looks awful on Hertha’s home shirt, but also goes against the promises of club president Kay Bernstein.
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Worst colour combination award: 1. FC Kaiserslautern - It’s a silver shirt with neon yellow/green sleeves, how could it possibly be good? Looks a bit like scuba gear. A green sponsor and a yellow-red sleeve sponsor don't help. MSV Duisburg’s grey and orange shirt deserves an honourable mention too.
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Best throwback award: Dynamo Dresden - Umbro's latest Dresden home kit is based on the shirt Dresden wore in 1989, when they won one of their most celebrated DDR-Oberliga titles. It was also the last season before manufacturers and sponsors made it to East German kits.
Worst throwback award: SV Werder Bremen
Worst throwback award: SV Werder Bremen - Controversial, but would any other brand get away with using the same design so much? Would any other brand get away with paying tribute to a kit that’s got nothing to do with Werder? For the 20th anniversary of Werder winning the double in their orange-sleeved ‘Papageitrikot’, a throwback to that would have been much better.
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Best fan-designed kit award: Viktoria Köln - This is also a 90’s throwback to a kit worn in 1993/94, made by Erima. It’s very 90’s, which is quite welcome in an era where bold block colours are no longer very common. A nice and interesting use of the club's three main colours.
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Worst fan-designed kit: Karlsruher SC - Maps on football kits very rarely look good. The map of Karlsruhe is particularly ill-suited to being on a football shirt it seems, and it’s also coloured with both red & yellow (the colours of the city and the Baden region.) It’s understandable how it appeals to fans but it’s a big downgrade on KSC’s last fan-designed third kit.
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The “that’s not your home kit” award: 1. FC Nürnberg - Bayern Munich made plenty of headlines with their revolutionary white home shirt. But the white shirt and red sleeved design, the so-called Wiener-Modell, was actually Bayern’s home kit looked like for a significant part of their history. This award goes to 1. FC Nürnberg instead. FCN have reversed their usual colours and have a mostly black shirt, which has never been done before.
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The “designed in powerpoint” award: Alemannia Aachen - Last year Alemannia Aachen had a kit with an image of former Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, their second most successful youth product behind Torsten Frings. This year they’ve stuck a word cloud on the side of the shirt featuring some club related words and phrases.
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The “well done, you have a kit” award: VfL Osnabrück - Last year’s Umbro VfL Osnabrück were a bit nicer, but Capelli Sport deserve a bit of praise for the job they’ve done for VfL. The club was supposed to be with Umbro again this year, but the manufacturer couldn’t keep to their obligations and actually provide the club with kits in time. Capelli stepped in and produced two bespoke kits for Osnabrück with a very short turnaround.
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The ruined by the back award: Jahn Regensburg - Jahn's third kit is absolutely beautiful. The back is weird. Why have the green part of the design continue onto the bottom? Why have the Netto logo in white when it's red and yellow on the front? To be fair, the problem is more with the front logo - white looks better and is probably only done due to league restrictions.
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The weirdest inspiration award: Holstein Kiel - This kit was actually introduced as a Sondertrikot at the end of last year, but is being kept on as a third kit this season. Inspired by the construction sites at their stadium, Holstein Kiel have a white and orange diagonal striped kit, which actually looks brilliant. Still, you have to ask how they came up with that one.
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The weirdest logo placement award: Mainz 05 - Mainz’s red and white checkered home kit is a pretty nice shirt, based on what they wore in the 90’s. But when you have white checks on the shirt, it’s hard to find a place for your white logo. The club badge goes in the midpoint of four squares, but Jako’s logo goes at the bottom of a randomly chosen red square, much higher than the Mainz badge. They could have just made it black, or had an outline.
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The weirdest kit leak award: Rot-Weiss Essen - When a picture of Essen’s kit leaked, it got people talking - but not about the kit. An image from behind the scenes of the launch video got out, showing some kind of ogre or alien wearing the kit. It was of course a human - U19 player Gianluca Swajkowski, in fact - wearing a green screen suit. The final video showed the full kit walking itself to the new sponsor’s offices.
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Best manufacturer change award: FC Augsburg and Hansa Rostock, Mizuno - This one goes comfortably to both Augsburg and Hansa Rostock, and their switches from Nike to outstanding, bespoke Mizuno kits. Bochum already made the same move last year, and it’s great to see teams that have been wearing Nike teamwear from 11teamsports for some time get some unique kits.
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Worst manufacturer change award: SpVgg Unterhaching, Adidas - Unterhaching were promoted to the 3. Liga in the playoff after beating Energie Cottbus - those playoff games were the last hurrah for a partnership with adidas that has lasted over 30 years. Though they’ve been wearing templates off the shelf for some time, it’s a huge shame to see the first offering from their new partners Uhlsport is only standard red teamwear. Even worse, they’ve combined it with navy shorts rather than blue once again.
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About Louis Ostrowski 15 Articles
Louis is from England but has become a VfL Osnabrück fan, and is usually found tweeting about football kits or the 2. Bundesliga at @ostrl.
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