Thursday 20 November 2014

2015 S-Pulse Kit

Barry BARRY WRITES... 

With thanks to Tichmall for inspiring this post, and glad to hear you have completed your collection!

These days we tend to reply maybe a bit too much on Twitter for breaking the news. What Twitter gains in convenience and speed, it loses in depth. So let's take a moment to fully appreciate our recently unveiled kit for next season, which I can only describe as a spectacular return to form.
"A spectacular return to form" Barry Valder, UKU
Away is a little simple compared to the extravagance of the home kit, but I'm not complaining. This is the first time in a few years our new kit has made me sit up and take notice. In recent seasons things have become rather tame compared to the uniquely striking shirts of the early years.
 Graphic borrowed from this excellent website - 8 pages of S-Pulse shirt history (Japanese)

The above graphic only goes up to 2009, which was the precise time I expressed a wish that "here's hoping ... five or six years down the line we see a return to the garish and outlandish shirts of the mid nineties." Just call me Mystic Meg. :)

2012 did see a flirtation with the world map of old, but it was a tentative toe-in-the-water testing of people's reaction. After this year's shirt was dull in the extreme, respect to the kit bods - they've now gone for it whole-heartedly. The result is some solid gold S-Pulse sexiness.

Even my better half, who has precisely zero interest in the beautiful game, sat up and expressed her approval at the return to what I like to call S-Pulse Classic.

Roll on 2015 - in J1!

3 comments:

Tichmall said...

Ha ha, that's funny, I made this shirt history picture back in 2009 (you can see little "Tich" tags on the bottom right of each shirt), and I was surprised to see it posted on the Japanese website last year or so.

I'm glad to see that the globe is definitely back since 2012, even if it's less fancy now than it was before the 2007 season. What I like most about the recent shirts is that the sponsor is printed in the fabric and cannot come off. And the return to a grey/white/orange scheme for the away kit (much like in 2005/2006) is welcome as well. Can't wait to get it !

Barry said...

That's you work? Brilliant! Any chance of an update? ;)

Yeah, I much prefer having the sponsor printed on the shirt. My 2008 shirt started peeling off pretty early on. :( Not good for such an expensive piece of merchandise!

Tichmall said...

Yeah, I stopped wearing a lot of my Shimizu shirts because of the sponsors, I don't want them to fade or to fall off. The weird thing is that the one I wear the most lately is the 1992 Cup one. Not the best looking but I really like the fit !

I didn't update that picture, but I took care of creating a uniform history on the club's English wikipedia page, and since then I update it every year. It seems we are the only Japanese club to have that on our wikipedia page.