Puma's radical new third kits cause stir: New shirts for Manchester City, Milan, Marseille, Valencia, Monchengladbach

Simon Borg

Puma's radical new third kits cause stir: New shirts for Manchester City, Milan, Marseille, Valencia, Monchengladbach image

If you're going to "rewrite the rules" with soccer jerseys, it might as well be with the third kits. And Puma definitely went off script with the release of the new shirts for its 10 European clubs in 2020-2021. 

The text-heavy jerseys, which follow a similar template for all 10 clubs, stand out for three reasons: Each team's name across the front, the club's badge showing in a background pattern and not over the heart, and the Puma logo topping the stack across the front. 

The European clubs that will be wearing the new kits are: Manchester City (England), Borussia Monchengladbach (Germany), AC Milan (Italy), Valencia (Spain), Marseille (France), Stade Rennais (France), PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands), Fenerbahce (Turkey), Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine) and FC Krasnodar (Russia).

Here are the images of all 10 shirts, followed by the initial fan reaction: 

Manchester City

AC Milan

Borussia Monchengladbach

Marseille

Valencia

PSV Eindhoven

Stade Rennais

Shakhtar Donetsk

FC Krasnodar

Fenerbahce

Puma released the kits via a jersey unveil show for each of the kits on YouTube:

As can be expected when the design change is this dramatic, the fans' immediate reaction was not necessarily favorable:

Simon Borg

Simon Borg Photo

Simon Borg is a senior editor at The Sporting News who has covered football/soccer for over a decade. A supporter of Italian club Parma Calcio from his years growing up in Europe, he was previously a long-time member of Major League Soccer's digital media team, as a multimedia content producer, on-air personality, and Editor-in-Chief. Based in New York City, Borg is multilingual and has covered the domestic and global scene for TSN since 2021.