Among the many luxuries enjoyed by today’s professional footballers is a well designed football kit by worldwide sports brands such as Nike, Adidas, Puma or Kappa. However, spare a thought for some of the stars of yesteryear. Back in the day when pitches were more mud than grass, it was almost as if the kitman was sending his team out in the oldest, raggiest clothes they could find so as not to spoil their Sunday best. Today, we look back at the 10 worst football kits of all time - feel free to add your own below.

10. Man Utd Grey shirt (1996)
We kick things off with one of the most infamous football shirts of all time - the “invisible” Manchester United shirt from 1996. Worn only once, Sir Alex Ferguson demanded his players change into a new kit at half-time against Southampton as they “couldn’t see” each other on the park and this was why they found themselves 3-0 down at the interval. Of course it was.

9. Mexico Jorge Campos Keeper Shirt (1996)
Jorge Campos has always been better known for his eccentricity than his keeping and here’s a good reason why - shirts so loud even the moles at the Azteca could hear them.

8. Aston Villa away shirt (1994)
Dwight Yorke here proving that there are reasons why, as anyone who has ever done art at school knows, red and green are at opposite ends of the colour spectrum and should not be mixed. Villa had a good team back in the day led by Ron Atkinson, but the facts are, you don’t win a Premier League title playing in a kit that looks like that!

7. Norwich City home shirt (1993)
Norwich City were regarded a fairly fashionable team in the early 90s as Mike Walker’s side led by Efan Ekoku and Jeremy Goss finished 3rd in the Premier League and knocked out Bayern Munich on a thrilling European run. However, “fashionable” isn’t the word we would use to describe this horror show with a kit that more resembled what birds drop from the sky when they are full up.

6. Arsenal away shirt (1991)
The Gunners may have won the title in 1990-91, losing only one game, but they won no prizes for this famous monstrosity, an early harbinger of the patterned design nightmares to come in the 1990s.

5. Barcelona away shirt (1997)
Barcelona aren’t a far of conventional away shirts, having treated us to some orange, yellow and fluorescent kits in recent years. However, the high standards of the Nike kits mean they just about get away with it these days. Not so in 1997, when Kappa presented us with this effort. Even Lionel Messi couldn’t look good in this outfit.

4. Scunthorpe away shirt (early 90s)
Were it not for the fact that there are much bigger clubs on this list with far bigger design budgets, this would be our ‘winner’. It’s as if Timmy Mallett put on a pink shirt, covered himself in superglue and plunged head-first into the sweets section at Woolworths. An absolute abomination that is only compounded by the fact they were sponsored by Pleasure Island at the time. Scunthorpe, I salute you.

3. Chelsea away shirt (1995)
One of the biggest questions about the early years of the Premier League was how on earth did Chelsea attract some of Europe’s star players like Ruud Gullit, Gianluca Vialli and Gianfranco Zola to play for them? Nothing to do with the club itself or the fact future billionaire owner Roman Abramovich was still an unknown. But would you really leave Milan or Juventus to come and play in THAT kit? Grey and orange? Come on! I very much doubt new Chelsea sponsors Samsung would have paid £50million to have their name displayed on such an eye-watering kit.

2. Hull City home shirt (1992)
Hull may be gracing the Premier League at the moment but only ten years ago they were at the foot of the football league and they certainly had the kit to match. This leopard skin outfit might have seemed a good idea to the kit designers - but did anyone stop to think just how ridiculous the “Tigers” players looked in it? Perhaps by co-incidence, Hull soon ditched the new kit and started to rise up the.

1. Athletic Bilbao home shirt (2004)
Basque side Athletico Bilbao have a reputation as being one of the toughest outfits in the Primera Liga but this horrific effort certainly doesn’t to much to help that reputation. One can only assume this shirt was created by throwing a bucket of paint against a nice white shirt. Furthermore, while most of the kits on this list were from a different era, this kit is reasonably recent. They should have known better! This is why it is our winner of the worst football kit of all time award.

Please leave your thoughts and nominations for the worst football shirt in the comments box below!

1. SC says:

   June 24, 2025 at 2:57 am

   re: Hull

   I guess this gives lie to the old adage “A Leopard cannot change its spots”

   Duh!

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