New Roma Away Kit Leaked Online

When I first started following football many years ago, I was stunned to hear that clubs changed their uniforms (or kits) literally every single year. For as crass and commercial as American sports can be, even they wouldn't stoop to something to transparent; changing kits every year for the pure sake of raking in more commercial revenue. However, as the years rolled by, I became accustomed to it, and quite frankly, if Roma had the same kit year in and year out, I might feel a bit uneasy.

There's no real secret to it; people are as obsessed with football as they are having the newest version of, well, of everything—cars, sneakers, computers and clothes. Part of what drives that obsession is simply anticipation, and part of what drives that anticipation are the annual "leaks” of the kits online.

While I can't put an exact number on it, these "leaks” are usually pretty spot on, but for the first time in my years covering Roma, it seems like we have competing and seemingly legitimate leaks.

Back in January we passed along a three-kit leak that seemed rather legit:

Besides being a high quality digital rendering of the kits, and having that same mannequin-esque pose Nike tends to use in their press releases, these leaks were succeeded by photos of the actual kit, at least the home one, in some sort of factory or clandestine Nike HQ somewhere, lending further credence to these versions.

However, Corriere dello Sport got their hands on an alternative white kit, one that takes that same lightning bolt motif and puts on a decidedly new twist:

As you can see, that's no mere artist rendering; that's the Real McCoy, new with tags and all. And in a vomit inducing wrinkle, the shorts not only include the players number, but have now included, for some reason, the players name and another fucking Hyundai logo, as well as that same ghastly lightning bold running down the side of the shorts.

Let's hope this was just some intern's good try and that these never come to fruition. These are hideous.