Ranking Aston Villa’s five best kits of the nineties – including FA Cup final and Dean Saunders classics
The five best Aston Villa kits of the Nineties – from a pinstripe classic to the forgotten ‘Inter Milan’ look…
Something we’ve been thinking about lately is why football kits were just so much cooler back in the Nineties. Is it the bit of extra bagginess? The prevailing styles of the time? Or just because we’re getting old and preferred things from our childhood? Quite possibly.
Either way, quite a few teams enjoyed a fashion zenith back in the early years of the Premier League, and we believe that Aston Villa are among them. It’s not that Villa’s kits these days are bad, but a little bit of imagination has been lost to time.
Sure, the more inventive designs of the Nineties didn’t always work out – the drawstring collar of the 1992/93 home kit doesn’t forgive an otherwise hideous shirt – but this was an era in which football clobber was at its best. So, to celebrate, here’s our top five Villa shirts from the decade in which the beautiful game was at its very coolest.
5. 1997/98 Goalkeeper Change
We’ll kick things off with what may be a controversial call – the only photo we could find of this deeply distinctive (and perhaps divisive) design doesn’t quite do it justice with all the washed-out colours of the age of analogue film, and some of you probably hate it anyway, but we picked it in part because we really miss the age of eye-gouging goalie jerseys.
God knows this one, which Mark Bosnich probably only wore once or twice, isn’t subtle, and nor is its grey, black and neon yellow colour pallet, but can you imagine a shirt with that striking pattern fanning out from the badge passing Reebok’s quality control department today? No, and that makes us a little sad.
4. 1990-1993 Away
One of the other great things about the Nineties was that clubs didn’t necessarily change their shirts every single year in order to extract as much cash from the fans as humanly possible – and this beauty was Villa’s change kit of choice for three straight seasons, including the very first of the Premier League.
Perhaps Umbro just had a spare Inter Milan design lying around which needed to be used, but it’s a beauty – simple, effective, and modelled to stylish effect by Steve Staunton here. A half-forgotten shirt which deserves more recognition.
3. 1999/00 Home
The only shirt in the modern era which dared to move away from traditional Villa designs and have a crack at some thick-cut stripes, and we love it for both its boldness and its bagginess, which made it look fabulous as it billowed out around the waists of Dion Dublin, Paul Merson and their colleagues.
We know some fans can never get on with a shirt which moves away from the most traditional design elements of the shirt, and perhaps this kit is tarred slightly by its association with the 2000 FA Cup final defeat, but it’s a cracker that should be recalled with kindness. And a shirt that kit suppliers probably wouldn’t even consider making today.
2. 1993-95 Home
Of course, the 99/00 jersey isn’t even the best striped kit in Villa’s history – the pinstripes that blessed the Villa shirt for two years in the middle of the decade make this kit a classic, and we’re surprised that the club have only attempted them again once, when a far fainter set of thin stripes were on the reasonable but far less appealing 2014/15 jersey.
This was some of Asics’ best work of a decade in which they were a major player. It’s Dean Saunders, it’s Andy Townsend, it’s Paul McGrath, it’s the much-missed Ugo Ehiogu and Dalian Atkinson. In short, it’s great, and only surpassed by…
1. 1993-95 Away
…the kit which Villa wore when they played West Ham at Upton Park. Or just when they wanted to look utterly fantastic. The green, black and red number is one of the best change jerseys in Premier League history, and a worthy number one.
Basically, Villa just looked really good for two straight seasons, even if they came perilously close to being the most fashionable team to get relegated in 1995. From the shirt sponsor to the perfectly-sized alternating stripes, this was pretty much perfect, and it’s a shame we haven’t seen its like since. Kit manufacturers just don’t have it in them these days…
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