33. Adidas Equipe (1996-99)
Chris Oakley | 2 August 2025
Perhaps it’s a symptom of being over 50 years old, but I can’t help feeling that modern football shirt design is stuck in a rut. Has been stuck in a rut - for several years now, in fact. That familiar feeling of seeing a new kit launch where the shirt is just an update of something worn during our own lifetime is not uncommon. Where once it was possible to witness genuine originality and innovation on the part of a kit supplier, we now see endless repetition and a constant mining of recent football history to create the next new-old design.
Don’t worry - this isn’t going to be a 10,000-word essay on Why Modern Life Is Rubbish, but I will say one thing; football shirt designers often don’t go far back in time enough to find proper inspiration. A prime example was when Umbro went back a whole century to find the vision they needed for Aston Villa’s truly remarkable home shirt for the 1992-93 season. Perfectly blending the design cues of the late 1800s with contemporary flair, Umbro showed how ‘modern vintage’ could be executed to a very high standard.
From left: Anderlecht (1996 away), Audax Italiano (1996-97 home), Auxerre (1996 away), Austria Vienna (1997 home).
This should have instigated a new trend for similar designs that made ample use of football’s rich history. The fact that it didn’t is rather surprising. More surprising, maybe, is that it took Adidas around four years to create something of its own in the modern vintage category, but when it did, the results were very pleasing indeed.
The first I saw of Adidas’ new 1996 template came when France played Romania in the early stages of that year’s European Championships in England. Aimé Jacquet’s team took to the St James’ Park field wearing elaborate blue shirts featuring a winged collar, lace-up placket, triangular flashes from shoulder to chest and an intricate shadow pattern that occupied the centre part of the shirt and upper sleeves. It seemed a world away from the diamond dominated shirt that preceded it, and no bad thing either.
From left: Benfica (1997-98 home and 1998 third), Cameroon (1996 home), Ferencváros (1997 away).
The effort that went into France’s particular version of our featured template was admirable. From the repeating red, white and blue of the laces to the clever incorporation of the Adidas three-stripe branding in the white shoulder flashes, no detail appears to have been overlooked. Even the shadow pattern (a duplicated FFF cockerel in alternating light and dark tones) was confined only to certain areas of the shirt, rather than being an all-over motif. Restraint balanced with flamboyance - a clever trick to pull off in kit design.
Other versions of the template soon followed with differing levels of adherence to the stated feature list. Some retained the shadow pattern, with teams like Anderlecht and Kaiserslautern employing their own logo, while others went for a simple repetition of the Adidas triple-stripe. Not many teams clamoured for the lace-up placket (probably for practicality reasons), but the winged collar was popular - even in modified form for Benfica.
From left: France (1996-97 home), Kaiserslautern (1996-98 home and 1996-97 away), Kazakhstan (1998 home).
One interesting tweak to the design was the use of panels to block out colour on the upper part of the sleeves. In my view, this made each shirt look more formidable and was a preferable alternative to the shadow pattern that appeared on the arms of, for instance, the French shirt. Advocates of this look included Hungary, Luxembourg and Lebanon.
Without question the most eye-catching aspect of the template is the pair of flashes that dropped to a point two-thirds of the way down from the shoulders. These were bigger and bolder than previous attempts to decorate the upper corners of the shirt, and only just avoided the criticism of those who prioritise practicality over aesthetics. Thanks to the encroachment of those big triangles, any sponsor logo that appeared in the centre of the shirt had to be small enough or narrow enough to fit between them. Luckily this wasn’t a problem for Austria Vienna who ensured there were plenty of sponsor logos littered elsewhere on the kit by way of compensation.
From left: NAC Breda (1997 home), Orlando Pirates (1997 home), Rangers (1996-97 home), River Plate (1997 away).
This Adidas creation was striking in its detail as well as its ability to convey the vintage sensibilities aforementioned while still looking modern. Quite rightly, in my opinion, the template came to be associated with a number of teams that achieved greatness while wearing it, starting with the France team that reached the last four of Euro 96. There was also Rangers (Scottish Premier Division champions in 1996-97), Auxerre (winners of both Ligue 1 and the Coupe de France the season before), and Kaiserslautern (Bundesliga champions in 1997-98). Even River Plate got in on the act, winning both the Apertura and Clausura competitions of the 1997 Primera División of Argentina.
Like a clever older brother to the Adidas Real template, this one had a little more character and was much more interesting. Whether some teams thought it was too eclectic or desperate to evoke a bygone era we’ll simply never know. What can definitely be said is that when kit suppliers go further back in time to get their inspiration from the past, the rewards are nearly always much greater. Bear that in mind when you realise your team’s new kit for 2026-27 is based on a kit they wore in 1996-97.
My very grateful thanks go to Adam’s Shirt Quest and FSWorld for their help in researching this template.
Update:
Following the publication of this article, I heard from Denis Hurley who informed me that the official name of this template was Adidas EQUIPE. Thanks very much for the info, Denis...
To see the full set of Adidas Equipe kits, visit the Adidas Equipe template gallery page.