The Championship has become one of the most entertaining leagues in the world in recent times and it has also been home to some of the best and most iconic kits in English football history.
Here we will look at five kits, in no particular order, and examine what makes the kit design so aesthetically pleasing, the most iconic players to wear the kit and how the team wearing the kit fared in the league that season.
The only eligibility criteria for this list was that the kit had to be worn by a team playing in the Championship.
Sunderland AFC 1998/9 – Away
The first kit on this list is a beautiful navy away kit manufactured by Asics and worn by Sunderland AFC during the 1998/9 season.
The stylish strip features red and white trim on the sleeves and collar, in homage to the Black cats’ traditional colours. The two buttons at the top of the shirt add a touch of class to what was already an elegant design.
Successfully integrating a sponsor onto a kit is one of the hardest things for designers to do, but this was achieved with this Sunderland kit. A red and white horizontal stripe across the chest acts as the background for the green and yellow logo of Lambton’s Beer. The logo is not too big or overimposing and the fact that Lambton’s was a local brewery is also a nice touch.
Sunderland fans will also have great memories of the 98/99 season as they won what was at the time the Division One title to gain promotion to the Premier League.
The Black Cats amassed a staggering 105 points, 18 more than second-placed Bradford City, and held the top spot from late October until the end of the season.
Their standout players were strike duo Kevin Phillips, who became the Premier League’s top scorer the next season and won eight England caps, and Niall Quinn, who won 92 caps for the Republic of Ireland.
Sheffield United 1997-9 – Home
Next up is Sheffield United’s home kit which they wore in both the 1997/8 season and the 1998/9 campaign.
The kit, manufactured by the iconic brand Le Coq Sportif, simply does everything which a traditional Sheffield United kit should do, but to the very highest standard.
The largely red strip features two vertical white stripes with splashes of black between the stripes and a black open-neck collar.
At this time, the Blades had a predominantly black badge which adds a nice degree of symmetry to the shirt; the badge on the left of the chest and the manufacturer logo, also black, on the right.
The use of black and white trim throughout the kit also helps to incorporate the sponsor ‘Ward’s’ which has a black and white logo.
The Blades enjoyed two relatively good seasons in the second tier whilst wearing this kit, finishing 6th in 97/98 when they eventually lost out in the playoffs, and 8th in 98/99.
However, their main success with this strip came in the FA Cup. In the 97/98 season, the Yorkshiremen reached the FA Cup semi-finals where they were unfortunately defeated by Newcastle United at Old Trafford. In the 98/99 season, they reached the fifth round and got to play Arsenal at Highbury.
The most famous players to wear the kit were Liverpool and Wales legend Ian Rush, cult hero striker Jan Åge Fjørtoft and current Blades manager Chris Wilder.
Hull City 2021/22 – Away
A modern-day classic, Hull City’s ‘blackout’ kit from the 2021/22 season may not be iconic in everyone’s eyes given its relatively recent release, but it will go down in history in due course.
The Tigers were able to perfectly capitalise on the social media hype surrounding the ‘blackout’ trend, started by Swedish giants AIK and popularised by Borussia Dortmund, as the all-black design was so popular amongst football fans that the club had to have an early access period in which only members were able to buy the strip.
The kit was manufactured by Umbro and featured what the club called a ‘tone-on-tone front stripe’ with a ‘woven black tonal crest’ and the word ‘tigers’ was written on the back of the neckline.
Giacom, a local IT services company who were the club’s front-of-shirt sponsor, also had their logo written in the same ‘tonal’ style to keep the ‘blackout’ theme consistent across the entirety of the shirt.
The 2021/22 season saw Hull return to the Championship after a brief spell in League One and the Tigers comfortably escaped the drop thanks to good runs of form in November, February and April.
Former England international midfielder Tom Huddlestone was one of the players to wear the kit alongside Brentford’s Keane Lewis-Potter, who was Hull’s top scorer that season, and current club captain Lewie Coyle.
The Tigers 2022/23 third kit was another ‘blackout’ strip, due to the popularity of the 21/22 number.
Manchester City 1997/8 – Away
Although the 1997/98 season is probably seen as one of, if not, the worst in the club’s history, there is no denying that Kappa designed two truly iconic kits for the Sky Blues to wear.
The home kit is a classy sky blue design with navy trim alongside the Kappa logo on the shoulders. But the away kit is the one which will be focused on here, largely because it was the one deemed worthy of reproduction by Score Draw, the official retro reproduction partner of many big club and international teams, therefore showing the kit’s lasting legacy.
As for the strip itself, it is almost completely white until the chest, from which point upwards it is almost entirely navy.
The exception to this is the single burgundy hoop at around chest height which houses the iconic ‘brother’ logo that appeared on all City shirts from 1987 to 1999 and was part of many historic moments.
The top part of the kit exudes class as the white and burgundy trim on the collar, which also has ‘M.C.F.C. embroidered on the front, and sleeves perfectly complement the navy background.
The shoulders are fitted with the same iconic Kappa trimming that features on the home kit, though it looks even better here due to the kit already having large parts of navy on it.
As previously mentioned, the season itself is one that most City fans will have put out of their mind. The Sky Blues finished the campaign in 22nd place and were relegated by one point despite scoring more and conceding fewer goals than both Queens Park Rangers and Portsmouth, who finished directly above them in the table.
That being said, the kit will always be remembered as it was worn by multiple Manchester City icons, the main ones being Shaun Goater, Uwe Rösler and the Magician of Maine Road, Georgi Kinkladze.
Newcastle United 2009/10 – Home
Ending on the list, on a slightly controversial note, is Newcastle United’s 2009/10 home kit.
The Magpies had just been relegated to the second tier after 16 consecutive years in the top flight and, although the specific design of the kit is not the best, it encapsulates most of the iconic aspects of a Newcastle United kit from this era whilst also meeting the eligibility requirements.
Some may argue that the kit was ahead of its time, utilising a centralised badge which came into fashion a few years ago and has been used by a multitude of big teams.
Its base features the black and white stripes synonymous with Newcastle United and Adidas’ iconic three stripes are incorporated into the kit seamlessly.
Whilst it may not have been integrated as well as it was in other years, the iconic ‘Northern Rock’ sponsor is also present on the kit. The Building Society sponsored the Magpies for the best part of 10 years before ceasing to exist in 2012.
Although the season started in uncertain circumstances due to problems with finding a new owner which fed into managerial and player-related problems, the Magpies bounced back brilliantly and secured 102 points to comfortably win promotion from the Championship at the first time of asking. They finished a staggering 23 points clear of third-placed Nottingham Forest.
A number of Newcastle fan-favourites wore the shirt. These names include: 19-cap England international Alan Smith, Fabricio Coloccini, who made the best part of 250 appearances for Newcastle, and youth team product Andy Carroll.
