The 2022 Adidas referee kit broke with recent tradition in its design – with the Adidas logo re-appearing on the jersey, shorts, and socks. This hadn’t been the case since the 2014 kit, with both the 2016 and 2018 sets featuring a minimal, logo-free look.
Interestingly, the unveiling of the 2022 set came right around the time Adidas was rebranding their logo – removing the wordmark and shifting to the triangular icon by itself. The 22 line was released before the rebrand officially took hold, and obviously production had long been underway beforehand – meaning by the time these kits would be seen on the field, they would effectively feature an outdated brand.
Officials in the Bundesliga—the most high-profile domestic league still using Adidas—trotted out for the 2022-23 season with the kits as they were released earlier that year.
Meanwhile, the FIFA World Cup was just months away, and Adidas-represented teams in the competition had all unveiled strips with the updated logo. However, question marks remained over the officials’ kits – and there was no photoshoot or kit release, like UEFA had done for the most recent Euros.
When Daniele Orsato stepped out for the tournament’s opening match, Adidas had indeed planted the new logo on the 2022 strips, along with not one, but two Qatar 2022 patches. In the end, pretty common-sense brand awareness from Adidas, being one of the flagship sponsors of the biggest sporting event on the planet.
The updated kits became the new de-facto Adidas 2022 referee outfits – the Bundesliga adopted them for the 2023-24 season as well.
Everything was stable in Adidas-land until the most recent Club World Cup, in which Manchester City were crowned champions. When referee Tori Penso walked out for the first match of the competition, she and her crew did so in the teal (or, for the purposes of this post’s title, blue) Adidas kit – with a black Adidas logo.
Referee Jesús Valenzuela, overseeing another early-round match in the competition, had the same kit – curiously, the two ARs also had the black Adidas logo, but the 4th official was stuck with the ‘old’ grey mark.
The pre-match captains photo certainly demonstrates some sort of kit manufacturing glitch – something very rarely seen at a FIFA competition.
As it turned out, the teal-blue kit was the only colour afflicted by this logo oddity at the Club World Cup. The red and yellow kits were business as usual, and predictably there was no colour change on the black kit either. Purple was not used.
