Welcome to the RKH blog – a long overdue section on this website for more stories, colour, and nuance behind the very factual and more purely informational season and competition pages upon which the site is founded.
There is no long-term path currently planned for these blog posts, but I do plan to cover kit releases, rumours, unique kit occurrences—both historical and forthcoming—perhaps features on individual referees and what they wear in a season or career…and, of course, what you will (hopefully) read here, general kit news updates from the vast realm of football referees.
Ultimately, while you can see an absolute plethora of kits themselves on the rest of the site (the “what”), there is a limitation to “the why” behind it all. And that’s what I can hopefully begin to uncover here.
So, with that, here we go! We are a few months into the 2023-24 season, and already we have had some interesting deviations on new kits being worn mid-season that weren’t around in August.
UEFA’s “Be a Referee!” campaign
The European governing body has launched a campaign aimed at the grassroots game in recent weeks, with the view of recruiting more individuals to begin their path as a match official, a role that has seen numbers steadily dwindle over the years. As a result, UEFA have created the “Be a Referee!” campaign to attempt to take the first steps to combat the shortage – and have used referees as advertising space for it.
UEFA referee kits have certainly been prone to variations in the last decade or so, at least as far as sock—and even shorts—colours are concerned, but this is the first time any kind of slogan has been added to the kits, outside of the standard cup final inscriptions at each season’s end.
The wordmark slogan was added in two places on the jersey: first, below the UEFA Match Official badge on the left side of the chest, and second, right across the lower back, stretching pretty much the full width of the kit.
The wordmark was printed in white on the black kit, and black, sensibly, on the other three.
Used on the November 7-8 round of matches, it was exclusively worn in Champions League fixtures, with Europa and Europa Conference League officials remaining with the standard Macron kits.
Premier League poppies
As has become custom over the last decade-plus in England, players and officials wore poppies on their kits in the two weeks leading up to November 11. This year, a small ‘2023’ was added in white on the bottom of the poppy.
Officials throughout the four flights of English football wear poppies each year – Premier League referees wear them in between the two chest pockets, in the middle of the shirt (above), while referees in the EFL wear them on the right chest pocket (below).
Süper Lig adds a second sponsor
Firstly, a plug for the newly-created Turkish Süper Lig competition page – charting referee kits from 2020-onwards.
To the point, though, Süper Lig officials received updated Joma kits at the start of the season with a new sleeve sponsor. While that sponsor—Trendyol—remains, a second icon has now been added above the Trendyol logo on the left sleeve.
Unfortunately, I can’t claim to know what the logo represents, but it has the letters “NG” combined together in a serif font. It appears in white on the black and blue kits, and in black on the yellow and pink shirts.
These sponsors playing musical chairs means that, in six months, Süper Lig referees have had three different versions of the same Joma kit.