Reimagining Romania’s Kit: A New Take on Three Colors
One notable change in the Romanian National Football Team’s kits was the disappearance of the three colors of the national flag from the complete kit chromatic palette. From the mid-70s to the early 90s, spanning almost two decades, Romania frequently used all the colors of the flag: blue, yellow, and red. Therefore, the team has always been known in local lore as “Tricolorii” (The Tricolours).
For example, back then, the team would sometimes wear a red shirt with yellow shorts and blue socks, creating a complete mix-and-match look for most games in the 70s and 80s. The most iconic pairing for us fans was at the 1990 World Cup, where they wore a yellow shirt, blue shorts, and red socks.
From 1984 to 2015, Romania was sponsored by Adidas and exclusively used Adidas template kits. Having the same template kit in three solid colors made it easier to change different pieces of equipment, like socks, from game to game.
Starting after the 1990 World Cup, Romania began playing home games more consistently in an all-yellow kit, with red and blue featured in a few details. At that time, like many other teams using the Adidas brand, Romania used standard Adidas template kits. Unique designs, like West Germany’s 1988–90 home shirt, were rare.
In January 2024, I was selected to design Romania’s upcoming kits for the 2026 World Cup qualifiers. I proposed and explored many design ideas from the past to their team, going back to the 70s. One of my ideas was to reintroduce the three-color kits, but it was decided to maintain consistency with a full yellow kit.
In this visually rich post, you can see how the Romanian kits might look if we returned to using all three colors in different parts of the kit.
The 1990 World Cup look
Using the latest Joma design for Romanian National Team I tried to reinterpreted the 1990 World Cup Kit: Yellow Shirt, Blue Pants, Red Socks.
The 70s-80s mix and match look
Using the latest Joma kit for Romanian National Team I tried to mix and match colors based on the color combination have been used through 70s and 90s.
The 70s unique look
Romania wore turquoise coloured shirts against Brazil at the 1970 World Cup in Guadalajara. In recent years, many stories about these shirts have surfaced from different sources. I wrote a story covering this unique look:
I post stories about Romania match worn shirts on Instagram. If you want to get in touch with me you can find me there as onromanianfootball:
https://www.instagram.com/onromanianfootball/
