It was supposed to be a straightforward pre-season run-out under the familiar floodlights of St James’ Park. Instead, Newcastle United handed football fans something far more entertaining than the scoreline, a mid-game wardrobe change that nobody saw coming.
During their pre-season friendly against Bayer Leverkusen on Saturday, Newcastle walked out onto the St James’ Park pitch wearing their black and white home kit, trimmed in blue. The problem? Leverkusen’s away strip, a mint shirt decorated with a blue pattern, sat uncomfortably close to Newcastle’s trim in terms of colour. Officials deemed it a clash, and the fix came at the first hydration break of the match.
The Great Kit Swap
Players peeled off their home shirts and swapped into Newcastle’s lilac third strip, a change that drew equal parts confusion and amusement from supporters in the stands. The swap happened while the Magpies were already trailing 1-0, which meant the new look did little to shift their fortunes immediately. In football, there is an old superstition that changing your kit mid-match can change your luck. In this case, it did not quite work out that way.
For full match details as reported, the BBC Sport coverage captures the sequence of events as they unfolded on the day.
Leverkusen, who have been one of Europe’s most consistently impressive clubs over the past couple of seasons, eventually ran out 2-1 winners. It was a decent workout for both sides, but the story that left the stadium buzzing was not a goal or a tactical masterstroke, it was the strips.
Why Kit Clashes Are More Common Than You Think
Colour clashes in football are not rare, but catching one this late, after both teams have already stepped onto the pitch, is unusual. The standard procedure is for clubs and match officials to identify potential conflicts well before a game. Kits are submitted, compared, and cleared. Somehow, in this instance, the blue trim on Newcastle’s home shirt and the blue detailing on Leverkusen’s mint away kit created enough visual ambiguity to warrant an in-game switch.
It is worth noting that pre-season friendlies operate with a looser administrative framework than competitive matches. The precise protocols that govern the Premier League or the Champions League are not always applied with the same rigour during summer warm-ups. That likely explains how the situation made it all the way to kick-off without being caught.
The Lilac Third Strip Gets Its Moment
Third kits, by their very nature, are designed to be a last resort. They sit in the wardrobe all season, brought out only when both the home and away options are unavailable. Having your third strip debut come mid-match, in front of your home crowd, during a pre-season friendly is about as unglamorous as it gets. Still, there is something endearingly chaotic about it. Football, for all its gloss and global branding, still throws up genuinely absurd moments like this.
Newcastle’s lilac strip, already a divisive piece of kit among fans simply for its colour choice, suddenly had a story attached to it. Whatever you thought of the shade before Saturday, you will remember exactly where you were when you first saw it being pulled on between hydration breaks against a Bundesliga side.
Where Newcastle Go From Here
Pre-season results carry little weight when the competitive calendar gets underway, and a 2-1 defeat to a quality Leverkusen side is no cause for alarm on Tyneside. The club has been active in the transfer market this summer, with reports linking them to Benfica defender Dedic as they look to strengthen the squad ahead of the new campaign.
The kit confusion, the defeat, the strip that briefly went viral, none of it will matter once the season proper begins. What it does show is that even when things go sideways off the ball, football has a way of keeping you entertained.
So here is the question worth sitting with: should Premier League clubs be held to stricter pre-match kit protocols even during friendlies, or is a little chaos like this exactly what pre-season football needs to stay interesting?
