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Barça will, yes, wear white again next season

BarcelonaBarça will once again use a white shirt next season, as approved by Joan Laporta’s board of directors. As the paper progresses Sport, the second kit for the 2023/34 season will be all white and will bring back a tradition that had been forgotten in recent decades. Different people from Laporta’s environment, in order to claim the club’s past, had already put the issue on the table in the first year of Laporta’s mandate, but finally this year’s third kit, which at times was valued that it was white, it ended up being a soft gray color with a Blaugrana cross, as this was decided by the previous board, as reported by ARA. When Laporta entered his second term, designs for the 2022/23 season were already agreed with Nike. And Josep Maria Bartomeu had decided that the third kit, which had to be white with a Blaugrana cross in homage to the cross of Sant Jordi, was finally light gray to avoid debates related to a color associated for many with Madrid.

Historians do not agree on whether the white color, in fact, would have been the first used by the club. When on December 8, 1899, Barça played the first match in its history at the Velòdrom de la Bonanova against a team from the English community of the city, a match played by three presidents of the entity, Walter Wild, Bartolomé Terradas and Joan Gamper, he probably did it dressed all in white. It was normal back then, when the teams were born and didn’t have a uniform yet, as it was the color of the underwear. Barça did not decide on their colors until December 13, 1899, when they chose blue and red in a vertical format, with white pants. The color white has been a traveling companion for Barça since then, as the white pants lasted until 1914. In 1979, white would be used for the last time in an official match. Shortly after, the company Meyba arrived, in charge of dressing all Barça sections from 1982, and opted for iconic designs using yellow or orange with the second kits. White was cornered. In part, because the rivalry with Madrid was getting bigger and bigger. And because at a time when televisions were already all in color it was necessary to differentiate itself from the white that is increasingly associated with Madrid.

Many iconic moments in the club’s history have been achieved in white, such as the 1952 Copa Latina final in Paris against Nice. A few years later, in 1955, the Copa de Fires was born, a competition that would become the ancestor of the current Europa League. Then this competition was not organized by UEFA. And in its first edition, teams representing the cities where major European trade fairs were held faced each other. Thus, some cities, such as London, presented teams made up of players from different clubs to the tournament. Other cities, such as Barcelona, ​​signed up a team, in this case Barça, but for formal reasons it debuted as if it were the city’s national team, without being able to play for Blaugrana. Without being able to use the shield. So the first European kit was a white shirt with the city’s coat of arms. The first game, a 6-2 win against the Copenhagen team at Les Corts, would be played in black pants and a white shirt. That edition of the Copa de Faires was so strange that matches could only be played at home coinciding with a fair, which is why it was necessary to wait three years to finish the tournament, which Barça would win, this time at the Camp Nou, and with a blue shirt. The last time Barça would officially use it was on March 7, 1979, in a Recopa match against Ipswich Town coached by a certain Bobby Robson.

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