Why Did Napoli Wear Last Season’s Shorts Against Inter? A little aesthetic curiosity
On the occasion of their defeat away at Inter, Napoli wore their 2026/27 Third kit for the first time this season. The jersey is a solid red design that reinterprets the aesthetic of the Home jersey, enriched with white-and-light-blue striped details on the polo collar and armholes. At San Siro, however, Massimiliano Allegri’s players took to the pitch with an aesthetic detail that almost went unnoticed.
To avoid a kit clash with Inter’s Home jersey black shorts, Napoli did not use the red shorts designed for the Third kit, instead opting for a white pair. An apparently simple choice that, however, created a small aesthetic clash within the 2026/27 collection. As reported by the A Tutela della Maglia del Napoli page, the white shorts worn by the Azzurri at San Siro actually belonged to the 2025/26 season.
The reason lies in a detail that is as small as it is significant. For the 2026/27 season, Napoli have two different sets of white shorts available, but neither is a perfect match for the Third kit. Those designed for the Home jersey feature the club’s centenary logo: the golden N enclosed in the pennant is accompanied by the “100” lettering, with the two zeros reinterpreted in the shape of the infinity symbol. The white shorts designed for the Away kit also feature a specific identity, with the light-blue background of the N enhanced by the silhouette of Mount Vesuvius.
Both models therefore carry a specific graphic element designed to complement their respective jerseys. The Third kit, on the other hand, uses the crest introduced in 2004 and subsequently reworked into its current form: a white capital N on a blue background, enclosed within a double circle with white outlines. Pairing either of the two white shorts from the new season would therefore have created a visual inconsistency between the different elements of the kit.
Napoli therefore chose to bring back the white shorts from the 2025/26 Home jersey, free from the celebratory details featured on the new models. Their origin is confirmed by another almost invisible detail: the EA7 logo in light blue positioned just below the players’ numbers. The result is a kit made up of elements from two different seasons, yet one that maintains a precise visual coherence. A small example of how, in contemporary football, even managing a kit clash can become a matter of archive, details and visual identity.
