Liverpool’s Adidas kits are back. And for many fans, that’s all it takes to stir something inside.
A collar shape. The three stripes on the shoulder. A certain shade of red. Suddenly, you’re not in 2025 anymore. You’re watching Barnes glide down the wing, Gerrard lash one in from 30 yards or Cantona ruin your summer at Wembley.
Because for Liverpool supporters, kits don’t just mark time. They hold meaning. They trap emotion. They remind us where we were, who we were with and how it felt to care about something more than ourselves.
These shirts have always been more than material. They carry memory. They hold weight.
And maybe that’s why Adidas coming back feels like more than a commercial deal. It feels like a reconnection with identity.
Something stitched into shirts across generations, from away days to European cities, from title wins to cup final heartbreak and back again.
Adidas I (1985–1996): Red power and a green goodbye
When Adidas first arrived in 1985, Liverpool were still kings. The shirts reflected it.
The red home strip with white shoulder stripes became part of the club’s visual dominance. Sharp, iconic, worn by Barnes, Beardsley and Aldridge, and remembered in the minds of those who watched trophies pile up while playing arguably the best football in the club’s history.
These weren’t just good kits. They were winning kits. Kits you saw lifting league titles. Kits you saw framed on pub walls. Kits you saw in family photos on the walls across Merseyside.
They captured what it meant to support a team who expected to win every time they walked out.
But by the mid-90s, things were changing. The silverware slowed. The titles had stopped. The certainty started to fade. And by 1996, the final Adidas kit of the era was as divisive as the team wearing it.
Some remember that green-and-white quartered away kit as the one Robbie Fowler wore to put two past Schmeichel at Old Trafford. One smashed in, and the other a cheeky Robbie chip, both unforgettable.
Others can’t see it without thinking of Wembley – one of the worst FA Cup finals ever played, where Liverpool looked lost and United, in red, stole it late.
It was Cantona who broke through the drab with that volley. David James flapped at a corner, the ball dropped once, and he struck it clean through the crowd. Game over.
The Spice Boys, in their cream suits, left empty-handed. It wasn’t just the end of a kit deal. It was the end of an era.
Adidas II (2006–2012): Black beauty, white hope, and a grey letdown
When Adidas returned in 2006, it felt like a homecoming. Gerrard was peaking. Rafa had just conquered Europe and followed it up with an FA Cup win. Liverpool were a side that nobody wanted to draw. They had belief, momentum, and a manager with a plan.
The kits looked the part. And for a while, so did the team.
The grey away shirt that Gerrard and Torres wore to tear apart United at Old Trafford in 2009 is still spoken about with a grin. A 4–1 battering. Pure energy, pure confidence, and a kit that belonged in a big moment.
The white away strip with red-and-green trim became the Torres kit. Clinical, quick, and just as lethal as the man himself.
But it didn’t last. Rafa left in the summer of 2010, and with him went the structure. Hodgson arrived and the club sank. The football was flat, directionless.
The black-and-yellow away kits looked the part, but the team rarely played like it.
Joe Cole was sent off on his league debut against Arsenal, a moment that felt symbolic in hindsight. Players like Jovanovic and Voronin are attached to these kits. The identity was missing. Hodgson’s Liverpool was rigid, joyless and lost.
Kenny Dalglish came back halfway through the season to try and fix it, and while things began to heal, the damage had already been done.
The 2011/12 silver and charcoal kits were sleek, almost regal, but the football didn’t match the look.
Liverpool lifted the League Cup in red that season, but it felt like a small prize in a big stadium. A brief pause in the decline rather than a turning point.
Adidas made us look elite. But that stretch proved something no supporter ever forgets. The shirt alone means nothing without the football to match it.
Adidas III (2025–): A return and the stories yet to come
Now Adidas are back again. But this time, it’s not about rebuilding. Liverpool aren’t looking for recognition.
They’re not trying to look elite. They are elite. Premier League champions once more, rebuilt through strategy, belief and resilience. And Adidas know it.
The new deal, £60 million a season plus royalties, puts the club among Europe’s most commercially powerful.
But none of that is what people talk about. Because this return isn’t about numbers. It’s about memory. It’s about what a kit represents.
For a lot of fans, this isn’t just a new shirt. It’s a return to something that feels more like Liverpool. Adidas has always been seen as the football fan’s brand.
Proper football. Proper material. The kind you like to see at the match and the pub. The kind that brings back Barnes, Gerrard, Torres.
The kind that reminded you who you were, even when the club wasn’t at its best.
Nike, by contrast, always felt sleek. Modern. But colder. Built for athletes, not atmospheres. It made the club look global, but didn’t always feel like it belonged to us.
Adidas kits reminded people why they fell in love with Liverpool. Nike kits showed them how far the club had come, but not always what it felt like getting there.
And now, there’s something new to feel again.
The 2025/26 away kit is clean and classic. White with red trim. Simple, sharp, no messing. The third kit is green. A bold throwback that resembles the ’90s. Hopefully, with more silverware, which will give future generations a different feel.
But it can’t be argued enough that the meaning on launch day isn’t the one you remember. It’s what comes next.
Maybe this is the Wirtz season. Maybe it’s the one Frimpong scores at the new Hills Dickinson Stadium. Maybe Ekitike bags a final-day winner in it. Or maybe it becomes something else entirely.
And that’s why it matters. That’s what Adidas have always understood.
Liverpool look like Liverpool again, but Adidas III will ultimately be defined by what happens on the pitch.
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