Are Napoli's Limited Edition Football Shirts Going Too Far?
Over the years, Napoli has been at the forefront of cool football shirt designs in Europe, creating some of the best shirts in recent history. This season, they sit at the top of the league in Serie A, seven points clear. However, their latest release in December has sparked debate about whether they have gone too far.
In 2021, EA7, Napoli's kit manufacturer, received plaudits for releasing a series of limited-edition Maradona shirts in tribute to the Napoli legend, Diego Maradona. The Argentine passed away on 25th November, 2020, and many of his clubs paid tributes in their own way. Napoli opted to release shirts featuring Maradona's face on them.
In 2022, Napoli also released a red version of the kit, which debuted against AC Milan on March 6th. This release was certainly warranted, as Maradona was a legend and arguably the best player in the history of football. He scored 115 goals in 257 appearances for Napoli. However, the 150 Euro price tag was not justified and priced out many Napoli fans and football shirt collectors. It also suggested that EA7 cared more about profits than the actual tribute. Resellers are currently trying to charge 10 times the price that Napoli was selling them for. Despite this, overall, we believe it was a great shirt and welcomed its release.
The next limited-edition shirt Napoli released was in the 2021/22 season and was Halloween-related, featuring a printed design of cobwebs.
As soon as we discovered this football shirt, we had to buy some for our customers! We procured 100 of these shirts and added them to our Mystery Modern Football Shirt Box. Our customers who were lucky enough to receive one all agreed that it was a great shirt, and every customer gave us a 5-star rating.
This shirt design was so cool that I decided to keep one for my personal collection too! This limited-edition shirt got a thumbs up from us, and we would be happy to see a Napoli Halloween shirt every season!
This season, Napoli released another Halloween-related shirt, this time featuring a swarm of bats on the front.
We were all for this shirt again and also put this shirt into our Mystery Modern Football Shirt Box. However, not everyone agreed, as it received a 3.1-star rating from fans. This shirt also priced fans and collectors out again, with its 125 Euro price tag, considered extortionate.
Finally, Napoli and EA7 pushed their limited-edition collection one step too far last month by releasing their first-ever Christmas-related shirt, featuring Rudolph-the-red-nose-reindeer taking up an enormous portion of the shirt.
It was only worn once, in a friendly against Turkish side Antalyaspor. This design should not have been approved as it looks like it was designed by a group of primary school children on MS Paint! If the poor design wasn’t bad enough, Napoli had the cheek to sell the shirt for 125 Euros. Consequently, the shirt flopped, and the Italian club is still trying to sell them on their website halfway into January. Napoli and EA7 have certainly gone too far this time, and it seems their strategy is to release limited-edition shirts for the sake of it.
Perhaps the club’s manufacturer will think twice before releasing any more limited-edition kits as they have become so frequently released, the ‘limited edition’ aspect of the release is becoming redundant.
