Liverpool Launch New Warrior 2012/13 Home Kit – Simple, Classy & Controversial (Video)

By Chris Wright

Excuse me being brief today, but I’m really not overly well at the moment. Here’s a video of Liverpool modelling their brand new Warrior home kit for 2012/13 – and it’s a bobby dazzler…

Like it.

Apparently, the kit has caused a ripple of consternation among the Hillsborough Families due to the two flames of justice being removed from the newly streamlined crest – though the keen-eyed among you may have noticed that a direct tribute to the 96 (including the twin flames) has been stitched on the back of the neck on the new kit.

A statement from the Hillsborough Justice Campaign reads thusly:

“We have noted that the Hillsborough flames and ’96’ will now appear on the back of the shirt ‘after consultation with family members’.

“We can confirm that no bereaved families of the HJC were contacted or consulted. The first we were aware of this was via the minutes of the Supporters’ Committee March meeting. Once again LFC has chosen to ignore the HJC and their families.

“The continued refusal of the club to acknowledge the HJC is insensitive, divisive and deplorable – 96 is more than a number. LFC would do well to remember that.”

Make of that what thou wilt. We ain’t touching it with a barge pole.

Personally, we’d rather look ahead to the launch of the new third kit. If the mock-ups are anything to go by, we could be looking at something quite special (and quite purple) here.

Posted in Kits & fashion, Liverpool

Share this article: Email

33 Comments

  1. Stiff says:

    Pure class.

  2. Joe says:

    Ok, I’m going to be incredibly insensitive here but I’m starting to get a little annoyed with all the Hillsborough yammering. I’m not arguing with the gravity of the tragedy, but merely with the slightest gesture being taken as some sort of provocation or sign of disrespect. It’s a small design detail, people, there’s plenty of awareness and honouring of the poor Hillsborough victims going on without it.

    Anyway, the kit looks sweet. Love the old logo.

  3. James says:

    I agree with you Joe, I’m a liverpool fan and this hillsbrough stuff does my head in, ‘The club chose not to consult anyone’, ‘we actually like the shirt, but they never consulted us’, why always us. blah blah fucking blah.

  4. SL says:

    Liverpool fans, always playing the victims.

    How about you grow up and realise the world doesnt revolve around you and move on instead of whining about shirts, playing in a certain day etc. No class at all and the whining is more disrespectful to the dead than the change of the badge.

    Bradford fans have done it right.

  5. Kacker says:

    What a shirt! Best home kit for a while.

  6. Toz says:

    Erm, except this isn’t entirely correct. The club met with the families from the Hillsborough Family Support Group, while they snubbed the HJC. (Which they have been doing for a while)

    The flames and the number 96 now appears on the back of the kit, in which my opinion is more likely to raise awareness (by kids and people asking what that’s about) rather than the huge complex logo we’ve been using since 1992.

  7. alex says:

    “The continued refusal of the club to acknowledge the HJC is insensitive” – The last thing anyone can accuse liverpool of is ignoring their past and their heritage, they do it to such an extent it frustrates most other fans.

  8. Mark Simpson says:

    I’m not a Liverpool FC Fan.
    But until this kit change, I wasn’t aware there was a Hillsborough tribute in the club logo. As it just disappears into the general mish-mash of it all.

    Personally, I think making the Hillsborough tribute a separate element on the shirt is actually a better tribute to the victims than the original one.

    And whilst I can appreciate the sensitivities of the bereaved, I think the danger with this is that the HJC have made it easier for people to stereotypically label them as “Whingeing Scousers”.

    And so make it easier for the authorities to deflect their quite legitimate push to have the full facts around the Hillsborough disaster to be in the public domain, and to seek the justice that the victims deserve.

  9. Grant says:

    They haven’t abandoned the crest, as far as I know. This is just a throwback to the 70s and 80s for this season. I would really doubt that Liverpool will abandon the crest going forward.

    I also would like to note that the reason there are two flames is because of the Heysel disaster where Liverpool thugs caused some 30 people to lose their lives in Europe.

    Now I’m not saying Liverpool fans were directly responsible for Hillsbrough, but maybe if English football supporters (including and especially Liverpool) hadn’t spend the previous two decades beating seven shades of shite out of everything in England and Europe, they wouldn’t have been treated like prisoners at grounds like they were back then. I mean seriously they built cages around the pitch to keep you fuckers from killing everyone including yourselves.

    Also, as an American, I honesty can’t understand why everyone has to go to a game so drunk that they’re legally anesthetized or why you guys hadn’t discovered that you can put seats in stadiums so that shit like this doesn’t happen. I mean seriously, I’ve been to a gazillion sporting events, all with an assigned seat, and I’ve had beer and stood the entire time with no problems. I’ve also sat with other sets of fans and nobody has beaten the piss out of each other either.

    So while none of the 96 did anything to deserve what happened to them, Liverpool supporters have their share of blame along with the rest of English football.

    TL;DR If you didn’t have a yob culture, you wouldn’t need two flames of justice and 120 people wouldn’t have died in two preventable catastrophes.

  10. Michael says:

    @Grant

    *Sigh.*

    As an American, I don’t expect you to be able to understand much about the game, let alone calling it by the right name.

    And yes, I shall target every drop of abuse at you, because your comments were seething with bitterness towards every English football fan in particular.

    If that were the case, all Americans would be obese, disgusting, stupid bigots who claim football is a sport where an oval is thrown with hands.

    But it isn’t, and many Americans are friendly and intelligent.

    Bar you, of course.

    I understand your comment about the seats and cages comment. Naturally, football is such a big sport that tickets sometimes sell out as quickly as those to a Justin Bieber concert, sadly enough.

    I apologise if baseball or handegg (the sport you idiots call “football” don’t attract enough attention to have proud fans come to the stadia to just stand outside.

    I’m not even European. I’m Venezuelan, and God, you’ve even offended me.

    So, while many people are actually nice enough to just treat the Heysel disaster as just that, a disaster, your biased, bigoted, shameful ass decides to put all the blame on Liverpool.

    People like you make me sick, and don’t deserve to live.

    TL;DR: Fuck you and your “as an American” comments.

  11. Cosa says:

    @Grant

    you have absolutely no knowledge or grasp of english football, and are especially lacking a grip on english culture, though you seem to be very good at sweepingly generalising a whole country’s supportership.

  12. Karan says:

    No “Suarez” on the shirts?!Disappointing.

  13. dbm says:

    Way to go Grant! You are a true keyboard warrior my friend by letting us know that those innocent people had it coming because of the clubs previous history with hooliganism. What a brilliantly child-like way to attach blame!

    And Michael I believe a good term for American football is “throwball”. Handegg made me think of Rugby.

  14. Kyle says:

    Dammit, Grant. Idiots like you give American fans a bad reputation. You should know that the Premier League, UEFA, FIFA, and even our own lowly CONCACAF require that all sanctioned matches be played in all seater stadiums.

    Honestly, you think English fans don’t sit and watch the game in the stadium like we do?

    I can’t tell if you’re being a troll or just a complete dumbass. Either way, you’re still a fucking moron.

    Sorry, rest of the world.

  15. Grant says:

    Michael, there are many reasons why you’re dumb. Allow me to list them for you.

    1. I never called the sport soccer, though the term is demonstrably of English origin. To call American football “handegg” makes you a cunt. You’d never do that to Rugby football (either code) despite the fact that the ball is almost exclusively caried by hand, would you? Football games are called “football” because the game is played on foot rather than on horseback. That’s why even ancient games like Royal Shrovetide Football are properly called “football.” All of the codes of football derive from the same basic game, developed in England in the 1800s.

    2. I don’t have anything against English people. I’m a huge Anglophone. I love English football. I love English football supporters. I hate the British drinking culture. I hate that English fans feel the need to get liquored up and fight anything and everything they see. The problem has gotten better, but we still have to have derbies played early in the day so people don’t drink as much, and fans have to be separated by walls of police. Nothing like this is necessary.

    3. I hate the fact that people in Europe needed almost 100 people to die before realizing that putting seats in stadiums was a good idea. Why would you allow stadiums to become seas of people in the first place? It’s literally a crush waiting to happen. And to go back to the second point for a second, if English football fans weren’t such appalling thugs there wouldn’t be the need for cages to keep them off the pitch. Without the fences Hillsbrough wouldn’t have happened.

    4. Please consult this list of the largest stadia in the world:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stadiums_by_capacity

    You’ll find that 6 of the top 10, 11 of the top 20, and 13 of the largest stadiums in the world are in the U.S. And they’re all primarily American football stadiums. We have literally hundreds of thousands of people show up to college football games, and they’ve done so without anything like Hillsbrough happening for well over 100 years. That’s because we don’t drink til we’re retarded, and we put fucking seats in the stadiums. It’s really not fucking hard.

    5. Heysel was almost entirely Liverpool’s fault. Don’t believe me? If the marauding horde of drunken football hooligans fits…

    In conclusion, you know shit about fuck. Please keep your mouth shut.

  16. Grant says:

    Anglophile not Anglophone. Autocorrect…

  17. Grant says:

    Kyle, I was clearly talking about what happened prior to the Taylor Report.

    I’m well aware that things have changed, but I think there are a lot of factors that lead to Hillsbrough that shouldn’t have taken 96 people’s lives to sort out. If you feel the need to build a cage around the field so that supporters don’t storm the pitch, something is seriously wrong in your sport and your culture. Without the cages and with seats in the stadiums, Hillsbrough simply wouldn’t have happened.

  18. dbm says:

    “1964 May 24, Lima, Peru: more than 300 soccer fans killed and over 500 injured during riot and panic following unpopular ruling by referee in Peru vs. Argentina soccer game. It is worst soccer disaster on record.”

    Hey Grant brush up on your Spanish.

  19. dc says:

    Grant, “as an American,” why do you dedicate so much of your life on an internet website trying to point out the problems of people in other countries? WHY? It has nothing to do with you, yet you seem so passionate….

  20. Joe says:

    I do agree with some of your points, Grant. However, over here in Europe we like to a have a little thing called ‘atmosphere’ at our sports games. While you Yanks are generally comfortable eating a plastic hotdog and sitting in seat 98ZZ of the Colgate StupendaDome whilst watching the Preparation H Coin Toss Ceremony featuring Kim Kardashian and Mickey Mouse, we like to watch our games among a crowd that’s alive-standing up, perhaps a bit tipsy and singing bawdy songs. The standing sections of modern German stadiums shows that this is perfectly possible, Hillsborough and Heysel were unfortunate consequences of bad policing and organisation.

  21. lfc_man says:

    Liverpool fans have caused trouble before as have plenty of supporters around England and Europe. I think we should leave the past in the past, Hillsborough does stand out because the problems haven’t been resolved. If a certain group feels that their aims are not being supported by the club, then they may be right to be angry about it but the club has done a lot for the 96. Thats why people all over the world are aware of it more than 2 decades later. Sounds more like a certain group needs to feel important and recognized.

    Seats in stadiums? If we went back in the time and asked a fan if he needed a seat at a stadium, he’d probably look surprised. Thats because football is not like watching a movie in a cinema, its something you actively participate in.

  22. Grant says:

    We have atmosphere in stadiums over here, too. There’s plenty of people going to college football games (over 100,000 in well over a dozen cases) where there’s plenty of atmosphere. We stand, we chant, we drink beer. Nobody ever dies.

  23. Grant says:

    And we have Ohio State fans sitting with Michigan fans and nobody ever riots. What the fuck is wrong with you people anyway? Nobody should ever get beaten up or stabbed or Glasgow Smile’d because of a sporting event.

  24. Dan says:

    sport teams in europe are different to sport teams in america. over here they represent an area and a set of people and have done for a hundred years, for most clubs. in america they’re franchises, they’re more like businesses. there’s a different tradition in supporting teams. you have to remember that football is, despite sky sports/fancy stadiums/sponsorship etc, primarily a working class sport where going to a stadium on a saturday was the only release for lower class people. there they were part of something and could say and shout whatever they like. europe > america

  25. Terry Shedingham says:

    Michael said:

    “As an American, I don’t expect you to be able to understand much about the game, let alone calling it by the right name.

    “If that were the case, all Americans would be obese, disgusting, stupid bigots who claim football is a sport where an oval is thrown with hands.

    But it isn’t, and many Americans are friendly and intelligent.

    “I apologise if baseball or handegg (the sport you idiots call “football””

    Please decide where your xenophobic tendencies lie.

  26. Coolie says:

    @ Grant

    Well done Captain Fucking Hindsight!!

  27. Michael says:

    @Grant
    1) I would never call Rugby “handegg” because Rugby is called rugby, not football.

    2) Derbies, and clubs as a whole, represent a region in a country. Naturally, tempers will flare, but you mean to tell me there’s never been a squabble at a handegg or baseball game?

    Sure, football tends to be more violent, but it means so much to many. If they announced tomorrow that baseball would be eradicated in every form most would just call it a bummer, bar die-hard Boston or New York fans.

    If football was to be cancelled at least in England, many people would be distraught. They have supported their clubs their whole life (most of them) and there are many football families, where the supporter is a 3rd or even 4th generation fan.

    3)The reason there were originally no seats in stadia was because they took up space. This space could’ve been used allowing more people to watch. Tragedy, yes, mistake, yes, unjustified, no.

    4) A common misconception is Brits “drink till [they’re] retarded[.]”
    If you stopped being such a bigot you’d realise that football is, to many, a family sport where families can all go out and cheer their team on. Sure, there is drinking, but most people know how to limit themselves. There’s a reason why there are more AA meetings in the US.

    5)Blaming the club for a select few’s actions are unjust.

    @TeddyShedingham

    Being viewed as Johnny Foreigner in almost every single country in the world doesn’t faze me. I am CERTAINLY NOT a xenophobe. Pedophobe, yes (I hate kids), but I am about to justify my wording.

    1) Many doesn’t mean majority, but it’s likely that the majority of Americans are average people.

    2) Many handegg viewers are indeed idiots, simply for calling the sport football.

    3) Xenophobes don’t necessarily generalise a nation or a group. I’ve generalised handegg supporters into idiots. The lot of them.

  28. QuickBrick says:

    Ìf anyone is interested the list Grant gave shows that the highest attendence in the American stadiums is ACTUALLY higher than there capacity, which would mean that they were over crowded…the irony of posting a list to show how big and safe these stadiums are.

  29. marc says:

    grant no’s fuck all about sports clearly because 1 as an evertonian hillsborough was the liverpool fans fault for rushing and overcrowding the police. hillsborough 2 hillsborough justice people only want to know how and when there family member died so get a clue and 3 keyboard warrior i bet you’ve never been to a premier league game hillsborough if anything has brought everton and liverpool fans together and to your disappointment DICK HEAD the Met (londons police) stated they where proud of the behaviour of both everton and liverpool fans i should no am Sgt Marc Conlan of the merseyside police you IDIOT i would invite you to come watch a game and see what happens because fans aren’t allowed to be drunk in the stadiums anymore and thats the law 4 don’t be so judgemental considering what your own country has been doing for the past 40 plus years

  30. Ogre says:

    I think the Grant character sounds familiar. I think he used to host a tv show on Fox Soccer Channel and had a podcast, too. I can’t remember the name of it thought, because once they started to charge for it, I stopped listening. It wasn’t worth the money (Football Ramble is better, anyway). Oh, wait. That’s Steve Cohen, nevermind. Still sounds like him, with the whining about LIverpool and all.

  31. Daniel says:

    Grant you are an INCREDIBLY insensitive, clueless piece of filth. while i don’t know anyone directly involved in the disaster, i know people who do and i would dare you to say this to any one of their faces rather than being a coward and saying this kind of crap on a forum like this. i’d put a lot of money on suggesting you’ve never properly looked into what actually happened at hillsborough by reading books, watching documentaries and watching the debates about it in the house of commons so keep your dirty mouth shut. just another fool who buys into everything the media feeds him. and to be honest, i’m MASSIVELY disappointed that pies haven’t taken your comments down yet.
    coming from liverpool, and know what this disaster still means to the city (and yes i even include evertonians in that), i take massive offence to your comments. i’ve been to enough premier league games to know that you are making gross generalisations about football fans in the UK but, in any case, time has moved on and the tolerance of alcohol and hooliganism has tightened massively at stadiums. so get off your bloody high horse you yank twat. whatever your views on hillsborough, there was no need to come on here and say the things you said. what does it achieve? there’s being controversial and then there’s just being a completely insensitive c**t of the highest order.

  32. dave the drunk? says:

    @ grant, I had so much to say, facts and some history, but thought why waste any intelligent on you! You are just a typical dumbass who give your fellow countrymen a bad name! So stick to shouting U.S.A U.S.A. At anything that makes you feel BIG! And as we say in liverpool: give ya head a wobble scagrat!

  33. Gustavo says:

    First, sorry about my poor english.

    Great t-shirt! This is Liverpool, the best european club ever!!! I’m from Brasil and I’m a huge fan of Liverpool. I will never forget the greatest final between Liverpool x Milan in 2005! This is a wonderfull shirt for the best english club.

    Guys, ignore this north american teen, he’s totally lost.

    Cheers, Scouse brothers!
    Always RED!

Leave a Reply to Grant