Football Shirt Culture.com

For the eighth consecutive year Palermo launched the new kits made by Lotto Sport Italia. The multi-annual cooperation which will last until 2010 says the Italian "Technical Sponsor and Official Supplier" of Palermo will provide the next season 2008/2009, clothing and accessories for matches, training and leisure from the first team to youth.

Palermo originally played with red and blue as its official colours since its foundation in 1898, but decided to switch to the current choice of pink and black on February 27, 1907, contemporarily to the change of denomination to Palermo Foot-Ball Club.

The colours' choice were suggested by count Giuseppe Airoldi, a prominent founding member of the club. In a letter Airoldi wrote on February 2, 1905 to club councillor Joseph Whitaker, he defined pink and black as "colours of the sad and the sweet", a choice he asserted to be a good fit for a team characterized by "results as up and down as a Swiss clock", noting also the fact that red and blue were a widely diffuse choice of colours at the time.

The club had to wait for the new jerseys for three months, because no pink flannel was available in Palermo, forcing the appointed tailoring company to import it from England. The new shirts were first worn in a match against Sir Thomas Lipton's crew team; the match ended in a 2-1 win for Palermo. From 1936 to 1940 the team played in red and yellow jerseys due to an imposition by the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, red and yellow being the official colours of the municipality of Palermo. When the club was refounded in 1941 following a merger with Juventina Palermo, they started dressing light blue shirt on the pitch, switching to the more popular pink and black one year later.

The choice of pink and black as official colours for a football club is still unique today, as Palermo appears to be the only top-flight football team to use these official colours.

Thanks to FDV and Ant

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