Leeds’ return to the ‘smiley’ badge on their new away kit: The treasure hunt and the history — The Athletic 24/7/24
By Nancy Froston
The code #ffd600 meant little to Leeds United fans until,
suddenly, it started popping up with greater frequency.
An X account with only a handful of followers under the
username @smileyffd600 started posting photos of various splashes of yellow
around Leeds city centre in mid-June. Pictured were a yellow shop front, a
yellow bus stop sign outside the club’s Elland Road stadium and a plain yellow
billboard. All the yellow, conveniently, was the exact shade match for the code
in that account’s bio. That string of letters and numbers — ffd600 — is also
the hex colour code for the specific yellow used in Leeds’ new away kit.
As The Athletic revealed in mid-June, there was an
expectation the Championship club’s famous ‘smiley’ badge, a stylised version
of their L.U. initials, would be used on the 2024-25 season’s away strip. And
this mysterious X account seemed to confirm it.
In one of the more tantalising kit rollouts for years, a
billboard in the centre of the Yorkshire city simply showed the smiley crest on
a yellow background with a QR code, which, once scanned, took users through to
a web page with Wednesday’s date and an Adidas logo on it.
All these breadcrumbs led to the 2024-25 away kit launch and
the arrival of a modern Leeds classic.
The yellow is rich and the smiley badge sits in pride of
place. Three blue and white Adidas stripes run along the shoulder with the Red
Bull logo (in contrast to this season’s home kit) in a tasteful blue. In a nod
to the away kit from 1974, drumming up memories of Billy Bremner, Johnny Giles
and Norman Hunter — among other club legends — Adidas has provided a revamp to
Admiral’s effort from 50 years ago, continuing a trend of bringing retro back.
But why?
Leeds are a monster of a club when it comes to commercial
power in the Championship, the second tier of English football. Their kit
revenue for the 2022-23 season ranked as the 16th-highest in Europe, according
to a club finance report from UEFA, the European game’s governing body.
As Adidas enters the final year of its current deal — with
no certainties it will be the club’s kit supplier beyond the end of the coming
season — producing a popular kit that will sell well makes sense.
This is about more than revenue alone, however, with only a
handful of big clubs given this sort of return to retro.
A key part of the move relies on clubs having a sufficiently
rich visual identity throughout their history to draw on in fresh kit designs.
Other clubs, such as Premier League pair Arsenal and
Manchester United, who are also with Adidas, have been given a similar
treatment in recent seasons. After using the cannon that’s an element of their
emblem as a standalone logo on the third shirt last season, Arsenal are rolling
it out on all of their kits for the coming one, while Manchester United had the
devil silhouette from theirs as the crest on their 2023-24 away shirt.
Newcastle United’s third top for the new Premier League season is also rumoured
to feature a retro logo from the 1980s, which puts Leeds in good company.
There is no obligation for clubs or kit designers to include
the current version of the club’s official crest on shirts, either. Liverpool
have had a simplified version of theirs, with the liver bird and ‘LFC’ on the
shirts in recent years.
This is unusual for Leeds, though. While the club have had
13 distinct crests throughout their 104-year history — including minor tweaks
of the same design — they have rarely gone leafing through old catalogues for
inspiration on new kits.
Only once have Leeds brought back an old badge, with the
1995-97 home kit by Asics having the traditional ‘LUFC’ script on it alongside
the then-modern badge. The other iterations of the club’s crest have stayed
retired and not made a return on kits in this way. Only small details have been
revived — such as the ‘LUFC’ script on the current version.
Though there have previously been nods to the club’s rich
visual history, such as with the peacock collection by Adidas and in imagery
used in the club’s media output, Leeds have not played in shirts sporting the
smiley crest since 1980. It seems more likely this is a one-off for Leeds than
a permanent move to bring back the smiley crest — but that will not dent its
admiration.
“It’s a very popular badge,” says Leeds fan Gary Edwards,
author of Paint it White, a book about his life supporting the club. “My
favourite was ‘The Owl’, under Don Revie in the 1960s. The smiley badge is
always one of the most popular ones that people still wear a lot. We do murals
as part of the job (Edwards runs a decorating business) and that is by far the
most popular badge that we do, including today’s shield. It’s an iconic crest.
It was a classic piece of design.
“I don’t know if it’s to soften the blow of the Red Bull on
the home shirt but people will be happy about it.”
A yellow away shirt has been a staple of Leeds’ identity
over the years, although that has become less frequent in the past decade. The
combination of a yellow shirt with a variation of the smiley badge was used by
the club from 1973 to 1980 while their kits were made by Admiral.
Leeds were crowned champions of England while sporting the
crest in 1973-74 under Revie and were also European Cup runners-up the
following year. The crest that preceded the smiley, the cursive ‘LUFC’ letters,
has a place on the socks of the new home kit while the peacock logo of the
1980s is another classic piece of design.
The current crest is not going anywhere, having been in
place with minor tweaks since 1998, despite efforts to change it in 2018 to the
quickly-shelved ‘Leeds salute’ emblem.
Leeds are creating a unique visual identity by drawing on
their history, whether in kit form or on murals around the training ground and
Elland Road, putting echoes of classic moments front and centre of their
ambitions of returning to the Premier League.