A surreal day
Liverpool launched their new kit today, the first of their contract with New Balance, who are the parent company of Warrior, the club's previous kit suppliers.
How do you launch a kit? It's pretty simple, you'd think. Put out a few pictures on the club's website and social media channels, stick it in the online shop and let the punters do the rest with their credit cards.
It seems like that approach is so 2008.
Because if you're Liverpool you put up a stage on the pitch at Anfield and invite a couple of hundred fans and make it a whole day out. They even played You'll Never Walk Alone over the speaker system. We're not sure if the fans held aloft their scarves or not. Maybe they didn't bring scarves. Do you wear club scarves to what is essentially a live action window display? Who knows.
But that was just the start of the confusion. Those tuning in at the advertised time of 1.45pm hoping to see a picture of the new home kit were instead treated to a stage show hosted by Claire Rourke and the other guy off the Liverpool TV channel. It was a bit like the Eurovision but with marginally less hairspray.
https://twitter.com/JamesPearceEcho/status/586507688147873792
Then they handed over to some pre-recorded scenes on the big screen where those watching around the world on the live stream!!! got a behind the scenes glimpse at the photo shoot where players modelled the kit (without us actually getting to see the kit - we had to wait for that).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OABI3o-EfkU
Then there were interviews with players.
Emre Can chipped in his two cents worth
https://twitter.com/JamesPearceEcho/status/586510905556525056
Then they brought out the big guns
https://twitter.com/johngibbonsblog/status/586511255067820032
And then they threw questions open to the floor. Seriously.
https://twitter.com/johngibbonsblog/status/586513818668441600
Mel from the Dallas branch asked some sort of question about what it's like to wear the Liverpool shirt - any Liverpool shirt.
Forgive us for paraphrasing but Fowler said something along the lines that it was great.
https://twitter.com/LFCDallas/status/586517528345583616
There were other more penetrating questions.
Questions which led to answers which reached deep into the soul of what it's like to play for Liverpool.
https://twitter.com/thisisanfield/status/586512504026750976
https://twitter.com/ElChiefMoore/status/586512679604510720
Most of the questions were for Fowler, however
https://twitter.com/RyanKeaney/status/586512871133151232
By this stage it was all seeming a little bit too much
https://twitter.com/evanfanning/status/586512997440495616
But then came the big moment. The moment we got to see the kit
Amazingly the kit was red. And they had a new motto. #HoldNothingBack replaces #WeComeNotToPlay
But can we be sure that Liverpool are not coming not to play anymore? That they're now holding nothing back?
They certainly weren't holding on to their dignity.
But there was more. Much more. Interviews with the players
Raheem Sterling was heckled by one fan who demanded that he better see the winger in the kit next season, presumably so he can boo him for demanding an obscene amount of money for the privilege of wearing the shirt.
And then there they played games
https://twitter.com/johngibbonsblog/status/586516697986813952
And then the players met the fans
https://twitter.com/johngibbonsblog/status/586517932479537152
And that was that.
The Liverpool kit is on sale now. Buy it if you like that kind of thing.
