Amsterdamsche Football Club Ajax, also known as AFC Ajax, Ajax Amsterdam, or simply Ajax, is a Dutch professional football club based in Amsterdam, that plays in the Eredivisie, the top tier in Dutch football.
AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS (August 20, 2021).- It was December 2020 when jersey enthusiast Jack Henderson – who has access to exclusive catalogs – started showing the first possible mock-ups of the Ajax jersey dedicated to Bob Marley, in the wake of the one already launched in 2019 by the Irish team of Bohemian F.C. (later forced to modify it due to copyright problems).
Eight months later, adidas and the Lancers have officially launched the third kit of the 2021-22 season and, as expected, the Jamaican singer is the inspiration. The tribute to a music icon does not stop at the colors but goes in depth, until 1977, when Bob Marley wrote, produced and recorded “Three Little Birds“, the unofficial anthem of the Dutch club also sung by Ky- Mani Marley, son of the great Bob.
The shirt is in total black, with the only colored details given by the sponsor’s red and the crest on the front and by the three stripes in green, yellow and red. The “Three Little Birds” are present on the back of the shirt, at the height of the collar, but the kit is contaminated by details and by the repetition of the three colors as on the socks, which combine those chromatic shades with the three Xs of Ajax. The launch also includes an adidas Samba model with a design that matches the colors of the jersey.
The link between the Dutch club and Bob Marley was born from a particular episode during a friendly match between Cardiff City and Ajax in 2008: at the end of the match, the speaker of the Welsh stadium decided to broadcast “Three Little Birds” and the Dutch fans to inside the stadium they started singing it. Back in Holland, it was immediately elected as an unofficial anthem involving all the Dutch fans, until the highlight of 2018, when Ky-Mani Marley sang it at the Amsterdam Arena before a match.
The Ajax jersey inspired by Bob Marley is available at adidas.com.
Source: NSS mag
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