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Daily Drip

Chinese Football Team Zhejiang Greentown Takes On Nigeria with New “Landmark” Shirt

Jake NewbyBy
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Home > Daily Drip > Chinese Football Team Zhejiang Greentown Takes On Nigeria with New “Landmark” Shirt
The Hangzhou-based second division team's new shirt features images of the city's famous tourist attraction the West Lake

China’s football season got underway last week with the first round of games in the 2019 Chinese Super League. This weekend, teams from the country’s lower tier leagues — including Manchester City’s new sister club in Sichuan — will start their seasons.

And one of them, Hangzhou-based Zhejiang Greentown, has unveiled an… eye-catching new strip for the 2019 season.

Woah. Yes, the Chinese League One (second tier) side have been given a strip by Anta that uses images of their home city’s famous West Lake, a tourist site that is partly responsible for one of the most worn-out China cliches going, that Marco Polo once described Hangzhou and nearby Suzhou as “Heaven on Earth”.

Seems like they decided to really go for it this year after their tourist board-friendly 2018 away shirt:

Maybe it’s the green of this new one, but it kind of puts us in mind of this (much more aesthetically pleasing) shirt from last summer’s World Cup:

We’re not sure Anta will be receiving over 3 million pre-orders for this one (as Nike did with that Nigeria number), but it certainly seems different, especially when compared to some of the yawn-inducing kits produced by Nike for China’s top tier sides in recent years. But maybe it’s not all that different. Here’s a kit that Puma made for Bordeaux’s 2016-17 season:

Hmm.

But look, we don’t want to give the impression that China is a country where rip-off football shirts are common. So let’s take a look at the home strip for Greentown’s opponents this weekend, Qingdao Huanghai:

Qingdao Huanghai Barcelona

Okay, never mind.

Cover photo: Greentown FC’s Weibo

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Jake Newby
Jake Newby is a Shanghai-based writer and editor with more than a decade's experience living and working in China. Previously managing editor of Time Out Shanghai, he's also written for publications such as South China Morning Post and the Financial Times.