2011/12 · Away

The Verts dressed as Celtic: for 2011/12, Adidas designed an away shirt of green horizontal bands on white, a true rarity for a club historically clad in solid green, with gold finishes on the logo and on the A.S. Saint-Étienne signature embroidered in script at the neck, below the star of ten titles, a French record. This example is the player version: long sleeves, Adidas Formotion cut, manufactured in April 2011 according to the inner tag, and without a sponsor on the chest, exactly as it left professional stock before printing. It was the season of Christophe Galtier's ASSE finishing seventh in Ligue 1, with a kid named Aubameyang exploding for sixteen goals and names like Ruffier, Perrin and a young Zouma in the squad. In the archive it lives side by side with the Climacool fan replica of the same kit: one shirt, seen from the stands and from the dressing room.

Here at Hoopster, France's greenest club tries on somebody else's stripes: for one season, the Verts wore hoops without ever stopping being themselves.