League Two Grimsby Town launches 2026-27 kits, pays homage to Italian roots

By George Edwards

Grimsby players Geza David Turi, left, and Cameron McJannet model the club's new away shirt in Naples, Italy. (Jon Corken/Grimsby Town Football Club)

"We only sing when we're fishing."

That is a direct translation of one of Grimsby Town's most cherished chants: "Cantiamo solo quando peschiamo."

Everything sounds better in Italian. But as this League Two side from Lincolnshire — halfway up the east coast of England near the River Humber — has discovered, everything looks better in Italian, too.

Grimsby is most famous for its fishing industry, processing around 70 percent of the UK's seafood. Hence the tongue-in-cheek song sung by its football supporters, a chant they made their own after it was initially aimed at them by Liverpool fans during a match at Anfield in 1980.

Now, Grimsby Town are turning heads for their fashion sense. The club has trawled through their archives for inspiration and re-collaborated with an Italian sportswear company to produce some of the standout football jerseys for next season.

"We should be unapologetically Grimsby, because we can't be anyone else," Jack Johnson, the fourth-division side's head of marketing, told The Athletic. "We didn't want to just go down the off-the-shelf strategy. We wanted something that was going to offer storytelling. That's what makes us, and this kit, unique."

A Modern Take on an All-Time Classic

When they play away this season — starting at Walsall on August 22 — Grimsby will regularly step onto the pitch looking like Milan from the 1990s — but also themselves from that same period.

In 1996, Grimsby linked up with Italian sportswear company Lotto for two seasons. Their away shirt for 1996–97 was a carbon copy of Milan's light-blue fourth kit from the previous campaign, down to the slim red-and-black band across the chest with a white-and-blue diamond pattern beneath. If you removed the Milan badge and sponsor's logo, and added Grimsby's equivalents, you had the finished product.

Milan never actually wore that kit in Serie A, leaving Grimsby to give a soon-to-be-underused Lotto design a second premiere. Now, football fans have fallen in love with a modern reimagining.

"It felt really cool that we had exactly the same strip as the Milan," remembers Steve Young of the Grimsby Town podcast View From The Findus. Despite the club's relegation from the First Division (then English football's second tier) that season, "It became one of those shirts people always remembered."

A Broader Italian Affinity

It was around this time that Grimsby forged a broader Italian connection.

• In 1995, they signed former Serie A star Ivano Bonetti, a two-time Serie A winner with Juventus and Sampdoria.
• Two years later, the town produced more pizzas than anywhere in Europe, including its homeland of Italy.

These quirks — and more — are paid homage to in the new away shirt's unveiling video, released on July 13. The video drew nearly 800,000 views on X within a week.

It was filmed in Naples, a city with fish markets of its own and a working-class atmosphere that perfectly illustrated the parallel with Grimsby.

First-team players Cameron McJannet and Geza David Turi were flown out to model the outfit on the streets of Naples. Turi's involvement was unexpected: he joined the shoot just a day after representing the Faroe Islands in their June internationals against Estonia and Latvia. His modeling of the shirt's long-sleeved edition has been received so well that the club are considering further production.