“Cantiamo solo quando peschiamo.”
That’s a direct translation of one of Grimsby Town’s most coveted chants: “We only sing when we’re fishing.”
Everything sounds better in Italian but, as this League Two side from Lincolnshire, halfway up the east coast of England near the River Humber, have discovered, everything looks better in Italian, too.
Grimsby is most famous for its fishing industry, processing around 70 per cent of the UK’s seafood; hence the tongue-in-cheek song sung by its football team’s supporters, a chant they made their own after a version 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, having 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, tells 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.”
It’s a modern take on an all-time classic.
When they play away this season, starting at Walsall on August 22, Grimsby will regularly step on to 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. And now football fans have fallen in love with a modern reimagining.
(Jon Corken/Grimsby Town Football Club)
“It felt really cool that we had exactly the same strip as the Milan,” remembers Steve Young of Grimsby Town podcast View From The Findus. And 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.”
It was around this time that Grimsby forged a broader Italian affinity.
In 1995, they signed former Ivano Bonetti, a two-time Serie A winner with Juventus and Sampdoria, two years before 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, which 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.
🇮🇹 Grimsby – inspired by Italian culture since 1878.
Introducing our 2026/27 Away Kit. Available in-store Friday and online from Monday.#GTFC pic.twitter.com/aWTNvLDr4F
— Grimsby Town F.C. (@officialgtfc) July 13, 2026
First-team players Cameron McJannet and Geza David Turi were flown out to model the outfit on the streets of Naples, the latter unexpectedly so, just a day after representing the Faroe Islands in their June internationals against Estonia and Latvia. Turi’s modelling of the shirt’s long-sleeved edition have been received so well that the club are currently out of stock and won’t have more until September.
“When you set the long-sleeve shirts with the backdrop of Italy and you’ve got random Italians on mopeds wearing it, it just looks very cool, and is extremely well thought of,“ Young says.
(Jon Corken/Grimsby Town Football Club)
The partnership with Lotto stems from Grimsby’s primary deal with KitLocker, which adopted a licensing branch four years ago to design bespoke, heritage-led kits alongside suppliers and clubs.
This season is the third year of Grimsby’s KitLocker collaboration. Their partnership, in conjunction with Umbro for its first two years, broke records last season as over 10,000 home and away jerseys were sold, the best-selling figures in club history, a figure greater than their Blundell Park stadium’s capacity.
Lotto then began a partnership with KitLocker last season, manufacturing League One side AFC Wimbledon’s kits, and getting into business with Grimsby felt like a natural progression.
“When the Lotto link came about, remaking the ’96 kit immediately sprang to mind,” Johnson says. “We didn’t want to mess with a classic, because this kit was synonymous with the Milan side containing Patrick Vieira and Roberto Baggio, and brings back warm memories for fans of my age and older.”
Roberto Baggio, left, and George Weah in action in Milan’s 1995-96 fourth kit (Getty Images)
There is a lot going on visually, and a kit incorporating a collar, pinstripes, diamonds and five shades of blue sounds too busy to work, but it does — gloriously so.
“Grimsby is a club we knew would respect the heritage of Lotto,” says Mike Atkin, KitLocker’s director of licensed brands. “We knew the away kit would be a hit, but the work has gone in across the board to ensure that every shirt tells a story.”
The new home shirt — Grimsby have played in black and white stripes since 1925 — similarly pays tribute to its Lotto-made equivalent from 30 years ago with a retro Juventus-esque look, while their training and goalkeeper kits feature landmarks and mythology connected with the origins of the town.
(Yuta Kato/Grimsby Town Football Club)
Johnson and KitLocker worked closely with JD Sports’ product director Luke Matthews, who aided the process on an advisory basis, and local photographer James Willis to bring the project to life. “Being a part of making these love letters of Grimsby that have transcended beyond the borders of Lincolnshire is awesome,” says Matthews.
It’s something Young, now living 60 miles away in Leeds, has also experienced: “I’ve had people who I play five-a-side with, many of whom only know Grimsby exists because of me, message me saying how amazing our kits look.
“Lotto feels like the quintessential Grimsby sponsor, and brings back memories of the season after we got relegated, where we visited Wembley twice (winning both the EFL Trophy and the Second Division play-off final) — the best times many of us have seen.”
On the face of it, Grimsby and Italian football should have little in common. Yet one borrowed template from the 1990s has become part of the club’s own identity, revived now not out of nostalgia alone but because it still tells the town’s story.
