Is Rakuten Behind the Unusual Color of Barcelona's 17-18 Third Kit?

An interesting perspective to the unusual color of Barcelona's 17-18 third kit, which we exclusively leaked last weekend, was offered to us by our reader Davy. He claims, and we think that it's it entirely possible that the club's new sponsor Rakuten is behind it.

Mock-up by Agron Designs

The Barcelona 2017-18 third jersey will be dark red, which is a first for the club. The color has been confirmed to Roma's and many fans have questioned the legitimacy of having a third shirt with a color this similar to the first one.

Turns out that Rakuten owns a Japanese baseball team, the Rakuten Eagles, a team whose first color is a dark red astonishingly similar to that of the upcoming Barça third kit.

Dig a bit deeper and Spanish sports daily Mundo Deportivo reported in the aftermath of the Rakuten announcement that the Japanese firm was first interested to sponsor Manchester City in 2011. Talks were well advanced until they broke down when Rakuten allegedly asked City to change its shirt color to red. Now this is hard to believe but, if true, it makes the above assumptions more likely.

Do you think Rakuten is indeed 'to blame' for the Barcelona third shirt? Drop us a line below.