Adidas Won't Like This: Benfica's Official Store Sells 'Fake' Kits

Browsing Benfica's official online store the other day, one of our writers made a surprising, almost shocking discovery. Displayed amongst the club's regular home and away kits, the Benfica store also offers so-called 'replica' shirts, which don't feature any Adidas branding and cost less than half as much (€40 vs €90).

Benfica 18-19 Replica Kits

Below you can compare the home Adidas and Replica Benfica 2018-2019 jerseys.

Besides the missing Adidas logo and stripes, the shirts appear to be almost identical, bringing them at least up to par with the higher quality Asian fakes. They reproduce all design elements of the actual shirts - which frankly don't feature a lot of those - such as the subtle striping found on the home. Club and sponsor logos appear to be applied using decent quality materials and processes as well.

Apart from the home kit, there's also the aforementioned away, plus full kits in kids' sizes and even the goalkeeper kit. Again, these very closely follow the Adidas template and designs.

To be frank we found it quite crazy to encounter these type of items in an official club store, but we also don't think a club of Benfica's stature would do something like this if it wasn't previously agreed upon with Adidas.

With more and more people opting to buy cheap fakes instead of the very pricey originals, we might see more clubs and around the world adopt methods such as these, although the likes of Adidas and Nike will be up in arms against it. Nike already produces less than accurate cheap replicas of its major jerseys as it stands, if you remember.

How do you feel about this? Leave a comment below.