'Russian Flag for Russian Club?' New Chelsea Away Kit Leaves Fans Perplexed

England’s Chelsea football club has presented the renewed design of its away kit, featuring a white polo jersey with blue and red stripes on its collar and sleeves. The designers admitted that the source for their inspiration was the mod subculture that dominated King's Road, a major street going through Chelsea, in the 1960s.

Most of the club's fans found the new kit amazing and agreed with the club's description of it as looking "sharp" and being a true "Chelsea thing".

Chelsea is CLASS 💙

— 𝓡𝓸𝓶𝓮𝓸 (@SW3CareFree) July 17, 2019

Absolute beauty💙👍👊

— DADDY YUSRO (@lanstech4) July 17, 2019

But some netizens took the change in a negative way and used the predominantly white colour of the shirt as a pre-text to take pot shots at Chelsea fans ending up in racist scandals from time to time.

Plus it’s pure white representing the clubs inherent racism

— Psycher (@htmwc) July 17, 2019

Numerous Twitterians, however, saw quite a different message in the new away kit's choice of colours, which strikingly resemble the Russian flag.

Lol that's literally a Russian flag on the collar 😂😂

— Victorframpton2 (@victorframpton2) July 17, 2019

Russian flag?🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺🤔🤫🤫🤫😅

— Renat Rashitovich (@RenatRvich) July 17, 2019

Some of them took it as an extra reminder that the football club has been owned by a Russian businessman for some time now.

Russian club 🇷🇺

— Kirasin Kirill (@KirasinKirill) July 17, 2019

One netizen apparently even saw the "hand of the Kremlin" in it…

Russian businessman Roman Abramovich secured Chelsea's ownership in 2003 for around £140 million. Despite investing over a hundred more million pounds in it, the club didn't bring in a profit for nine years, but after that started turning a profit.

At the same time, the club has seen a rise in its results on the playing field over the last two decades, securing five league titles and the UEFA Champions League crown, as well as in other prestigious championships.