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Leeds United announced a new badge and everyone hates it

If this rebrand was a way to unite the fans, they’ve done a good job

Leeds United v Birmingham City - Sky Bet Championship - Elland Road

Leeds United announced a “rebrand” today, and unveiled a new badge.

So yeah.

That’s the new badge.

Reactions were not positive.

This is a bad dream, right? Like this is some elaborate trolling job, with the new badge released later today and everyone gets a good laugh to think that the club would actually release this awfulness?

It appears not.

And yes, a petition was quickly set up and it’s garnered far more than 10,000 signatures, more than the club claimed it “consulted” to pick this new badge. It’s worth noting that the response on polls on Twitter and Facebook were almost universally critical, with the vast majority of people saying they disliked the new badge.

The Leeds salute is not something that belongs on a badge. Many people have pointed out that this badge resembles the astroturf designs of MLS, and they’re not wrong. Rather than honour the history of Yorkshire, or Leeds, the club chose a fan “salute” instead to adorn the badge. And I get the impulse to want to honour the fans, but this is just misguided and looks appalling.

Andrea Radrizzani has made few missteps since taking over the club from Massimo Cellino, but this has the possibility of undoing a lot of good work that he has done at the club. Fans are united behind the hatred of this “rebrand” and if the club wants to keep fans happy, it might not be the worst idea in the world to rethink this new “rebranding” effort, because right now the only thing this new badge is doing is uniting fans for the wrong reason and making all the wrong kinds of headlines.