This week, prolific kit website FootyHeadlines – renowned for posting early leaks across world football at club and international level – posted a proposed Celtic third jersey for the 2024/25 campaign that set tongues wagging. Shortly after, it was declared fake.

Such is the roundabout we find ourselves in at this time of year. Following the modern trend, Celtic release a minimum of three kits on an annual basis, which inevitably leads to summertime speculation regarding what the next line of jerseys might look like – and when we can expect to get our hands on them.

With concrete Celtic transfer news thin on the ground at the moment, and with club football only now slouching out of its post-season lull, kit speculation has given those interested something to ponder.

And the latest Celtic third kit 'leak' more than facilitated that.

(Image: Twitter (X))

With the utmost respect to anyone who fell for it, the kit screams fan-made concept. It's something a little too controversial for the so-far-played-safe Adidas numbers we've seen since the German brand and Celtic joined forces in 2020.

Nevertheless, the above kit is a belter, with its lime green gradient shading and hypnotic four-leaf clovers spreading from the centre of the jersey outwards.

The Cinch patch on the top's right arm was probably a giveaway that this wasn't legit (given the fact the car financier is no longer the sponsor of the Scottish Premiership), so too was the kit's overall outrageously ambitious design that would have surely gone either way on digital storefronts and bricks and mortar shop shelves.

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The latter point is exactly why I'd longed for the above to be legitimate. I'm old enough to have been around for the first bumblebee kit in 1996, and the reason that strip is still so revered to this day is because it pushed the boundaries of expectation.

The '90s were a wild time for experimental football jerseys – migraine-inducing goalkeeper tops especially – and the classic bumblebee captured the imaginations of Celtic supporters in the throes of it.

The reimagined bumblebee kit of 2009/10 was a brilliant throwback to the classic, but the above concept kit would have been, for my money, the best since the original bumblebee – in design, concept and theory.

Who knows what the official Celtic third kit for the 2024/25 season will look like, but I'd love to see Adidas throw caution to the wind with something that thinks a little outside of the box.

Or, dare I say it, the return of a modern day bumblebee.