Juventus badge: The biggest redesign in football history?

Italian champions Juventus have unveiled a new logo, but the Old Lady of Turin's minimalist rebrand has not gone down well with fans.

The club's new crest was revealed at a lavish launch party this week – in Milan of all places – where club president Andrea Agnelli explained the need for the new look, which sees the iconic black and white striped badge replaced by a stylised letter J.

"We need to define not only a sense of belonging to something, but also to define Juventus's style, which can relate to certain targets such as children, women, youth," he said.

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"The new identity captures Juventus's DNA aesthetics and carves into the sharp lines of an iconic and essential sign. A bold and uncompromising approach which transcends the schemes and the traditions of the football sector."

Critics were not so sure and social media was soon awash with posts mocking the rebrand.

The previous Juvenus badge was "a thing of beauty" says the Daily Mirror, "something that instantly screams class, history and European pedigree". The new look, it says, is enough to make fans "weep for the state of modern football... this monstrosity perfectly sums up everything that is wrong with the game today".

Design website Dezeen acknowledges that the new logo "is intended to help the brand grow in presence as the club explores new business initiatives less directly related to football". But it says: "Almost all of the club's previous logos, dating back to 1905, had featured an oval crest enclosing black stripes and an animal rearing up on its hind legs. The bull had been the animal of choice since 1990. Before that it was a zebra.

"The project shows the minefield that faces companies undertaking rebrands."

But not everyone hates it. ESPN claims it has "a pleasingly retro 1970s feel about it".

Others think it could be ahead of its time. "It's easy to be cynical about the logo change and conflate it with everything else that's wrong with modern football. People will ask whether it was really necessary and why, despite its simplicity, it is so radically different from the original crest and other variations of it," says James Horncastle in The Independent.

"Whatever you think about the emblem... this serves as yet another example of why Juventus remain ahead of the competition not only on the pitch in Italy, but off it too," he claims, arguing that Juventus understand the need to evolve as they keep pace with their business rivals in the Premier League and La Liga.

Designer Daniel Nyari, writing for Goal.com, goes even further. "This is the most important visual rebrand in football history. With it, Juventus have cemented their place ahead of the pack when most of their competitors don't even realise they're in a race," he says.

The global realities of the game now override local concerns, he argues, and the new look badge is instantly recognisable. "By condensing the Juve brand into an essential single logomark, Juventus are future-proofing against signifier overload," he says.