July 29, 2023

WWC: The Kits

It's time to talk about soccer/football kits. Long time readers of my main newsletter have probably been expecting this for a little while. For the Men’s World Cup last year, I did a kit competition, using the 2022 bracket, which ended with Mexico’s Away kit as the winner. I’m not going to do all that this time around, for a few reasons:

1. I spent literal weeks building that out, between tracking down the home and away kits images, building all the visuals, and all that before I even got to the writing part, which ended up being the longest thing I'd written since before the pandemic. I’ve got a new job and just don’t have the time for that this time.

2. Many of the kits are similar or that same as that bracket.

3. Last time, I praised the Adidas away kits effusively (this year’s away kits from Adidas are also beautiful) and not a single one was worn in the Cup itself, and I’m frankly still a little cranky about it. Fool me once, shame on you, etc etc.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t talk about some of the trends I see this year and what I think about them.

Battle of the Brands

Like last year, the bulk of the kits are from a handful of manufacturers, but this time it’s even more unbalanced.

Last year, 26 out of 32 came from three brands: Nike made 12, Adidas made 7, and Puma made 6. This year, it’s 25 of 32, but 13 are Nike, 10 are by Adidas,¹ and only 2 are by Puma.²

The remaining seven are from seven different brands, with most being small or regional brands. As usual, Hummel made Denmark’s kit.³ Ireland’s kit was made by the newer brand, Castore. Founded in 2015, Ireland remains Castore’s only national soccer/football endorsement, but they’ve picked up a fair number of Premier League and La Liga teams since their founding.

Conversely, once-dominant Le Coq Sportif made South Africa’s kit, their only remaining national soccer/football endorsement. From the 1960s to the late 80s, they made some of the most iconic kits for some of the strongest teams of the era.

Nike Continues to Disappoint

While the Women’s version of Awful Nike Neckline (ANN) is marginally less awful, I still hate it. Thankfully, it seems like Nike only used on one of each kit pair, either home or away, while the other one got a normal crew collar. I don’t know why Nike insists on making the collar anything but comfortable. Maybe it’s because I’m a delicate flower, but one of the last things I imagine I’d want when trying to win a World Cup is some completely unnecessary distraction pulling awkwardly around my neck.

Beyond my personal vendetta against the ANN, I’m trying to figure out the origins of the Nike designers’ vendetta against the production crew. At least five of the 13 teams they outfitted have this very odd textured pattern that causes a moiré effect whenever the camera zooms in on the players.

Australia has a double whammy with the away kit having the textured lines, and the home kit having a wavy pattern like rings in a pond, both of which occasionally cause the moiré effect This would be less of a problem if this didn’t include some of the strongest teams who all have a good chase of going deep into the tournament and therefore spending a lot more time on screen.

Beyond that, the kits are fine, I guess. They’re apparently very sustainable or whatever. I would say the only one I really like is the New Zealand home kit, which take the fern leaf of their logo and nickname and uses it throughout the kit in a cool kind of spray-painty, photo negative look.

Adidas continues to drain my wallet

Will I buy any of these? There’s a non-zero chance. Should I buy any of these? My many other jerseys hanging in my closet say probably not. But I don’t listen to talking shirts.

I do miss the vaporwave away kit for Japan from last year, but apparently Adidas made special away kits for this year that are all inspired by nature and created out of their most sustainable materials to date. Each included⁵ nation’s kit pulls from the nation’s specific landscape. So instead of vaporwave, Japan’s kit is inspired by the pink sunrise of Mount Fuji, which is nice too, I guess.

There are a few different things I appreciate about Adidas kits in general:

1. Like Nike, the general cut of all the Adidas kits is the same, but unlike Nike, the cut doesn’t suck.

2. Adidas truly created different designs for all the teams. Even with the away kits sharing a theme, all the teams have very distinct visual design for each kit. Meanwhile, if you look at a grayscale version of the Nike kits, you’d only be able to distinguish the kits for the Dutch, Portugal, and US by the crest. The home kit for the Netherlands and the away kit for USWNT are identical in design. 

3. As someone who’s never been much for patriotism, I also love that the away kits offer other colors and designs that aren’t quite so aggressively patriotic. This year’s German away kit is so pretty, even I am considering getting myself one.⁶

Everyone else

Shout out to the 7 other manufacturers, adding a little spice and variety to the game. We’ve already covered Denmark’s Hummel, Ireland’s Castore, and South Africa’s Le Coq Sportif. So let me mention the other four. 

Vietnam

Vietnam’s kit is made by Grand Sport, a sportswear company based out of Thailand. They previously made the kits for a number of Asian Football Confederation (AFC) teams, but these days, only make the Vietnam and Laos kits. I can fairly say that the kits could be more boring. They are at least not solid colors, with a faint design to the near-solid white home kit and red away kit.

My biggest gripe is that the company’s page doesn’t feature the women at all, even though they are currently at a World Cup, something the men’s team has never done.

My other issue is with the folded collar on the home kit. Vietnam wore this one for the match against Portugal and they seemed to be frequently fixing and adjusting it. Collars on jerseys were historically popular but fell out of favor in the 21st century. But they’ve been making a comeback, appearing on kits from some of the most well-known clubs, like Manchester United, Real Madrid, Arsenal, Boca Juniors, and Inter Messi, I mean Miami, which I cannot understand. Who wants to be adjusting their collar when they need to focus on a game?

Haiti

Saeta, a sportswear company based out of Colombia, makes Haiti’s kits. At first glance, Haiti’s kits are kind of boring, and use the team-colors gradient on the sleeves that was very popular 20 years ago that looks very outdated today. However, I really like the subtle pattern on the torso of the kit.

I also really like that not only are they highlighting the women, they are selling kits with player names from the women’s team. And they’re selling them in men’s and women’s cuts. You would be amazed how often I can only find women’s names on women’s cuts only, because why would a man-type-person care about women’s sports.

Panama

Reebok, not an unknown brand in the States, but not a brand well known for their participation in soccer at any level, makes the Panama kit. Reebok had a little bit of a foothold in the sport at the end of the 20th century, but that faded out during the first decade of the 21st until they had no official brands after Adidas bought Reebok and the remaining teams still working with Reebok switched to Adidas. As such, Panama is Reebok’s first official endorsement in over a decade. Yes, I am talking about all this rather than the kit itself, because it is wildly underwhelming and I am so tired of primary-color red/white/blue kits in general.

Zambia

Since 2018, Zambia’s kits have carried the brand name “KoPa” however it's worth noting that unlike most of the kit arrangements in association football these days, KoPa is a subsidiary of the Football Association of Zambia itself. I would love to tell you more about this very unusual arrangement, but I cannot because KoPa does not have a website or a Wikipedia page or anything. I’m sure there’s something very fascinating here, at least by my standards, but we shall remain in the dark on this one together.

Enough about T-Shirts, Théo

Day 9 status update

Three teams are through to the knockout stage in some form:

• Spain

• Japan

• Sweden

Five teams have been officially eliminated:

• Vietnam

• Ireland

• Panama

• Costa Rica

• Zambia

Interestingly, of the five eliminated teams so far, four of them wear kits from the one-team brands. Of the remaining one-team brands, none are outfitting strong contenders, with Denmark/Hummel having the best odds to continue.

Day 10 Preview

Day 10 will be a big one, with two Group H matches to wrap up the second round of group play, and sandwiched in the middle, simultaneous matches from Group A to determine the final results of one of the more chaotic groups of the competition so far. 

As a reminder/intro for the newbies, each group plays their final round matches simultaneously in order to avoid the situation that happened in 1982’s Men’s World Cup which became known as “The Disgrace of Gijón.”