A New National Color?
March 31, 2008
| Kevin
Zdancewicz
It’s a general rule of
thumb that if you can't define what
your team’s new color is, it's generally an ineffective uniform change.
Case in
point: the Seattle
Seahawks redesign in 2002. If you want to make matters
worse, take
something with clearly identified and recognized colors and go against
that.
That's exactly what has happened with the U.S. men’s national soccer
team and
their new away kit featured above. Good luck figuring out what to call
that
hue. Some say it’s gray, others say black and apparently the official
name is anthracite.
What can be said for sure is that it doesn’t
really look
good and, more importantly, it doesn’t represent the United States. I
wouldn’t
mind going with a simple jersey; in fact, I think soccer kits look best
when
they limit excessive border trim and patches of color. But at least
make it
navy or red. The gray jerseys look more like warm-up shirts or at the
very best
part of a goalie’s uniform (which are a different color than the rest
of the
team, if you are a non-soccer fan). Worsening the problem is the fact
that the national
team had some beautiful away
kits last year
and the redesigned home jerseys look like golf shirts that pale in
comparison to
last year’s home whites.
Why
not keep the 2007 kits around another year?
I know that soccer jerseys change often in
all
levels of
play, but that shouldn’t force teams to scrap solid designs that look
great on
the field. And in terms of national teams, there’s no excuse for
neglecting the
colors of that country’s flag. The women’s U.S. soccer team unveiled
new gold
jerseys for the World Cup last year, a pretty cocky move
given the
color’s champion connotation and another example of United States
soccer moving
away its national colors (which are red, white and blue in case Nike is
reading). The whole point of defining national colors is to form an
identity
for a country’s citizens to rally behind. So until we add gray and gold
to the
American flag, let’s stick to red, white and blue on our soccer jerseys.
Jersey of the Week Archive
|
