Excel-lent Football Facts 4

Today is the day!!! The World Cup kicks off in Qatar with the host team facing off against Ecuador, kicking off any minute now (at time of publication). In honor of this, I bring you the latest installment of Excel-lent Football Facts, which is again, not really fact based, but does involve an excel sheet this time, at least.

You can check out the first two issues in this series here:

• Excel-lent Football Facts 1
• Excel-lent Football Facts 2
• Excel-lent Football Facts 3

Now onto:

Excel-lent Football Facts 4: World Cup Kit Competition

My first ever football kit was, and I say this because it’s true, not because I’m proud of it, a Brazil national team home kit. I was a pre-teen, but it was so large that it actually still fits me, though it’s starting to get a little snug as I enter my dad-bod era. The next kit was a frankly extremely cool early 90s England jersey that I found at Unique Thrift Shop on Lorain Ave in Cleveland (RIP). It was my first time thrift shopping and a ridiculously good find in retrospect and gave me outsized expectations for what the thrifting experience would be like.

Since then, I have owned maybe 10 more football kit, mostly for national and club teams from Spain or Mexico, but I have coveted many more. Some of my favorite kits include:

• Slovenia’s 2010 World Cup kit, which sported a zig-zag lime green stripe across the chest of a solid emerald green shirt, making them look like a squad of color-adjusted Charlie Browns. They did not make it out of the group stage.
• Forward Madison FC’s 2021 alternate kit, the reversible one with one side solid black with a pattern of small, pink flamingos, and the other side pink with a pattern of various flamingos, palm trees, and beach scenes.
• Spain’s 2010 World Cup kit. Simple, iconic, you gave us our star. Thank you, I love you.
• Nigeria’s 2018 World Cup kit with the zig zag pattern in light green and white across the chest, with a black and white version on the sleeves. Maybe I have a thing for zigzags?

Anyway. I could go on. In another life, I became very rich somehow and just collected all my favorite football kits. BUT that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to talk about the future. We’re here to talk about the 2022 World Cup kits.

I’m breaking my completely arbitrary rules again, and not using data or wikipedia or anything. I’m running completely on vibes to share with you my judgments on each teams’ kit for the coming World Cup.

To maintain some modicum of fairness (aka to try not to rank Spain as #1 simply because they are always #1 in my heart) I decided to play out the World Cup, but base the winners and losers on their kits and not their playing. I played out the group stage, then the knockout rounds, with each team scoring a somewhat arbitrary number of goals based on the “performance” of their kit.

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if this will actually be fun to read, but it was really fun to do, and that’s good enough for me.

Before I dive into the individual kits, I want to mention some things about outfitters. Adidas, Nike, and Puma are the dominant brands, outfitting 26 out of the 32 teams. The remaining six teams had unique brands. Adidas, Nike, and Puma employ similar motifs throughout all the teams they outfit each year. In this year’s kits, these are some of the shared themes:

• Nike: These kits have a truly awful cut at the neck and shoulders, which I will refer to as the “ANC” going forward. It’s similar to a cut they did in the early aughts. I owned a couple of these jerseys over the years and not only do they not flatter the shoulders, even on the most fit footy player, they also are weirdly uncomfortable in the armpits? Also, many of Nike’s kits this year are just kind of bland. Solid colors, no spice or panache.
• Puma: They went in the opposite direction of Nike, not opting for old and tired but instead something new and different on the away kits and…it didn’t really work out. Each away kit sports an odd box in the center of the chest that might look better once we see them with the player’s numbers, but if you’re a fan trying to score a kit without numbers, it just looks unfinished.
• Adidas: Of the three big brands, Adidas definitely is the winner. Their kits have interesting designs, with good variety between teams, and they took some risks with the away kits that sometimes worked really well. And sometimes flamed out, pun intended.

Here are a few visual options to follow along at home, because if I included all the images in this newsletter, your ESP would definitely send it to spam:

• Footy Headlines’s Kit Overview
• Miro board showing the visual match-ups
• Excel sheet showing the “official” “scores”

Group Stage

Group A

This was not the most competitive group. Ecuador’s kit was solid, if not particularly compelling, but became the clear favorite, with the real competition being for the second spot in the group. Senegal was one of the many teams harmed by Puma’s odd away kit design this year, though Senegal’s in particular looks better by comparison and the home kit is sharp and simple.

Holland’s away kit is boring, just solid navy, with a couple of black and orange accents, and the Awful Nike Cut (ANC). The home kit is the bigger disappointment. I’ve always liked The Orange’s bright, distinct home kits, but this one, in addition to the ANC, has this weird faded tie dye business happening that just looks like someone spilled some bleach on the prototype jersey and called it a “happy accident”.

Qatar’s home kit is fine and boring. Another ANC, solid maroon, with an interesting accent along the cuff of the sleeves. The away kit, on the other hand, looks like someone got it muddy, left it out in the sun too long until the pale mud baked into the fabric, and then made a failed attempt to clean it up. With Qatar and The Netherlands are both unable to overcome the ANC with any redeeming design choices and Ecuador will be accompanied by Senegal into the knockout rounds.

Group B

This group also features two Nike kits. The USA home kit is boring beyond belief, like the platonic ideal of boring, and the away kit features a similar weird tie dye business. England’s home kit, also with ANC, is nearly as boring, except it’s somehow made worse by a 1998 Microsoft Clip Art gradient blue on the shoulders. The away kit is actually kind of fun, with a retro take, the solid red shirt comes complete with a small collar and a nice baby blue crest. Wales brings our first Adidas kit into the mix and while it’s not exciting, it’s also not bad. There’s not much to say about it, but I would wear it. Iran’s kit is from the brand Majid, and hasn’t actually been confirmed yet. But of the two possible leaked designs, both have some interesting elements. But since they failed to meet the deadline (me sending this newsletter) they are disqualified. This is great news for England, who likely would have finished third in the group otherwise. Wales and England take spot 1 and 2 respectively and move on to the knockout round.

Group C

Argentina’s Adidas home kit is a familiar design, but looks sharp and modern with the cut update and the slight pattern on the blue vertical stripes. The away kit took some risks, with an interesting dark and light purple flame design, which unfortunately evokes some “Goblet of Fire” connections. It might have worked in their favor in other groups, but this group was tough, and the risk didn’t pay off.

Mexico’s Adidas kit looks poised to take home the grand prize, and really must have all the other teams worried. The home kit is both hewing to traditional styling, while bringing in some interesting patterning. And then the away kit? Where do I begin??? It’s beautiful. Perfect. Art. A great cut and use of the Adidas stripes, with a lovely red on white pattern that calls up Mexico’s indigenous history and culture. And frankly, it just looks cool.

Poland’s Nike kit is…fine. It’s safe. The ANC is almost not noticeable, but it’s still there. The home kit is solid red, and the away kit is white, with a grey pattern on the shoulders that kind of looks like broken glass? The first thing I thought of was Kristallnacht, which isn’t really what you want from a Polish kit?

Somehow, Saudi Arabia’s Nike kit doesn’t involve the ANC. Both the home and away kits are cut like a normal t-shirt, and both are solid colors with a slight, somewhat indiscernible pattern. The home kit is white, with maybe palm leaves, and the away kit is green with ??? something?

Result: Mexico dominates the group in the end, with Saudi Arabia coming second, sliding through not on its own merit, but on the failures of its competition.

Group D

This was an interesting group, with each kit being a potential classic in the making, or completely forgettable, and no, I can’t explain why completely. Part of what made this group more interesting, I think, is that there were two outlier-brand involved. All the other groups had either one outlier, or none.

France’s Nike kit is one of the rare Nike wins. It still has the ANC, but it also has a vintage style collar on the home kit, which is navy with a subtle, darker navy pattern and the team badge in gold embroidery. The away kit is similar to Mexico’s with an interesting pale blue pattern of French iconography on a white background. But, again, ANC. Just looking at the ANC makes my armpits uncomfortable.

Denmark’s kit, made by Danish brand Hummel, has already made the news, with mixed reviews. The three versions are solid red, white, or black, respectively, with just the faintest pattern of vertical lines. The Hummel logo and the team crest are the same color as each shirt, making them all but invisible. Hummel released a statement explaining that this is a protest of Qatar hosting. FIFA regulations require that all kits display the logo and crest, so this is a way, according to them, to follow the letter of the law, if not the spirit. It’s gotten some backlash, because why not just not design the shirts at all, or why doesn’t Denmark protest the World Cup entirely. I get the criticism, but I also have some level of empathy for the untenable position in which the Danes, and every other team, have found themselves in. FIFA and Qatar engaged in corruption to make this happen. But these players have trained their entire lives for the chance to play at the World Cup. And there are only so many chances, so many years they get to be at their peak, to be competitive here. Do they have to sacrifice all that, because of the corruption of others? But at the same time, if FIFA doesn’t face significant consequences, what’s to stop them from pulling something like this again? It’s a sticky wicket.

Tunisia’s kit, by outlier brand Kappa, caught me by surprise. Both home and away kits have a subtle graphic on a solid red or white background, respectively. The graphic, in this case, is not a pattern of many cultural references, but a single image of the Armor of Hannibal, a cuirass found in Tunisia in 1909, attributed to Carthaginian general Hannibal. It looks nice in the pictures, but I am curious how it will look on the field when 11 guys have a face on their abdomens.

Australia’s kit is more dominated by the ANC than France’s, because of the simple design otherwise. The home kit is a yellow that looks like it’s been sponge-painted, and the away kit is a solid navy with some lovely seafoam accents. That said, Australia gets extra points always, because their team crest is a kangaroo and emu facing off over a football which, of course it is, but also, I celebrate anything that gives me an opportunity to bring up The Great Emu War.

Group E

This group saw three Adidas kits and an outlier brand compete, which made it tough. Adidas kits are consistently the most satisfying this year. The results may have been colored by my own bias, with Spain coming in second place, but I couldn’t deny that Japan was the clear winner with their vaporwave style kits. Germany’s kit is fine, and an argument could be made that it’s better than Spain’s, but no one could argue that Costa Rica’s New Balance kits were boring and borderline looked like the kind of knock off kit you can get for $5 at a corner store in any latino neighborhood in the States.

Group F

This group was whatever the opposite of the Group of Death is, with just a bunch of disappointments. Belgium’s Guy Fieri kit was the clear winner, only because the rest were either boring or terrible. Canada’s kit looks like someone slapped the (boring) team crest on a plain t-shirt and called it a day while Croatia’s Nike kit got too fancy with the checkerboards and were hurt by the ANC. This left the second spot open for Morocco’s solidly forgettable kit to sail through to the knockout round.

Group G

Okay, Group G has some tea. The short version is “Ooof, Cameroon.” The longer version is that there was a big dust-up between the Cameroonian Football Federation (FECAFOOT) and the original brand in charge of their kits, Le Coq Sportif. This resulted in FECAFOOT canceling their contract with Le Coq, and getting new, last minute kits designed and printed by One All Sports. Let me be clear, this stuff is all done far in advance, normally. Changing the brand and kit design within months of the World Cup is like starting your term paper due at midnight when it’s 10:45pm. Like, it’s maybe theoretically possible that you could get enough words on paper, but the result is going to be awful. Which is exactly what happened. The new One All designs and manufacturing of the official kit are awful, and also, countless vendors already bought up a fair amount of Le Coq stock which are now basically illegal to sell. The story of this group SHOULD be that the Swiss kit looks like a “Hello my name is…” sticker, or Brazil’s ugly away kit, but instead, it’s Cameroon’s kit [YET] [AGAIN] being a disaster. Serbia and Switzerland take the top two spots by default.

Group H

Lots of risky choices in this group, and I really had to deliberate over what worked here. Portugal was a clear loser, with their boring, ugly home and away kits that weirdly some wrong people really like. Ghana played it relatively safe, but in the end it hurt them, with the top two spots going to South Korea’s bus upholstery away kit and Uruguay’s vintage style home kit.

I can’t believe I’ve already written 2000 words about football kits, and yet, I completely can. If you’re still here, I salute you. Join me as we move on to the knockout round.

Knockout rounds

Round of 16

• Ecuador’s classy away kit beats England’s MS Word Gradient home kit.
• Mexico’s incredible away kit CLOBBERS Denmark’s protest kit.
• Japan’s vaporwave kit makes clean work of Morocco’s solidly forgettable kit.
• Serbia and Uruguay tie in regular play, go to penalty kicks. Serbia’s kit wins by one. Metaphorically.
• Wales and Senegal tie in regular play, go to penalty kicks. Wales makes all five, winning by one. Metaphorically.
• Tunisia’s Armor of Hannibal cuirass takes down Saudi Arabia’s ??? something?
• Belgium’s Guy Fieri kit overcomes La Roja’s classic but forgettable home kit.
• South Korea’s bus upholstery away kit ties Switzerland’s “Hello my name is…” kit, goes to penalty kicks, penalty kicks go to 6, with the Swiss goalkeeper failing to save the last strike by South Korea.

Quarterfinals

• Mexico cleans the floor with Ecuador.
• Japan’s vaporwave kit overpowers Uruguay’s classy home kit.
• The Armor of Hannibal carries Tunisia over Wales, which really only made it so far on the failures of its opponents.
• South Korea’s bus upholstery away kit bests Belgium’s Guy Fieri kit.

Semifinals

• A tough match up between Mexico’s incredible design and Japan’s vaporwave vibes sees Mexico come out on top in penalty kicks.
• Tunisia’s Armor of Hannibal finally falls, bested by the 90’s vibes of South Korea’s bus upholstery kit.

Third place match

The final match was really the first semifinal, Mexico versus Japan. Which means Japan had no trouble finishing off Tunisia’s Armor of Hannibal kit, which really surprised everyone making such a solid run.

Final

South Korea’s bus upholstery kit put up a good fight, scoring some goals, but in the end they only tied because the officials disallowed two Mexico goals on VAR offsides calls that, upon further review, only appeared offside because the Mexico jersey is so good it fills the room and crosses the body of the opponent. In penalty kicks, Mexico easily won, claiming the Cup and the very deserved place of “Best 2022 World Cup Kit.”