One of my favorite things about a new season starting, aside from the fact that we get to see games, is that there are usually new shirts that release. With the MLS season rapidly approaching, I thought I’d take a look at what was coming out for each team and take the opportunity to take a few cheap shots at Adidas critique them.
Why don’t I start with a word about the shirts as a whole though. They’re not very appealing, all of them have strange patches on the sleeves and the amount of random piping on each shirt looks like a cake decorator designed them. Soccer shirts are perhaps the easiest of any sport to translate from the field to casual wear. They’ve got the exact same shape as a t-shirt and thus are much easier to wear as casual everyday clothes. A solid shirt design that appeals to the masses makes more people want to buy it, meaning more exposure, and in a World Cup year you want all the exposure you can get.
That said, lets take a look at the 7 new shirts coming out for these teams, and see how they look.
You might notice Toronto FC is missing from this list. According to everything I can find, TFC is keeping their shirts from last season. If you know differently, let me know in the comments.
New England Revolution
Home
Away
I think I have to start with the Revs, since Fuse is the biggest MLS fan of the four of us and they are of course his team. I actually don’t totally hate these two shirts, but each of them have their flaws. The home shirt would look great, but those huge grey portions of the sleeve make zero sense. Did some prankster come into the plant making these and chop a big chunk out of each sleeve? Every other shirt’s sleeve gap makes a little sense color wise, but these are grey, when there isn’t any grey on the rest of the shirt. If they were navy I’d like it a lot more.
The away shirt is a lot better, The red stripe across the chest is a little odd, but it’s so small it’s hardly going to ruin a shirt. My only thing is why do MLS teams still feel the need to put the names of the teams across the chest? I understand why they did it originally-to mimic the European aestetic-but I’d like to think we’ve moved past things like that. I’m fine with teams getting sponsors, but if they don’t have sponsors, just leave it blank, they’d look so much cleaner.
Philadelphia Union
Home
Away
The picture is too small to really tell, but are those buttons?!? It really looks like they are. I don’t know what benefit they would provide, but ok. It actually doesn’t look that bad, but I really can’t stand the gaps in the Adidas stripes. The stripes running down the sleeves are one of the iconic things about an Adidas soccer shirt, and to work these big gaps into them on every shirt just seems like they’re messing with something that shouldn’t be messed with.
Columbus Crew
Home
Away
Where do I even start with that home shirt? First the pinstripes are strange. It looks like the shirt was just a simple clean shirt, and then someone decided they needed something on them to “jazz” it up a bit, and it looks goofy. I’d like it a lot without the pinstripes. I don’t understand the collar either. It just ends. If the shirt wasn’t yellow or the picture was bigger it’d make more sense, but it’s a black strip that ends halfway around the neck, and it’s just off.
The away shirt is the polar opposite of the home shirt though. Clean black with yellow pinstripes, but again this is a shirt that’s hurt by the dreaded “armbands” without them, or even if they were black, this would be the best shirt in the East. I still really like it though.
Chicago Fire
Home
Away
Why’s the white stripe go from small to big at the ends? That just seems like a strange reworking of a defining trait of the shirt. The rest of the shirt doesn’t look bad, but again, there’s a funky collar on this one too. Overall, it’s not a bad shirt, but nothing about it makes it really exceptional. The away shirt is the same way. Nothing about it that just looks terrible, but nothing that would make me consider buying it if I was a Fire fan.
Kansas City Wizards
Home
Away
I kinda like the two of these. The home shirt has a pretty clean basic look to it, and even the armbands seem to fit on this one since the color matches the shirt and the yellow piping gives it a nice pop. They both have the collar that just kinda ends, but I don’t mind it here because it tapers down, unlike the Columbus collar. The armbands on the away shirt even seem to work because the color gives the shirt some much needed color. While I praised the Union shirts for the inverse effect, I’ve got to mark these shirts down for it simply because it isn’t a very unique design and a little creativity would have been nice, but these look nice enough that it works.
DC United
Home
Away
It seems I’ve saved the best for last. My only two things are the gaps where the piping just stops, and that they’re rather undistinguished shirts that just have their colors inverted. Just looking at the home shirt though, it’s very clean and the red collar looks awesome in the sea of black and white. As a neutral if I was looking to buy an Eastern Conference shirt, I’d buy this one.
I realize I came off a little harsh, some of it was probably deserved, but these could have been much worse. MLS could have just gone for the same template for every team and just changed the colors, or these things could have been even bigger disasters than they are. What are your thoughts on all of them though? Who got the best? who got the worst?
Look out next week for the Western Conference.
Adidas really sucks when it comes to unis. Don’t they know that less is more! Too many modern sports unis are covered in needless stripes and piping. I get the “three stripes” things, but it’s definitely overboard. I also don’t like it that each team uses mostly the same template and changes the colors. Have some orginiality.
I like Philly Union ones. I can’t explain it, but I think that black one is kind of sweet. Just fix the sleeves!
I guess my default team is the NY Red Bulls, since I’m from NJ. But I find them embarrassing in general, due to their corporate nickname.
That Red Bulls shirt is only good if you’re trying to dress up like a can of Red Bull for Halloween.
Agreed. Like I kind of mentioned, something like this for a lot of the teams, perhaps with a little flair to define each team, would look 10x better
The Kansas City shirt is the most “wearable” shirt on the list, with the Revolution shirt a close second (the gray patches aren’t cool now, but they might look cool on the shirt). Do they not have sponsors, or is it just not on the shirt yet?
I like the color scheme for the Union shirt, but it’s an awful implementation.
And I hate the “American flag” patch on the shirts. Why do that? The MLS patch means you’re in MLS, and this league’s over two countries, so there shouldn’t be a flag at all…just like there isn’t a flag on ANY OTHER LEAGUE’S SHIRTS*.
*-That I know of. I’m sure someone can prove I’m wrong.
I think the NHL’s Flames wear a Canada flag on their shoulder. But I agree with you. No flags. Flags are for national teams only.
I’m not saying this makes ANY sense, but the proliferation of American flags on uniforms is a post-9/11 phenomenon.
It bothered me when they were sewn on to the uniforms of the HS team I was coaching at the time, but we were just outside NYC and a lot of staff and parents were effected by the attack, and if sewing a flag onto the uniform made them feel better, it was fine with me.
Since then I think it’s just inertia that has caused the practice to continue.
Some Italian teams (Inter come to mind) wear an Italian flag “shield” on their shirts.
Now that I think about it, do they put USA flags on the back of NFL helmets too? I guess it is pretty common.
That’s the Scudetto; Inter wears it because they won Serie A last year.
MH is right. Whoever wins Serie A gets to wear the scudetto on their shirts the next year.
I kind of like the Revs new home shirt- it’s kind of a midpoint between last year’s home shirt and last year’s training shirt (which I own and like a lot), but I can’t stand the new away shirt. The red line across the chest makes it look like they’ve sewn two different shirts together.
As for having the name across the chest- sheesh. It still mystifies me that the Revs can’t find a shirt sponsor to put there instead. It seems to me that there are plenty of quintessentially “New England” companies that would be happy to put their name on the shirt- Gillette, Hood, Dunkin’ Donuts, etc.
I hear what you’re saying about Philadelphia’s uniform colors, but the navy blue, “natural khaki,” and light blue accents are meant to mimic the coats worn by soldiers during the Revolutionary War, and in a league where all the team names, colors, logos, etc. seem to have been produced by focus groups, I appreciate the nod to the city’s history.
Still, it should have been “Union Philadelphia.”
Also, and as usual, DC United’s new shirts are the only ones I can’t find any fault with.
I think you could wear those Philly colors in a different way, though; that big stripe down the middle just doesn’t work for me, but I’m not sure how I’d do it differently. It’s also grown on me more even since I wrote that reply; there’s something about unique color schemes that makes me at least respect the effort.
Which brings up another point: why are there so few purple teams?
Paul Lukas just threw up a little at the mention of purple.
I do think some team in MLS should have at least purple accents in their colors. Other than about 4 teams, most of the jerseys seem to consist of red/white/black/some type of darker blue. It’d be nice to see a little variation in there. Purple is really the only “wild” color that’s not seen at all in MLS.
I also may be biased as I’ve always liked purple and I’m sitting here in a purple shirt.
I also may be biased as I’ve always liked purple and I’m sitting here in a purple shirt.
I thought Coloradoans only wore purple during Rocktober?
And I think there should be more teams that wear green, but that doesn’t seem to be a very well-represented color in the uniform world.
My favorite book when I was young may have been Harold and the Purple Crayon, which may have lead me to really liking purple forever.
Well next year sees the Timbers enter the League, but you’re right only Seattle has green (if you can call it that) the Rapids had green for 1-2 seasons but ditched that look quickly.
I also don’t like big polo-shirt-style collars. The entire sport of soccer (footie, football, whatever) should ban those.
Arsenal doesn’t know what you mean.
The Fire away shirt you have posted looks slightly different than what they unveiled earlier this month. The one McBride was wearing has a replica Chicago flag on the lower left of the shirt. See the third picture in the link below.
http://web.mlsnet.com/gallery/photogallery.jsp?pathid=201001157922530&vkey=t100
Maybe this is a little Euro-snobby of me, but I like shirts with sponsors. Some of those shirts above just look empty.
If you check out the Fire Away Jerseys, they have the city flag on the back by the waist. It is pretty sick. Not sure why it is not in this shot.