By Dario Camacho - MIAMI, FL (Dec 19, 2011) US Soccer Players -- When you are a kid living in Bogota, Colombia there comes a time and realization that one day, you must pick a side. The eternal battle between the local teams, Millonarios and Santa Fe de Bogota is one of the countries oldest rivalries. It’s a rite of passage for most young boys and girls of a certain age to pick one and root for them for the rest of our lives.
There lies a division between my parents. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, is a Millonarios fan. My father, on the other hand, is a Santa Fe man through and through. When it was my turn to decide, it would tilt the balance of power in my household. I thought about it, and the decision could have been made based on a multitude of metrics that many people would associate with the sport to determine a certain favoritism towards a team.
For me, the only one that counted was that Millonarios wore blue jerseys, while Santa Fe wore red. In my eyes, blue was always better than red. Ever since then I knew that when blue won over red, good prevailed. When red won over blue, something was wrong with the world.
Such is the power of a jersey. So what to make of a League full of teams that got to start fresh a little over 15 years ago, and have had no hesitation in tweaking their designs, colors, and crests since then?
Thigh-to-Short Ratio
It’s evident that times have changed since the early days of MLS back in 1996. I’m not talking about quality of play, but rather quality of fashion. Markedly, it has improved. Take for example the style and fit of kits. Back in the day, it was fashionable attire to have a kite for a jersey and boxer shorts for shorts. Things were un-proportionally balanced on purpose. It was a ridiculously high thigh-to-shorts ratio and flailing, baggy jerseys. It was Eric Wynalda, Santa Ana breeze through his hair, running in a big white San Jose Clash jersey with mid-thigh length white shorts, exposing some nicely tan thighs.
Imagine that every Saturday in the summer of ‘96.
Now add in the disastrously inventive patterns that adorned some of the jerseys of the period. Two stand out in my mind: the Galaxy's inaugural ‘96 jersey and The Wiz rainbow jersey of the same year. Both should've come complete with seizure warnings for the viewing audience.
The Wiz, as Sporting KC used to be known, had a jersey with too many colors in a diagonal ascend on top of a sky blue background. They actually went out onto the field like that.
LA’s was a mix of four colors, emblazoned with a zig-zagging black pattern on each side of the shoulder sleeves. None of the colors seemed to match, the zig-zagging just made it worse. It’s as if the Fresh Prince of Bel Air was the lead designer of those kits, choosing a mish-mash of haphazard ideas that culminated in the disastrous jersey on display.
A little more subtlety should have been used. Think more Carlton Banks than neon Will. What were they thinking?
Jogo Bonito and the People Who Don’t Know What That Is
Of course, now, soccer jerseys are fashion choices that normal people not fit to set foot on a pitch use as everyday casual wear. People who don’t know a lick of Portuguese proudly wear a Seleção jersey because the style is just so refreshing and hip. Go up to them and shout “Jogo Bonito” while giving them a smile and a thumbs up, and more often than not they will look at you and smile while in the back of their heads they’ll think what sort of medications you forgot to take.
We are at this point because nowadays, subtlety is much more appreciated than in ‘96. Today’s MLS jersey is all about subtlety. It’s about accent colors that mesh well with a main, primary color. And they have to be, since more and more, these jerseys are becoming good channels of income for MLS teams. Fans like it for fashion reasons as well, and it’s good marketing when fans want to be seen in your team's shirt walking about town. It’s also why we see teams come out with new jerseys each year, trying to rake in a little more on the novelty of a fresh, new design.
Money grabs aside, this can work both for fans and clubs. There's a stickiness factor that only increases by selling clothes people want to wear. It sounds simple, but how many people did you ever see outside of an MLS stadium or other soccer event wearing the extremes of those mid-90's designs? There's a point that part of the early popularity of DC United had to do with their classic shirts. Winning everything imaginable probably helped.
As the league matures and understands the whims and fancy of its fans, the way a fan reacts to the unveiling of a new jersey each year is a clear indication that the stickiness factor is increasing between fan and team. How a team then reciprocates that reaction to its fans in a new design for its team jersey is key in creating the roots of our culture for the sport grow.
What’s Old, Is New
Portland is now the clubhouse leader for nouveau retro, a new category that emerged after grown men all over the United States wondered why they were wearing expensive baseball shirts made to look like they were 40 years old. You take the best of the old designs and mesh it with something new. Give it a story, and fans buy into more than just a shirt.
A throw back to their old NASL days, the retro-look of the Rose City kit is just a brilliant nod to the past of its roots, all the while creating a desirable, and user consumable product, that will no doubt sell. It’s also something that other teams in our league will probably look to as a means to create a memorable and desirable commodity. Of course our founding MLS teams, as mentioned above, had a big problem with ‘style’ that it would be hard to bring back any of those designs into the fold today. Well, except for United for reasons we've already covered.
Amongst all the kits revealed in '96, DC’s home shirt was something all on its own. It was classy. It was memorable, and above all, when those players paraded onto the pitch and stood side-by-side before kick-off, they looked like they meant business. They were something else, entirely. The three, white stripes across a plain black shirt. It was all they needed, a working template for what good design should be.
Dario Camacho made the move from regular commentator as Pesmerga7 to columnist. He writes weekly for US Soccer Players. Follow him on twitter at DarCam7.
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