Homely and AwayThe U.S. soccer team's growing uniform crisis.

Remarks from the Fray:

As a former soccer player myself, I have my own theory as to why the US Men's National Team hasn't yet stuck with a single jersey in the past 17 years since we returned to serious international play: no luck. [...]

Athletes are notoriously superstitious when it comes to the freakish reasons why they win or lose games. Sometimes you lose to a clearly better team, but unless you are totally outclassed, you tend to see more the seeming arbitrariness that determines that any one team can beat any other team on any given day, even a 1950's US soccer team beating their English counterparts. That's why if you talk to athletes of just about any sport that I can think of, you will find that most have a pre-game ritual of varying degrees of complexity and sophistication, for practical reasons as well as superstitious.

When I played competitively, I had very strict meal rituals based on what I knew would almost never upset my stomach, and ideally even provide me with enough energy to get through the competition. But I also had rituals about what music I listened to, how much sleep I tried to get the night before, what clothes I wore under my uniform, hair length (to cut mid-season or leave grow until losing? shave/no shave?), etc.

The key factor in creating those game rituals though is that you are trying to repeat something that had previously proven successful. Without previous success, you just keep changing things until something sticks. Who wants to be reminded of the failures of 1990/1994/1998, or the 40 mostly anonymous years between 1950 and our return to the World Cup?

The only US jerseys that have any significant success behind them are the 1950 jersey, partially resurrected for the previously mentioned retro-style "Don't Tread on Me" jersey, and the 2002 edition from Korea. Of those, only the former two were really distinctive, but neither would I want to see be set up as a standard, so we're still looking for that iconic uniform.

At the same time we're still looking for our first truly iconic team. Hopefully when the team makes it to the semifinals of a World Cup, they'll have a look that will do them justice and see us into the future, welcomed into the lands of yellow Brazil, the blues of France and Italy, and white of Germany. Until then, who really cares?

--bradpaton

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It is similar in the Olympics. Other teams maintain the same uniforms through the years. Holland has the bright orange. The Chinese are all red, the Greeks are a medium blue, the Japanese have a big red dot. There is some degree of consistency through the years, meanwhile the Americans inevitably look like someone half digested a flag and then barfed it back up on them. Sometimes the stars are big, sometimes small, sometimes non-existent. The bars are also somewhat inconsistently represented.

I say USA needs to come up with a uniform design that they can commit to for all international competition where national pride is at stake and stick with it for eight years. If the design is relatively simple it can be replicated easily for any sport and brand loyalty will increase sales.

--Beaujoe

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That's not a crisis. That's a fashion sense caught up with marketing Nike and not the U.S. Eventually, something'll stick.

A uniform crisis is the fact that baseball still requires its coaches to dress up as players. What is with that anyway? Nothing gives an elderly man less respect then letting him dress up in tights, show his gut hanging over the bottom half of his uniform, and putting him in a little cap. If they weren't in the dugouts, they'd be suspected of having broken away from the local nursing home staff while on a field trip.

Imagine how bizarre it would be if this were required in other sports. Football? Who wouldn't want to see Andy Reid suited up and looking for a place to hang his clipboard? Basketball? Oh yeah. Gregg Popovich would look good in those shorts. And of course, ice hockey coaches would look great, but they'd have to expand the boxes so there'd be room for the padding.

Let's call an end to this right now. Let the boys of summer be boys, but let's let the management look like men.

--rundeep

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