Isn’t that like standard procedure in the US? One team wear white as the home team and the away team something darker? Like in baseball, white or grey.
It’s very standard to have a single uniform manufacturer. The leagues are all a single entity so they’d contract as a league with Nike or Adidas to make the uniforms, the warm ups, the leisurewear and stuff like that.
The color-scheme stuff is a little more recent. Home teams in basketball used to wear white but with the explosion in athleisure wear and extra merchandising the NBA has started issuing tons of special edition jerseys (think Napoli but on the whole way better taste, sorry @Jesseviolin ) that are used at home. Baseball teams have started doing gimmicky jerseys or hats and the NHL has even gotten in on the act with their incredible “reverse retro” jerseys.
The issue with MLS is that a lot of these teams are extremely new and are attempting to create a sense of history with some of their branding that doesn’t actually exist. Not to mention the weird homogenization of team crests (how many circular badges can one league have?) and the insecurity around North American team naming conventions which has led teams to forgo some amazing visual identities with actual history for something that a marketing consultant assured them would appeal to a 15 year old even though that 15 year old loves FIFA, Neymar, Messi and Chelsea (in that order) and doesn’t have the disposable income to buy an Apple TV subscription to watch MLS let alone live within an hour of a team.
MLS has done a lot of things right, especially in terms of inclusivity but the visual identity of the league is bad enough to cause night blindness.
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I hope that the development continues in that direction, where teams in the NHL for example have had more creative freedom with kits for the last 20 years.
But are there any sports in the US that have the same system as in Europe? Where teams can get relegated and promoted? It would take some time to implement, but it’s far more interesting having regional divisions. If promoted you move up and face better teams from further away etc. This is (imo) what creates history, tradition, team legends, rivalries and hard core fans to teams. With the closed leagues as of now the focus seems to be to sell the sport itself to the masses. Maybe in the short run, but definitely not in the long. Since your team can be sold or moved to another city at any time.
No and the promotion/relegation argument is basically the argument over MLS.
Pro/Rel advocates say that without a true open competition that the soccer we do have in the USA is a false version of the sport.
Pro/Rel haters say that with a true open competition a league like MLS would have folded a long time ago. North American teams are built on the franchise model these days with big investors owning the club. If MLS told an investor who spent 500m to buy a franchise that there was a chance that the team could be kicked into a lower division, those investors would have an aneurysm. Or at least that’s the argument against pro/rel.
There’s also a tradition of “lower” leagues being used for developmental purposes in baseball, hockey and basketball here so for new soccer fans it can be disorientating to realize that a lower European division isn’t actually a minor league feeding players to the top while the teams always stay. A second division in European does feed players to the top but the teams also move.
Overall I think MLS may move to some closed version of pro/rel if they reach 36 or 40 teams. They’ll never stop expanding despite what they say because their business mode is a ponzi scheme (relying on ever-increasing “expansion fees” to make the league look attractive). But the USA will never have a consolidated pyramid like England. The country is too big, the teams at the bottom are too unstable and the teams that would theoretically make up the bulk of that second, third and fourth division were or are operating in a league that doesn’t have the same restrictions as MLS. North American soccer is fascinating imo. MLS hasn’t really cracked it per se and some of the league format changes are really stupid imo and will lead to some awful soccer getting hyped up on Apple TV as somehow meaningful but it’s by far the most successful soccer league we’ve had.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CpNPZcyjhdw/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
This is a great kit. If only shipping was cheaper from Ireland.
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Some crackers here
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Poor old Spurs. Their kits are either mind-numbingly bland or cheap and tacky. After their tribute to lower league and pub teams’ kits this season, they’re going back to bland.
I used to think their kits were bad because they always started with a white base but Madrid have the same and usually come out with interesting stuff.
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their motto ‘you can’t be bothered…neither can we’
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That Italy and Swedish away shirts look great!
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That’s really nice
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Can’t go wrong really when you keep it that simple. I like it.
God, imagine quoting Kim Kardashian to try sell a kit.
Less is more
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That is sensational.
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