Canadian Soccer Fans are Blind
With the Canadian men's national soccer team finally getting some new kits, some people are mad about them for no good reason.
There’s lots of reasons to be mad with Canada Soccer, but these jersey designs are not worth your tears, you should be embracing them. So suck up those tears and complain about something important.
To say that soccer in Canada is at an all time low would be incorrect, but it would also be incorrect to say it’s at an all time high. That was in 2022 when the team made the World Cup for only the second time. They exited the World Cup in 2022 as most sane people would have predicted; a group stage exit. Where the team sits now is somewhere between, ‘hype’ and, ‘mold’.
This is because the team is in a transitional stage. Several old-timers have left, and several more are on their way out. This theme is heavily displayed in the roster selection for Canada’s upcoming playoff style single game against Trinidad and Tobago; a win here would see Canada into the Copa America for the first time (and hopefully the last because the inclusion of North American teams in a South American tournament is very stupid). There’s lots on the line for this game, especially a sense of pride, but more importantly, a victory would suggest that this Canadian team is good enough to beat teams that are not as good as them. If you’re familiar with CONCACAF, beating teams that are worse than yours is not an easy task.
This brings us to the point of this newsletter: the new jerseys. Wow, omfg, people have truly lost their mind over this. This is a Canadian team who showed up to the World Cup in 2022 with no new kit; the only team without new threads. Very generally speaking, all kits at the 2022 world cup were underwhelming to say the least. It was never a debate about who had the best kits, it was more of a debate about who had the worst.
Canada’s jerseys for the 2022 World Cup were an absolute disgrace. The white and red kits, at best, looked something like very overused gym tees with sleeves. They were short, light, see through, and you can literally tell the crests were ironed on with cheap plastics. The only saving grace was their third kit, the black jersey. This kit is made out of the exact same material, however the deviation from gym colours made it more approachable. Several players wore black gloves and long knee high black socks to match that included white accents. Very classy. It is important to note though that black is not a Canadian colour, and has nothing to do with Canada whatsoever. Black is just a good colour for clothing in general. It is sleek, classy (think a well fitted business suit), imposing and a great option for a third jersey.
Fast forward to March 18, 2024. It’s a few days before Canada goes head to head with Trinidad and Tobago, and what do you know, fans are graced with new kits just days before the game. The players like the jerseys, the designers like them, literally thousands of dollars has gone into their design and production. Nike is a capable team of producing stellar jerseys. Surely this will hype fans up for an important game.
Nope. It just made people complain.
Before we take a look at the new kits, lets just be clear about one thing; this is the stupidest, most embarrassing thing to complain about. You are not a fashion designer, and your style and choice of clothing is probably mid at best. I say this with confidence as North Americans in general dress like slobs. Canadians are no different. Summer ends on exactly September 1st of every year for the majority of us, and the first thing people are busting out on September 2nd are their overpriced, ugly, impractical Canada Goose and Arcteryx jackets. If you’ve spent one second in any Canadian city (actual city, not a town with a population of 25), you will have noticed several thousands of those branded jackets in less than a minute. The other seasons are no better for us. We wear outdated plaid red long sleeve shirts in the fall, desperately clinging to some form of ‘culture’ created by hard working lumberjacks of the past. In the spring we wear gap sweatshirts, hoodies and blue jeans. In the summer, Canadians dawn tacky short sleeve button up shirts with tacky designs paired with shorts made from the same material as khakis. Canadians on a global style-scale rank very, very low. Just above Americans.
It goes without saying that other places in the world set fashion trends. Italy, France, UK, Spain, Switzerland, South Korea, Singapore, etc. These are the places where fashion trends are set. For good reason as well. You don’t have to be an expert to notice that people in those countries generally dress nicer than people from Canada. Canadians have virtually no right to complain about fashion trends because we don’t create any that others want to replicate. Nobody in Spain is like, “yeah I can’t wait to get to The Bay in Vancouver and get some fuckin plaid shirts”. Literally the only people thinking that are Canadians. Nobody from France just needs that new Arcteryx jacket. In fact, they are avoiding that overpriced trash as best they can.
By this point I’m sure you’ve connected the dots. Canadians are unfashionable slobs addicted to showing off their personality through expensive clothing that is not fashionable. Or they are the opposite, couldn’t care less about their appearance because of the whole, ‘what is the point of existence’ thing most of Canadians are facing right now because a stick of butter is $12.99 and the rent for a one bedroom apartment anywhere in the country is $5,000 bi-weekly. I didn’t mention this part earlier because it’s pretty obvious if you’re Canadian and reading this.
This finally brings us to the point of all this: the new Canada kits. They are not stellar, but they actually look decent and are real soccer jerseys.
The red jersey in particular stands out for a lot of people. There are multiple shades of red, the collar is two colours instead of one, and it has a centred logo.
But…that’s all there is to complain about. There’s nothing offensively bad about the red kit at all. It just has different shades of red with white accents. People are complaining about the Nike logo because it has a white/red circle around it? I’m sorry, what? oh no, a logo has a small circle around it and this is worth fucking freaking out over? Absolutely not. Everyone calm down. The absolute worst part of it is that there is no constructive criticism, nothing is being offered as a solution. Just complaints with zero merit and claims that lead nowhere. Most importantly, jerseys always look better when they are being worn. The Nike release had AI generated models wearing the jerseys, they were also wearing the opposite coloured shorts which made them look horrendous. The use of several tones of red brings the kit to life and takes nothing away from it. It doesn’t look like a jersey worn by a high-school gymnasium soccer team. This is a legit jersey, possibly the first one in several decades. Admittedly, I am not a fan of the centred crest, but I am willing to accept it and move on because the rest is actually decent and I’m not an obsessive weirdo.
The white jerseys are actually fantastic. I have no idea why anyone is complaining about them. They mix outdated ‘old-school’ trends with modernity. The pinstripe looks good and doesn’t take away from the rest of the jersey. Full pinstripe jerseys have been out of date for nearly 30 years, I have no idea why people would like to see thin pinstripe across the entire kit, this is a perfect example of how out-of-touch Canadians actually are with fashion. To pinstripe an entire jersey would be an incorrect use of negative space (Greek here so I actually know a thing or two about art and fashion). The red accents on the white kits also look great, but clever use of a single-toned red apart from the red stripes used on the bottom of the sleeves gives the kit an imposing look. This is a major improvement from the gym bibs we got at the World Cup in 2022. Dare I say that the white jerseys look, “fast” whereas the black jersey from 2022 and the 2024 red jerseys look a bit, “sluggish”.
Canadians don’t have the right to complain about fashion. We set bad fashion trends. It seems like the majority of Canadian soccer diehards wanted a kit looking like something from the past with a modern twist (this is literally what they got btw), but, were upset when they found out the kits went beyond replicating something from the past to create something new and exciting. There is nothing wrong with the new jerseys, but people are going to tell you that they don’t like them. They are going to say things that may initially sound like legitimate claims. However, careful analysis will help you determine that they have no fucking clue what they are talking about. Below are a series of images of Canadian kits that were used prior to the 2024 kits. Even fashion blind Canadians can tell that the kits below are either outdated baggy trash from the 80s, or, kits that look like they belong in the bib bin at your local High-school gym class.
This newsletter is dedicated to the drachma, and acts as a humble reminder that it was a currency used daily for over 2000 years before white people fucked it all up.
