Nike embarrasses US Soccer with bad merch again

The partnership between federation and merch manufacturer makes for results all over the spectrum, from immediate take-my-money status to oh-god-someone-got-paid-for-that. Nike has given US Soccer things like the centennial kit, the height of simple, clean design. They’ve also given us the current awful two-color sleeve jerseys. Nike giveth with one hand and taketh with the other.

And boy, do they taketh with this latest round of t-shirts, providing US Soccer with some of their most truly horrifying NT gear to date. Behold.

This looks like someone was in charge of submitting a design, forgot, and threw together a submission in MS Paint with one hour until deadline. Perhaps whoever was in charge of approval careened into a wall of so-bad-it’s-good, or perhaps they were in a rush to pick up their sick child from school after receiving a phone call about a multi-vomit incident and just waved their hand in approval as they rushed out the door.

Whatever happened here, the outcome was Not Good. US Soccer has slapped a $30 price tag on these bad boys, which is the usual price for their new releases. But that usual price assumes that the shirt is also of the usual quality. These shirts look like they were sewn together from the rags of other shirts. Any fan who wears these shirts could reasonably be asked by someone else “Oh, did you make that yourself at home?” And then their eyes would track down to the little authentic crest and swoosh of a major international brand and they would go “Really?”

Nike t-shirt designer, own it. Everyone makes mistakes. Tomorrow is a new day - hopefully a day when these suckers are marked down and you can try again with the next iteration of USSF shirt.