Beer-tastic World Cup Jerseys: Group C

By Nick Sindt

Here we are! Just nine days to the greatest sporting spectacle the world has ever seen. No... not the monster truck rally at your local convention center. The World Cup! The pageantry, the globe's greatest teams and players, the crazed and delusional fans (looking at you, England).

But what about the team's jerseys? Every four years, and sometimes even more frequently, the National teams of nearly every country roll out new threads for materialistic consumers to salivate over and spend their hard earned dollars, yen, Euros, etc on.

How will you ever sort through all of them to decide which jersey you'll treasure for the next month?

Worry no more! The Free Beer Movement's Nick Sindt is going to walk you through all 32 teams' home and away jerseys and rate them based on (what else?) beer!

Previous Groups:
Group A
Group B

Here’s how the ratings will work; I’ll be ranking each kit on its design/uniqueness and purchasability (from a home fan’s standpoint) and the rankings will of course be done in beers as follows:

John Smith’s Extra Smooth = An Excellent design that deserves to be toasted with a fine beer; you don’t need to pound these back to look at it, but it’s beer and it’s the World Cup so we know you’re going to.

Summit [Insert Local Brewery Name Here] Extra Pale Ale = A solid design though it may not satisfy everyone’s pallets. You’ll only need two or three of these excellent brews before you lose your inhibitions and purchase the kit online in the middle of the night.

Miller Lite = A shallow and pedantic effort by one of the “big names” in the world, but it’s still an average beer/your national team’s kit so you can’t hate it, right?

Coors Lite = Thankfully Coors tastes and goes down like water because you’ll be drinking a lot of it to drown out the abomination that is this iteration of your team’s kit.

Bartles & Jaymes = Shennaigannery! Travashammockery! This kit is such an abomination you’d rather punish your liver, taste buds, and stomach with a wine cooler.

Group C

England Home ------------------------ England Away

(Ed Note: Tee hee hee... we put in the women's and baby's kit!)

Similar to Uruguay’s Home kit, I don’t know whether I should wear this to pub when watching a match or out to the links; though, this versatility does up the purchasability value of the shirt. My biggest complaint about the home kit for the Three Lions this year is not necessarily the shirt, but the fact that the shorts and the socks are both solid white. Also, they’re cut in a such a way that it makes Wayne Rooney look like an overweight dock worker trying to cram his ten pounds of garbage into a five pound bag. My second biggest beef with this year’s England kits is that the Championship star is the same color as the shirt, instead of the usual gold, so it doesn’t stand out; something to do with wearing similar shirts to those worn in 1966 when England last tasted some glory in International Footie.

Home Design = Miller Lite
Home Uniqueness = Miller Lite Home
Purchasability = Summit EPA

England’s away kit is…..[dozing off and drooling on keyboard]. The retro theme I s big this year and Umbro/England definitely crapped the bed with this attempt; someone should tell them that retro doesn’t mean exactly like it was 44 years ago.

Away Design = Bartles & Jaymes
Away Uniqueness = Coors Lite Away
Purchasability = Bartles & Jaymes

United States Home ----------------------- United States Away

Here she is Miss America! It’s line that we’ve heard many, many times since seeing the leaked photos of this kit. In crazyland (Beaverton, Oregon) the grey sash is supposed to bring our collective conscious back to the white shirt with red sash that the US wore when they beat England back in 1950. That is half-way believable at best. Though I was initially repulsed by it, the home kit has started to grow on me a little; I no longer wish to cut myself when thinking about it. Unfortunately this shirt is paired with white shorts and white socks, and I am not a fan of teams dressing in solid white, it just looks like a bunch of girlie-men running around out there. Throw on the blue shorts instead of the white and this kit is starting to be halfway decent.

Home Design = Coors Lite
Home Uniqueness = Miller Lite
Home Purchasability = Coors Lite

Same as the home except in different colors, how novel of an idea! As the US home kit has started to grow on me, this away offering has started to become more detestable. At least the sash was somewhat subtle in the home kit, here Deuce looks like a crossing guard (a scary one, but one none-the-less). Seeing this one launched in the March 3rd contest against the Dutch, and worn on a few fans at the Minnesota Stars game the other night, the Navy Blue looks almost purple which pansifies the look even more. Going with the blue shorts and socks helps pull it together, but I’m still not sold on it. It seems that Nike has done everything in their power this time around to make all of their shirts just middle of the road enough that no one will love them and no one will hate them.

Away Design = Coors Lite
Away Uniqueness = Coors Lite
Away Purchasability = Coors Lite

Algeria Home ----------------------- Algeria Away

Everyone (kit nerds at least) fly off the handle about Nike using the same template and switching out color schemes. Have they even looked at Puma’s shirts for this, or any, World Cup? Alergia’s home shirt could be any African nations’ shirt except for the crest and the lone cool feature of the shirt; a sublimated thingy that’s representative of each nation’s identity. This picture isn’t sharp enough to discern what that may be for the Algerians (a fox maybe?), but it’s a cool idea.

Home Design = Coors Lite
Home Uniqueness = Miller Lite
Home Purchasability = Coors Lite

Puma’s away kits for all of the African nations will follow the same template as well except this time the colors of the shirts will be insanely bright (think of the bad mid-to-late-90s movement of African-American’s returning to Africa which was popularized in many TV shows) brush stroke effect which is supposed to mimic fans’ body paint. This brush stroke effect is supposed to be unique, maybe someone should remind Puma that to be truly unique they shouldn’t use the same design ethos for all of their African teams. Still this shirt is a lot cooler than the plain ol’ home shirt they’ll be sporting, and the color choices are something you don’t see every day in international soccer.

Away Design = Miller Lite
Away Uniqueness = Summit EPA
Away Purchasability = Summit EPA

Slovenia Home ------------------------ Slovenia Away

Multiple choice question - The thingy on the Slovenia Home and away shirt pays homage to:

A. A mountain range seens somewhere within Slovenia’s borders
B. The US Stock Market in the last 30 years
C. Charlie Brown’s shirt

Actually, it loosely depicts the Slovenian Coat of Arms which is found in their flag, which probably references Mount Triglav, the highest point in the country. Where I’m lost is how a very Russian looking flag (red, white, and blue are the dominant colors) gives us white/forest green and forest green/highlighter yellow kits…I digress. Nike again uses a basic template and tosses on a little national uniqueness. Not a horrible effort, but still rather plain, plus it’s a knock-off of the last time the Slovenes made the WC Finals in 2002, and that kit was made by some random company that’s probably defunct now because the World & US economies have followed the lines on the shirt itself.

Home Design = Coors Lite
Home Uniqueness = Summit EPA
Home Purchasability = Miller Lite

Everything I said for the home shirt goes for the away shirt, except this time around Nike has used highlighter yellow as the compliment color instead of plain white. Definitely a nice touch that makes this kit more tolerable than the home shirt. I’m not condoning the use of Jorge Campos neons again, but it’s different enough that it would be worth buying if you find yourself on vacation in Slovenia.

Away Design = Coors Lite
Away Uniqueness = Summit EPA
Away Purchasability = Miller Lite

Tomorrow: Group D!

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