Beer-tastic World Cup Jerseys: Group D

By Nick Sindt

Here we are! Under just eight 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
Group C

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 D

Germany Home ------------------------- Germany Away

Adidas usually trots out the best kits for their home nation, and this year’s Germany kit is no exception. Like Argentina’s away shirt, the German home one has a nice simplicity about it. Kudos for the German flag style striping running down the left side (stage right) of the shirt through the crest, it’s noticeable but subtle enough that it doesn’t overpower the rest of the shirt.

Home Design = Summit EPA

Home Uniqueness = Miller Lite

Home Purchasability = Summit EPA

First off, the Germans may not be able to wear this fancy away kit in actual competition since there’s some law from the Geneva convention that doesn’t allow German national teams of any sport to wear a predominately black uniform (something to do with Hitler’s youth teams or his mustache, I’m not really sure). As for the shirt itself, not bad but not great, at least the fascist undertones are a little more subtle than this one:

Away Design = Coors Lite

Away Uniqueness = Coors Lite

Away Purchasability = Miller Lite

Australia Home ------------------------- Australia Away

The Soccerroos got an interesting design from the Nike people this year, and for the life of me I’m not sure how I feel about it. The last few versions of the Aussie home kit have looked conspicuously close to the Brazil home shirt, this year Nike went a whole new route, darkening both the yellow and the green tints (good) and adding a white band across the collar bone (bad). Everything about this shirt screams Project Runway – The Rugby challenge, I can hear Tim Gunn shouting at the hapless sweatshop workers: “I want you to bring rugby to the runway. Make it work!” Unfortunately this shirt just fails all over the place; at least no one will get them confused with Brazil this year…

Home Design = Bartles & Jaymes

Home Uniqueness = Summit EPA

Home Purchasability = Bartles & Jaymes

The away shirt for Kanga and her Roos is the same horrible template as the home shirt (whatever happened to Nike experimenting with the away shirts…?), but for some reason I find myself liking this exponentially more. The two different tones of navy separated by a yellow stripe is still very rugby union, but decent to look at. Plus dark navy blue, like black, will help to hide some of my excess gut.

Away Design = Miller Lite

Away Uniqueness = Summit EPA

Away Purchasability = Summit EPA

Serbia Home ------------------------ Serbia Away

The obvious inspiration for Serbia’s home shirt is the old Inter Milan shirt. The offset white cross on the red background is very unique in this year’s cup and looks quite slick. The only problem I have with the whole get up is the royal blue shorts, makes them look like a bad 4^th of July outfit.

Home Design = John Smith’s Extra Smooth

Home Uniqueness = John Smith’s Extra Smooth

Home Purchasability = John Smith’s Extra Smooth

Unfortunately Nike spent too much time designing the Serbian home shirt, and didn’t get started on it until about 30 minutes before it was due. There’s way too much white on this shirt, especially when you add the white of the cross in the crest. Yawn.

Away Design = Bartles & Jaymes

Away Uniqueness = Bartles & Jaymes

Away Purchasability = Bartles & Jaymes

Ghana Home --------------------------------- Ghana Away

Again Puma gives us a turd of a kit, the only redeeming part is the sublimated black star on the shoulder.

Home Design = Bartles & Jaymes

Home Uniqueness = Coors Lite

Home Purchasability = Bartles & Jaymes

For the Ghanaian away shirt, Puma sticks with the “unique brushstrokes” of loud and audacious colors, and like Algeria’s away kit, this one is pretty sharp. I personally don’t think I can pull of red and yellow vertical stripes, but it won’t look bad on the field.

Home Design = Miller Lite

Home Uniqueness = Miller Lite

Home Purchasability - Summit EPA

Next week.... Groups E,F,G, and H!

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