The German men weren’t exactly great in their friendly matches against Switzerland and Ghana. They weren’t exactly bad either. National coach Julian Nagelsmann was in a foul mood because everyone kept talking to him about the well-performing striker Deniz Undav, for whom he has only a place on the bench for the upcoming World Cup. Any other insights from the games? Sure, now we know what the officially sanctioned German away jersey for the World Cup season looks like: like a pajama top.
That might fit the sleeper-car football expected when the Germans in their group-stage matches play against defensively parked teams from the Ivory Coast, Curaçao, and Ecuador. But that is not what is meant. The designers at Adidas have come up with something quite special as always. In their own words: “The familiar diagonal zigzag chevrons appear as a continuous zigzag pattern across the entire jersey and are inspired by classic design elements of earlier Adidas shoeboxes.”
And it is blue, which is sure to reassure all those right-wing commentators who suspected a gender-inclusive hellish nod from Wokistan in the pink jersey that Germany unveiled before the home European Championship 2024. Carsten Linnemann, for one, is thrilled with the color, as he announced in a video by the CDU parliamentary group.
The slender CDU general secretary demonstrates the new DFB away kit while juggling a soccer ball. When he speaks his lines into the camera, he is so out of breath that it seems it took several takes to keep the ball in the air for a few seconds. He would particularly like the colors, Linnemann gasps into the camera.
Conservative Jersey Revolution
Blue the jersey and turquoise the shorts. That was something, right? Exactly, at the start of his tenure as secretary-general, Linnemann gave the CDU a new color scheme: in Cadennabia turquoise and Rhöndorf blue. Like the football kit designers, they have assigned stories to the colors that at first glance surely no one would come up with.
Cadennabia was the holiday resort of CDU icon and postwar chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and Rhöndorf was the place where the CDU decided after the war to prefer coalitions with right-wing minor parties to the SPD. After the pink diversity excess, now the conservative jersey revolution? No wonder Linnemann is so enthusiastic about the new DFB outfit.
A completely different turquoise has been presented by the French national team. Their away jersey is said to recall the color of the Statue of Liberty. With that, they want to remind of the “greatest gift” that France gave the USA, according to Nike, the American sportswear giant that outfits the French team.
France’s away jersey should remind of the Statue of Liberty
One would not likely have thought of criticizing the conditions in the United States sliding toward authoritarianism at Nike’s headquarters in Eugene while designing the shirts. And so no French professional will have to fear arrest, as happened to a woman who attended a “No Kings” demonstration against Donald Trump in Los Angeles dressed as the Statue of Liberty.
Too political for you? Then perhaps the white-marbled away jersey of the Austrians from Puma is the right World Cup outfit for fans. It mirrors “the Austrian tradition” with the golden lines of Art Nouveau and the marmored pattern of the classic Vienna coffeehouse tables. A large brown to that! Or is that also too political?
