World Cup of Kits (Group G)

 This was a super top heavy group much like it threatens to be in real life. One team completely ran away with it with the second team out qualifying mostly just because they were in this group.

Group G: Brazil, Serbia, Switzerland, Cameroon

Brazil: 

If NIKE had managed to mess up the Brazilian kits I would have lost it. Luckily for fans of the game, they didn’t bottle it. They kept it relatively simple, adding a Jaguar print to the sleeves as an ode to the Amazon jungle cat indigenous to Brazil.

The yellow shirt on Blue Pants is perhaps the most recognizable kit in all of sports. It means that a great team is on the field, and probably at least one all time great player. It’s almost an unfair advantage when a company gets a historic kit like this where all they have to do is not ruin it. Adidas had this with Argentina and Spain earlier, here NIKE has it with Brazil, later even Puma will get a boost with Uruguay's Blue and blacks.

The blue shirt with white shorts, while not as recognizable, is also a historic combination. I actually really like the addition of the Jaguar print here. I think it brings something unique without taking away from the classic Brazilian blue. This shirt ALSO uses the Inter collar. Here, however, it is much more subtle and doesn’t make it seem like another copied and pasted shirt. (much like actual Inter). 

Overall these are a couple of historic kits that NIKE actually adds something nice to, and will certainly be moving on in this competition. They even top the group with a three win thrashing of its competition.

Results: W against Serbia, W against Switzerland, W against Cameroon. Finish in 1st place with 9 points.

Serbia: 

Probably the best of the gaudy chest-pieces on the Puma shirts, most likely because of the gold and white color combo. Add a solid red shirt with a subtle diamond pattern and you have the best Puma COMBINATION of the tournament. That being said, I’m definitely not blown away.

The white kit could be worse. Puma has this weird thing this year where they felt like they had to add a giant shape smack dab in the middle for one of the two kits they made for every country. I do feel like the gold shape kind of looks like a Christmas ornament… but hey, fits the theme.

The red kit like I said earlier features a subtle diamond pattern that works well here. Just like red and white, I think its hard to go wrong with red and gold. The rule I mentioned earlier about only champions sporting gold would leave Serbia screwed, as gold is the only thing pushing these kits out of the group stage.

Serbia advances from another mediocre group once you get past Brazil and we have our first Puma advancer.

L against Brazil, W against Switzerland, W against Cameroon. Advance to the knockout stage in second place with 6 points!

Switzerland: 

Bleak is the way I would describe this performance for Switzerland. The red kit is middle of the road at best and the white has an iPhone calendar emoji in the middle.

I really don’t have a ton of positive things to say about these kits. The red isn’t horrible, the stripes make it slightly unique and Switzerland has one of the most unique crests in the world which helps, but thaaaaat’s about it.

The saying goes: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” so I simply won’t say anything about those white shirts.

Switzerland gets trounced with 0 wins in 3 matches

Results: L against Cameroon, L against Brazil, L against Serbia. 0 points, certainly do not advance.

Cameroon: 

I’m beginning to think that companies just have a vendetta to try to make African teams look bad this World Cup. These kits look straight out of an AYSO game, but to be fair there was a lot of confusion as to who was actually making the kits for Cameroon at all. They are also unique, which I guess I can give them credit for. Even if they look like something a dystopian police force would wear in a Sci-Fi movie. You can’t say these kits are copied and pasted from anyone else in this competition, they also don’t have any visible emojis, so they already have a leg up on Switzerland.

I’m not going to break these down one by one since they are literally just the same shirt in different colors. You have red and dark green, white and dark green, and even green and dark green! They might as well have added a fourth with yellow and dark green just so that every color on their flag could get an equal chance to be matched with the dark green. Are you tired of hearing dark green yet? Because I’m already a little tired of seeing this Transformers ass design in it.

Overall, these are simply not good, but also not worse than Switzerland which is definitely debatable, but this is my list. The darlings of Africa make a short and disappointing trip to the kit competition.

Results: W against Switzerland, L against Brazil, L against Serbia. Fail to advance in 3rd place in the group with 3 points.

Overall Results: