By Phil Hecken, with Kyle Evans & CJ Fleck
Follow @PhilHecken
I’m back today with my “soccer guys,” Kyle Evans and CJ Fleck, with Part II of their Women’s World Cup Preview. Yesterday they looked at the first three Groups (Group A, B & C). With a total of 24 teams playing, the second three groups (and final 12 teams) will be previewed today. Click any image to enlarge.
Here’s Kyle & CJ:
Thanks Phil! Glad to be back to preview the kits for the Women’s World Cup, which is taking place in France from June 7th to July 7th. This is the 8th edition of the tournament, and the United States are the defending champions and have won three of the seven titles. This is just the second time that the tournament will feature 24 teams, which means there are plenty of kits to discuss!
Group D
Argentina
Argentina uses the same kits for both national teams, which includes a new primary jersey with wide (and slightly jagged) sky blue stripes and a black secondary jersey carried over from last summer.
Kyle: I much prefer the classic Argentina stripes than this version, and the secondary kit is just alright.
CJ: I’ll double what Kyle said here, though I like the secondary more than he does. Push.
England
An all-white primary and an all-red with sublimated roses secondary for The Lionesses.
Kyle: As sublimated designs go, I count this as one of the best.
CJ: I’m not sold on sublimation, but overall good.
Japan
Another carryover from the men’s World Cup, Japan will wear a navy with dashed light blue pinstripes primary jersey and a white secondary jersey.
Kyle: Loved it last year and love it now – that Japan primary is one of my favorite jerseys in the tournament.
CJ: I like it, but I can’t quite say why. Call it good.
Scotland
Another country making their Women’s World Cup debut, Scotland have a navy over white primary and a pink over black secondary look.
Kyle: Completely uninspiring and doesn’t deviate much at all from a template.
CJ: Things could be much worse. Good.
Group E
Cameroon
We know the least about Cameroon’s kits, but we do know they will sport a green primary jersey with a sublimated design at the top.
Kyle: A nice start, and I’ll be curious to see the accompanying shorts and socks colors and the entire secondary kit.
CJ: We’ll see what happens but I’m not encouraged by the sublimation.
Canada
All-red and all-white options for the Canadians.
Kyle: No problems with retaining a traditional look.
CJ: Simplicity usually earns a good from me, and it does again here.
Netherlands
The defending European champion Dutch will wear a traditional orange primary jersey (with light orange diamond design) and a light blue secondary jersey with a checkerboard-ish pattern.
Kyle: The orange (with design) is beautiful and the light blue looks like an optical illusion of sorts – not a great feature of a soccer jersey.
CJ: The blue appears to be a test page for a new printer. Great inspiration. Stupid.
New Zealand
New Zealand will wear an all-black primary kit with a silver fern on the sleeves and an all-white secondary kit.
Kyle: Love the integration of the silver fern on the sleeves.
CJ: A nice touch on the sleeves. Good.
Group F
United States
The defending World Cup champions will wear an all-white primary with thick red and blue stripes on the sleeves and socks and a red / red / blue secondary with sublimated stars and stripes.
Kyle: What an upgrade from the black and neon yellow from four years ago. A fantastic pair of kits, especially the whites. Love the 3 stars on the shorts representing the 3 World Cup titles as well.
CJ: I had hoped we’d be a bit more creative, but knowing the women got their own design is a good in and of itself.
Chile
The fourth country making their Women’s World Cup debut, Chile will wear red over blue and a red/white/blue gradient horizontal stripe design.
Kyle: Nice traditional primary look, but I can’t say I’m a fan of the secondary – a really busy design.
CJ: No, no, no. Don’t do that. Stupid.
Sweden
Sweden will wear a yellow primary jersey with an asymmetrical navy horizontal stripes pattern and a navy secondary jersey.
Kyle: What bothers me most about the yellow is the mismatched blues between the stripes and the collar/shorts. A nice secondary look though.
CJ: I’m not sure I’d categorically say asymmetric designs are bad, but this one definitely is. Stupid.
Thailand
It appears that Thailand will be wearing an all-navy primary and an all-dark red secondary with a subtle horizontal stripes pattern, but the splash photo (put out by FIFA) does show an unreleased white with sky blue horizontal stripes jersey.
Kyle: These will work, but certainly nothing to write home about.
CJ: The change in stripe size is driving me insane. Please, companies, do not do this. Stupid.
What are your favorite (and least favorite) jerseys and kits in this edition of the Women’s World Cup? Feel free to share in the comments and follow us on Twitter @KyleEvans17 and @RealCJFleck.
Awesome guys, thanks for Part II the preview! Make sure to thank the lads for their writeups and give them a follow over on the Twitter!
Kreindler’s Korner
I had the distinct pleasure of featuring the wonderful artwork of artist Graig Kriendler on two occasions over the summer and fall of 2017, and more recently, in August of 2018.
For those who don’t wish to click the links, Graig paints baseball heroes (and regular guys) from the past, and is an immense talent.
Occasionally, I will be featuring his work on Uni Watch.
Here’s today’s offering (click to enlarge):
Title: “Better Days Behind”
Subject: Addie Joss, 1910
Medium: Oil on linen
Size: 16″ x 16″To this day, Addie Joss remains one of the more interesting “what if” stories in baseball. One of – if not THE – top pitcher in the American League during the first decade of the 20th century, we’ll never know what the full arc of his career could have been as the sport approached the era of Babe Ruth. Joss passed away suddenly in April of 1911 from tubercular meningitis.
Images of the man aren’t necessarily super hard to come by. But being from the early 1900s, when sports photography was still relatively in its infancy, there weren’t a ton of photographs of the man that have survived to current day. Playing in Cleveland for the entirety of his career might not have helped matters, as even then, places like New York, Boston and Philadelphia were much greater hubs of media coverage. However, occasionally I’ve come across one or two that have stopped me in my tracks.
This portrait of Joss is one of them. It has ALWAYS haunted me. For one, that gaze is just incredible. Sure, both eyes aren’t necessarily facing the same direction, and perhaps he might not have been the most attractive ballplayer you’d ever seen, but if nothing else, his face certainly had a lot of character. More importantly for me though, the moment I saw it, I was drawn to that beautiful light: what it was doing to his sweater, his upturned collar, those wonderful wrinkles in his ruddy face. And then seeing some of the sky color reflecting back into his cheeks and nose, even catching a little bit of those teeth…man…that’s what painting is all about for me. It was one of those images that I was able to see a finished painting of in my mind, which even to this day is a rare thing.
Thanks, Graig! You can (and should!) follow Graig on Twitter.
Uni Concepts & Tweaks
After being dormant for a while, the Uni Tweaks/Concepts have returned!
I hope you guys like this feature and will want to continue to submit your concepts and tweaks to me. If you do, Shoot me an E-mail (Phil (dot) Hecken (at) gmail (dot) com).
I received the following e-mail from John Elbertson, who has an interesting concept for the Chicago hawkey team:
What’s up Phil? Here’s a concept for the Chicago Blackhawks. My apologies, this write-up is longer than usual. My goal was to create a design for the Blackhawks that would reduce/refine the Native American imagery, and possibly make it a more proper eponym to Chief Black Hawk.
In the spirit of Mike Ivall’s rework of the main crest, I first addressed the Tomahawk C logo. This was one of my favorite logos growing up, but the tomahawks needed to be modernized to get rid of the stigma of Native American imagery being rendered in a crude manner. I tried to use a decent amount of colors from Chicago’s extensive color palette. Such a range of colors would be nearly impossible to pull off with a modern sports brand, which makes it even more fascinating.
As for a shoulder patch, my research led me to a site where the “Two Wolves” legend, one of my favorites, is attributed to Chief Black Hawk. I started to doodle this idea of a wolf on each shoulder, with a red tuft of hair on top. As much as I was locked into this idea, further research could not confirm that this was accurate, and actually made me somewhat confident that it was flat-out wrong. So I begrudgingly ditched the idea. The more I looked at what I had so far, the more I was convinced of the wise words of Jake Miller (@Jake88Designs), that not every hockey jersey needs shoulder patches.
As for the jersey itself, it’s inspired by the barberpole sets from long ago. I simplified the logo of the 86th Infantry Division (how the hockey team originally got its name) for the breezers. The Chicago script on the helmet is from the Bulls, in particular young MJ from NBA Street: Vol. 2.
Readers, let me know what can be done to improve this idea. Talk to you soon.
– John Elbertson
Thanks John. OK readers (and concepters). If you have some tweaks or concepts, shoot ’em my way with a brief description of your creation and I’ll run ’em here.
Guess The Game…
from the scoreboard
The game has returned! At least for a trial basis, but I got a lot of positive response to its return, so we’ll see how long we keep this one going.
Today’s scoreboard comes from me.
The premise of the game (GTGFTS) is simple: I’ll post a scoreboard and you guys simply identify the game depicted. In the past, I don’t know if I’ve ever completely stumped you (some are easier than others).
This one probably rates a 2 out of 10 on the difficulty scale.
Here’s the Scoreboard. In the comments below, try to identify the game (date & location, as well as final score). If anything noteworthy occurred during the game, please add that in (and if you were AT the game, well bonus points for you!):
If you guys like this, and want to continue this as a weekly feature, let me know in the comments below. You’re welcome to send me any scoreboard photos (with answers please), and I’ll keep running them.
Father’s Day 2019
Next Sunday is Father’s Day, and I will be continuing my tradition of posting photos of all the Uni Watch readership “Dads In Uniform” as I have for the past several years.
It’s a tradition that began in 2013, and continued in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and last year as well. I’d like to keep that tradition going strong for 2019.
So, dear readers, I’d love to feature a photograph (please just send ONE) of your father in uniform (it doesn’t need to be a sports uniform — military, sports, work — any uniform will do) along with a short (please try to keep it to 100 words or less) description of your dad in his uniform, or how it relates to him. You can use prior years as a guide to what to say. Even if you’ve submitted before, feel free to do so again.
This is always a very special day and I’d love for as many of you (particularly those who’ve never sent in a photo or description of your dad in his uniform) to participate.
Please send me an e-mail with the subject “UNI WATCH FATHER’S DAY 2019” along with a photo (one picture please) and description, DEADLINE Thursday (June 13) at 11:59 pm. I’ll run all submissions next Sunday, Father’s Day, 2019.
Thanks. Looking forward to it, once again!
No ticker today, guys — sorry. I’m at a bonspiel (that’s a curling tournament for those of you unfamiliar with the terminology) up in Providence, RI. Paul and crew will have a full ticker tomorrow, with any bigger uni news that didn’t make it here today.
Catch you folks next weekend. Have a great week.
Peace,
PH
August 23, 2017, Josh Harrison scores only run of the game.
At PNC in Pitt Hill loses perfect game in 9th, no hitter and game in 10 off Harrison’s HR
In photo, it looks like the pitch where Harrison hit the HR in the 10th
This was the easiest one, and it should have been a 1 and not a 2.
Here’s some pictures of Cameroon’s kits. They were literally revealed two days ago and they had been wearing the previous kit as recently as last week.
link
As for Thailand, I don’t know where the sky blue shirt comes from. They could conceivably wear it against Chile but they’re the designated home team so perhaps not. They did wear white earlier this year against Italy in the Cyprus Cup.
I really shouldn’t complain about Canada’s kits. They could be worse, but they seem really plain.
I like our recent Canadian kits better:
link
Yes I really liked the one with the side stripe too.
I hate when women’s jerseys are Girlie-fied. (LFLS? “Lady for Lady Sake”? Girlie for Girlie Sake would work better, but GFGS is taken.)
Is pink a national color of Scotland?
Do the English men wear giant flowers all over their jerseys? Or is it as idiotic as covering the men’s jersey in a sublimated truck pattern, so we can all understand they are boys?
It’s like a few years ago when Japan inexplicably made their women wear pink.
I would be so disappointed if I was on my countries national team, and they told me I didn’t get to wear my country’s colors but instead had to run around draped in some pretty in pink nonsense.
Is pink a national color of Scotland?
Well, it has a history. Lord Rosebery, the UK prime minister in 1894-95, was president of the Scottish Football Association. The national team wore his horse-racing colors, which were yellow and pink, on several occasions between the 1890s and 1950. It has been revived a couple of times this decade as either pink and yellow or pink and black — yes, for the men’s team too.
For England, the FA’s crest does feature roses (the flowers on the shirt are not just roses), so that’s not really coming out of nowhere either.
However, Japan have worn pink accents for a few years now for no obvious reason.
FIFA in general does have kind of a problem with girl-ifying women’s soccer, which a WaPo columnist wrote about recently: link
FIFA has always been fairly condescending towards women’s football. In 2017 an amateur player was voted 3rd best player in the world because she scored a goal that trended on the internet.
link
In 2018, the winner of the best player in the world was asked to twerk on stage.
It was a decade ago now, but former president Sepp Blatter once infamously suggested women should wear more revealing uniforms to popularise the game.
Thank you for the informative post.
“It’s like a few years ago when Japan inexplicably made their women wear pink.”
It wasn’t totally inexplicable; the Japan women’s team is nicknamed “nadeshiko”, a pink flower, in contrast to the Blue Samurai which is the nickname for the men’s team (who always wear blue).
Coupling the inexplicable color with an equally inexplicable and eye roll inducing nickname does not make it better.
Unlike most other New Zealand national teams, both the men’s (All Whites) and women’s (Football Ferns) football/soccer teams wear white as their primary uniform.
The black uniform listed is the alternate kit.
That game is August 23, 2017 Dodgers @ Pirates at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. Rich Hill lost a perfect game in the 9th and then lost his no hitter on a Josh Harrison walk-off home run in the 10th. 1-0 Pirates defeated the Dodgers
Something different for “Guess the Scoreboard”:
link
As a baseball fan who knows the bare minimum of cricket, I need some help understanding what’s written on it! I imagine one team is leading the other 364 to 101, with the number 7 batsman coming up to bat for the trailing team and six wickets having fallen. What does the 770 in the middle mean?
HI Mark,
The scoreboard is from the 5th and final Test of the Ashes Series between England and Australia in 1938, held at The Oval in London.
The scoreboard is of the English innings, and has been taken when the 6th batsman of the innings has been dismissed, with the team having scored 770 runs. The batsman dismissed was No 1 in the batting order, Len Hutton, who has just made the highest individual score (364) by a batsman in the history of Test cricket.
The No 7 batsman (Joe Hardstaff) has scored 101, and would eventually remain not out on 169 when England declared their innings closed at the huge score of 903 for 7 wickets. This score would stand as the highest innings total in Test cricket history for nearly 60 years.
Here is the complete scorecard of the match:
link
The use of numbers to identify batsman was used only in England. Now every country has the batsman and fielding teams surnames on the scoreboard.
Thankfully, the US Women got rid of the White and Neon Yellow outlined in black. I don’t recall those being our country’s colors.
I recognized this right away, because I went to the game the night BEFORE, a total stinker that saw the Buccos blow a lead and lose in their familiar annoying manner. C’est la vie!