Skip to content
 
Uni Watch

Five MLS Teams Unveil New Jerseys for 2024

By

With the 2024 MLS season scheduled to start on Feb. 21 — that’s one week from today — five teams unveiled new shirt designs today.

This is the part where I remind everyone that I don’t follow soccer and therefore don’t feel comfortable assessing the designs. So I’m just going to present them here and let everyone discuss. All of them are primary designs, except as noted.

New England Revolution

New York Red Bulls

Additional info here.

Philadelphia Union

Additional info here.

Portland Timbers (secondary jersey)

Additional info here.

Sporting Kansas City (secondary jersey)

No video for this one, but there’s additional info here.

 
  
 
Related Posts

Best Name Ever: NYCFC Calls New Facility ‘Sponsor Stadium’

MLS Jersey Week, Part Four

Imagining NBA Teams in Soccer Uniforms (Part II)

Imagining NBA Teams in Soccer Uniforms (Part I)

Seattle Sounders Unveil New Jersey Crest and Supporting Logos
Categories
MLS
Comments (21)

    The primary for the Philly Union is usually pretty good, but this one is pretty meh

    I disagree with you. This one calls back to older shirts with the contrast panel down the middle, but also incorporates a snakeskin design, which suggests the snake iconography in their crest and insignia. It isn’t the Philadelphia city flag colors and lightning bolts but I like this a lot.

    Adidas might be going a bit overboard with the centered crests (and they and all of MLS really have to cool it with the branded names — just tell me which is first choice vs. change kits), but it’s nice to see that return for Philly Union. Similarly, LOVE SKC going back to the argyle — aside from the State Line in their crest and their 2013 shirts, it’s probably the design element I think of most when I think of them. Hopefully they continue to own that pattern, just like the Galaxy with their sash and FC Dallas with the hoops. And as an RBNY fan who grew up with them when they were the MetroStars, it’s nice to see a return to the red-and-black without looking like they copied Atlanta United (when it’s actually the other way around).

    As an FCD fan, I wish they’d lean into hoops even more, particularly red/white… they’ve gotten subtler over the past few seasons, and the leaks of the upcoming jersey is supposed to be some vertical gradient.

    As an outsider, but a uni fan, I’ve never been happy with small offset crests on soccer jerseys leaving space for advertisements. I loved the old NASL uniforms for their American-ness, big wordmarks arched or angled across the front. I want no details that can’t be seen from a distance, like heraldic crests.

    If I were designing soccer jerseys, I’d look back to the era when American baseball teams wore giant monograms on their left sleeves. Put a big letter right there. I was hoping the women’s expansion team Bay FC was going to put a big Old English B on the sleeve or chest when I saw its logo, but the B will be inside another tiny crest.

    Red Bulls look hideous, sorry, and Revolution are fine. I like the idea behind what my Union are doing, but this isn’t our best execution of the look. I think it’d look markedly better with a more traditional placement of the maker’s mark and team logo (like SKC), since that would allow the center stripe element to be a clearer focal point, instead of being broken up by three large chunks of something else.. SKC and Portland’s kits are spectacular, and if I collected MLS jerseys, they’d be instant buys for me.

    The Union kit is, I guess, meant to emulate snakeskin with that strip on the front. I kind of like it.

    A little more nuance than Paul’s answer:

    The number font here is MLS’s proprietary number/name font. They change it every 5 years or so. Other leagues around the world are similar, most notably the English Premier League. In the case of EPL, teams will all use the league’s font for EPL matches, but the bigger clubs (Liverpool, Arsenal, etc) will have unique club fonts for other competitions throughout the season (Champions League, Europa League, EFL League Cup, FA Cup). Smaller clubs often just keep the EPL font when they play in the cup competitions.

    Some leagues, like Spain’s La Liga, just let the clubs use whatever font they want.

    It’s a fun quirk to track worldwide and I think it’s right up the UniWatch alley.

    The Premier League’s first all-league number font was a certain number of millimeters long, so that only certain machines would be able to make it. I don’t know if the current font is taken to such a silly extreme.

    I like what the Timbers kit is going for, but the spruce needles end up looking like palm trees on a first pass — which makes it look like a very out of place aloha shirt.

    Revs fan here. Disappointed not to have a sash on the jersey. When the team rebranded, the marketing department made a big deal about the sash in the logo, saying it created a “defiant tone.” That “tone” carried through to marketing campaigns (“Bring the Fight” or “Defend the Fort”) and the name of each year’s new jersey. But only one of three jerseys since the rebrand has something resembling a sash; last year’s away jersey.

    Own it, Revs. I hate marketing speak but I love consistency. I’ll guess we’ll wait until next year to see if sashes are for away uniforms only.

    NE Revolution: Come on, you can do it, red and white stripes, you’re hinting at it, cliches are cliches for a reason.
    NYRB: You know the old saying…..
    PH Union: Not a bad representation of the original center stripe, nice using light blue and old gold
    Portland: Nice alternate, but Michael above is right, they do look like palm fronds
    KC: Argyle/Diamond print, subtle or not, always good.

    What caught my eye, as an employee of The Nature Conservancy, was seeing our logo on the Portland Timbers neckline. (Well, what really caught me eye was the “Nature Unites Us” slogan, which I have on at least one TNC tee shirt.) I am on the East coast, and had no idea we partner with Portland.

    I don’t love that jersey though. The PNW (and in Canada the PSW I suppose!) is temperate rain forest, and this has a rain-foresty feel to me, but I don’t look good. I also note the irony in an organization that is involved in forest protection putting its logo on a shirt with a giant axe!

    Love the KC argyle. Revs are okay. Philly is okay, but I’d prefer the offset placement of the crest and Adidas logo. The Red Bull logo is terrible to begin with, and the shirt fits that just fine.

Comments are closed.