[Editor’s Note: Today we’re back with our own Jamie Rathjen, who’ll bring you his preview of the 2024 Copa América kits. Yesterday we looked at Groups A & B, and today we finish up with Groups C & D. The Copa begins tonight when Argentina plays Canada. Enjoy! — PH]
If you missed Part I, click here.
2024 Copa América Preview (Part II)
by Jamie Rathjen
The 2024 Copa América is technically the South American men’s soccer championship, but is being hosted here. Since the South American confederation CONMEBOL only has 10 members — all the jurisdictions in South America except Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana — it has a 30-year habit of inviting guests to make at least a 12-team men’s Copa América field. The US has been a guest a couple times, but there were no invitees this time; the six members of CONCACAF (the North American/Caribbean confederation) at the tournament all qualified earlier this year through the men’s CONCACAF Nations League.
The opportunity to host is supposed to rotate among the 10 CONMEBOL members in alphabetical order. It hasn’t ever quite worked out like that as Brazil hosted the previous two editions in 2019 and 2021 and the would-be hosts for this time Ecuador dropped out, creating the chance for CONMEBOL to move the tournament to the US. The US also hosted a special 100th-anniversary edition in 2016, the only other one with 16 teams.
Let’s look at what all the teams are wearing.
Group C
Bolivia
Bolivia usually wears green as first choice, but this time it’s a little lighter (on the far right of this image). Both they and Ecuador are outfitted by the Ecuadorian company Marathon. The usual shade is something closer to what’s on the shoulders, sleeves, shorts and socks. The second shirt is red with flag-based accents.
In a recent friendly against Mexico, the men’s team also wore black.
Panama
Panama’s designs have not been high on creativity for a few years now during their time with two smaller outfitters in the sport (New Balance and now Reebok). It’s solid red and solid white with not much else to write home about for either one. These are also the first shirts with a new crest released last month.
United States
The first shirt is the usual white with a flag-based collar design this time. The second shirt looks like a callback to 2014’s “bomb pop” shirt, although the official explanation is that it’s a reference to occasional sashes first worn by the USMNT in 1950. I don’t mind that it’s completely solid-colored almost from the waist up, because that’s not something Nike is normally good at doing. It feels like there’s always some extraneous line or wave or whatever, but not this time (because it’s Nike and not Adidas). The end result is colorful and executes its idea really well, except that there are blue side panels even on the red part.
Uruguay
Uruguay just signed with Nike in April after wearing proprietary designs for the first part of this year. Their kits were only released last weekend. Their normal color scheme is sky blue, black, and white, and these shirts are sky blue and white with contrasting accents and the usual gold-outlined crest. In their warm-up games, the men’s team only wore a different mono-white kit which did not have any of the accents that the one shown above did, or any sky blue at all. They’ve also provided us a look at the competition’s sleeve patch.
Group D
Brazil
For the untouchable yellow/blue/white first kit, a centered crest, all-over pattern, and the striped sleeve accents that some other Nike teams have all qualify as pretty wild. It always looks the same from TV distance, though. The blue/white/blue second kit is equally familiar but tends to be a little more creative, with the same centered crest and sky blue accents this time. The blue shirt is missing the crest’s five men’s World Cup stars in this picture because it’s meant to show the women’s team’s version.
Colombia
Adidas’s shenanigans make up most of what there is to see here. The accents on the yellow first shirt really can look either orange or red depending on the lighting, but Colombia tends to use its yellow/blue/red flag color scheme and the ball in the crest is always red. The second kit is nondescript black with a lot of definitely orange accents floating around.
Costa Rica
More Adidas shirts, more patterns that don’t extend onto the sleeves. The company has such a heavy presence at this tournament and I would say all of its teams barring Argentina could look better. The red and dark blue color scheme always works well, though. The white second shirt uses accents in those colors with a lighter blue pattern.
Paraguay
We round off this piece with Paraguay’s distinctive red and white stripes. It’s the only Puma team at this tournament, so yes, it still has the “back swoop,” as Anthony called it in the Euros preview, and no stripes in the “number zone” on the back either. On the blue second shirt, the part above the back swoop is darker than the rest. It’s two kits that for sure look way better from the front than the back.
It continues to flummox me that the U.S. hasn’t returned to the classic Waldo look. That and stars on blue for the second should be our kit at every tournament IMO.
I really wish they’d make that the main look. But Nike likely will never just stick with something. Everyone knows what Germany, Brazil, England, the Netherlands will look like. The US should be similar.
Uruguay’s are gorgeous.
Most of these photos are horrible, especially the USA. You would think that they’d want better pictures to promote this event.
Big fan of the current US uniforms, with the exception of the blue stripe through the red on the away top. Huge improvement over the garbage Arizona football uniforms we had for the last world cup. Bolivia and Uruguay look pretty nice too. Not a fan of the Brazil yellow unis, looked way too out there to me when watching the US-Brazil game.
Thanks again for a thoughtful roundup, Jamie! Lots of classic kits that are just a little off from their optimum presentations, in my opinion. Of all of these, I actually like Paraguay’s the best. Stripes on the backs of shirts always seems to be hard to pull off because of the issue of number visibility, so the solution of creating a mono-colored areas for the numbers on these uniforms doesn’t bother me all that much. They may look better from the front, but I don’t think they look terrible from the back.
Thanks, Kary!
I wanted to comment on the euro preview, so I will do so here– not the Euros, but the dreaded butt stripe. As a lifelong broncos fan I hated it as soon as I saw the inverted Broncos swoosh. And it much be noted, it is not just a butt stripe, but a swoosh to connect the shorts to the jerseys. Like the Broncos it rarely lines up. While the Adidas kit (and why does everyone have to use the same template?) gets the lions share of the derision– the Puma butt stripe is way worse. There is also a back stripe, but the relationship between them is often fuzzy at best.
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But as we all know, what really matters is how it looks on the field. And as much as I loathe to admit it, I like some of the kits. I’m watching Italy and Spain now and both look good. There is a dynamism to the bright yellow of Spain connecting the red to the blue. I like the different green and blue stripes of Italy. Also, Rodri is one of the few players who tucks his shirt in, and the stripes line up pretty well.
I also like the Swiss Puma kit, there the butt and back stripe create nice contrast and connection to the maroon shorts (a Uni Jamie did not like).
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Anthony did the men’s Euros, not me.
Sorry!’
These Puma and adidas butt stripes are ruining evey uniform, even the glorious Argentina, Jamaica and Mexico kits. Of this bunch Uruguay is the winner.
As a Leicester City fan who has had years of boring Adidas kits, I’d got fed up with the brand, but I think the new template – even with the butt stripe is coming across really well at the Euros.
Spain looked good with the yellow linking the red shirts and blue shorts, while it gave enough colour to the Italy white shirt to bring out the green/white/red pattern.
Its been good to see something different, and having the colour on the shorts gives more visual impact than the shirt alone can give. So whereas I might agree on how it looks on an individual player, it looks good across a team on TV, so this Adidas look across teams at the Copa America might pleasantly surprise people .