[Editor’s Note: As part of our continuing coverage of the uniforms of the Paris Olympic Games, we continue today with Women’s Soccer. If you missed Part I, click here. Enjoy! — PH]
by Peter Gaston
JAPAN
We owe a thank you to legendary Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto for helping the Japanese team mostly escape the oddities of this year’s Adidas template. Yamamoto’s imprint, Y-3, took the reins for designing Japan’s current kit via its Adidas partnership and the resulting effort is one of the tournament’s most distinctive and tasteful designs.
The team made its Olympic debut in its white aways, which feature flames — hand-painted in Y-3’s design house — that rise upward from the waistband in cherry blossom red. Here, however, the Adidas template rears its head again, with those template-driven side stripes reappearing and interrupting the beguiling flame patterns. The nation’s three-legged crow crest has been replaced for the Olympics by a simple Japanese flag on the left chest, and the Y-3 logo — not Adidas’ — appears on the right side, as opposed to the stacked look of their regular, non-Olympic version. Names and numbers appear in Japan’s own chalkboard-ish font. Seemingly missing: the standard Adidas logo, as well as the Adidas shoulder stripes, which has been the case on all Adidas kits in the Olympics.
“Samurai blue” is the traditional dominant shade of the home kit, as usual for Japanese teams, and it follows the same system of logo placement as the white aways. The flame pattern here is blue-on-blue, so a bit more subtle, as is the shorts striping that’s the worst feature of other Adidas kits in these games.
GRADE: B+
Finally, the first non-Nike or Adidas kit of the bunch! New Zealand’s Football Ferns recently turned to Puma for their football attire, and this is an Olympic twist on the manufacturer’s debut set.
Black dominates the home kit, inspired by the tradition of the All Blacks, New Zealand’s legendary rugby side which has worn black for over a century. The Ferns’ simple, elegant fern logo, evoking the silver-frond fern that’s one of the island country’s national symbols, is married with their national flag and an Olympic logo over the right chest. The jersey front sports a simple sans serif number font, a boring but overall improvement over their federation kit’s massive block numbers.
The change strip is a simple white top that shuns the teal accents and shorts of their federation kit and utilizes royal blue shorts instead.
GRADE: C+
The Super Falcons, perhaps Africa’s most successful women’s side, brought an awesome new version of their dark kit to Paris, with a pattern of iridescent green animalesque prints covering the shirt and shorts, juxtaposed with very retro block numbers.
The away version is a total retro class act in white, with those same block numbers, bright green stripes on sleeves and shorts, and tasteful side stripes. It’s a set that outpaces what the team’s been wearing in non-Olympic play and we’d hope to see in regular rotation after the Games.
GRADE: A
The reigning World Cup champions possess one of football’s iconic looks, but, like Colombia, they’ve got that 2024 Adidas template working against them, at least when it comes to the home kit.
For the Games, the Spanish team made two major changes to their kit: they’ve added a special Olympic-themed crest to replace their standard one, and they’ve deleted the gold Adidas shoulder stripes. Still, while their color scheme — red jerseys with gold accents and name/number fonts, royal blue shorts — remains a classic, the side stripes still connect (mostly) to the shorts striping before creating the underwear look, as is true of all current Adidas kits.
While the men’s team won the Euros this summer while wearing this pale yellow change kit, the women have yet to appear in it. However, against Brazil, they wore the pale yellow shorts to contrast Brazil’s blue, so we expect they have the pale yellow shirts available as well, with an Olympic crest and no shoulder stripes.
GRADE: B-
Nike in 2024 continues to opt for simplicity and classic designs over complexity and attempts to be groundbreaking, but without the oversized crest of the non-Olympic jersey, this set looks a bit too simple.
With the home whites, the left chest sports “USA” in a tech-y sans serif with zero adornment. Like the standard kit, the sleeves sport a thin array of red and white stripes, and that pattern continues on half of the collar, with the other half being royal blue. Atop royal blue shorts with the same red-and-white trim, it’s a subdued stunner, if even a little late ‘80s, off-the-shelf Umbro — in the best way possible. The names and numbers are basic, too, rendered in a blocky, navy blue font. The team also wore its white Olympic top with white shorts in the group stage.
For the away kit, which has yet to appear on-field in the Games, Nike takes a little risk, dropping a tie-dye-esque sash of a white stripe from the waistband across the midriff, dividing the whole kit into a royal blue top and red bottom. Instead of complicating things with sleeve or collar trim, it’s just color-matched, and the USA logo and swoosh appear in the same spot as the home strip. Names and numbers are clearly displayed in that blocky font, this time in white.
We would have loved to see the team use a version of the 1999 Women’s World Cup winning throwback, which Nike rolled out alongside a celebration of that groundbreaking team at a pre-Olympic warmup match earlier this month.
GRADE: B+
ZAMBIA
Zambia’s kit isn’t Nike. Or Adidas. Or Puma. Or Under Armour or Macron or Kappa or Castore or New Balance. It’s made by KoPa, a sports manufacturer owned and operated by the Football Association of Zambia. Its mission is to keep the revenue earned by the sales of Zambian football attire within the nation’s own economy, which, honestly, seems like a pretty decent idea.
The Copper Queens share the same home and away kit as the country’s men’s team, and the design is refreshingly unique, even if the KoPa logo could easily be confused for another maker’s mark from many angles. Hopefully, that maker won’t feel the need to (flexes) “PROTECT THIS HOUSE.”
The home kit evokes one of Germany’s classic away kits, with a green base and touches of black, gold, and red. Player numbers and national crest are quite large, proportionally, but the vertical series of multicolored slashes is a cool design feature that feels ownable and unique.
Speaking of Germany, there’s a Dortmundian vibe to the away set, with its golden top, black trim, and black fonts, and it has its own version of those vertical slashes, done here in simple black. Black shorts offer a fitting if bland companion for the Copper Queens.
GRADE: B+
No mention of how Nigeria’s kits don’t have any badges?
Nigeria’s WC kits from a couple years back should be evergreen.
Zambia’s kits do not use gold. It’s orange. Orange is on their national flag, and represents the nation’s copper resources. It’s why they call them the “Copper Queens.”