Nike Unveils USWNT Kits for 2023 Women’s World Cup
The U.S. women’s national team’s primary uniform at this summer’s Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand will be anchored by a white jersey that features a pattern of scattered blue dots. The secondary jersey will be royal blue with a recolored U.S. Soccer logo.
Nike unveiled details of its Women’s World Cup kits, along with a few photos, early Monday morning. The manufacturer also outfits the co-host countries, along with qualifiers Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, South Korea, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway and Portugal.
The ninth Women’s World Cup will be played July 20-August 20. The four-time champion Americans will face Vietnam, Netherlands (in a rematch of the 2019 final) and Portugal in the group stage.
Courtesy of Nike
The USWNT kit
The blue dots are “inspired by the art movement of abstract expressionism,” according to Nike, and are intended to evoke droplets of paint like those found in the work of Jackson Pollock. The droplets are “highlighting the energy of the women’s national team—though different, they are united,” Nike explained. The pattern is different on each jersey.
The four championship stars are rendered in metallic gold rather than the typical blue. Nike said the USWNT’s primary uniform will feature blue shorts and white socks. Those blue shorts would be a rarity for the American women, who traditionally have preferred all-white at the World Cup. Nike’s press release isn’t necessarily a promise. Last year, when the manufacturer unveiled the World Cup uniforms for the U.S. men, the primaries featured white shorts and blue socks along with the white shirt. Once the men got to Qatar, however, the socks were white.
Courtesy of Nike
The USWNT could wear white against all three group-stage opponents (Portugal and Vietnam wear red jerseys and the Dutch wear orange).
The new away uniform is all blue. The royal jersey features a sublimated, rippled pattern and red accents, including a crest that eliminates U.S. Soccer’s standard white background.
The Verdict
The droplets on the home jersey are an interesting departure from the tired plain white, but it’s unclear whether they’ll be visible from the stands or on TV (the gold stars also might be tougher to see, which would be an odd design choice).
A binary thumbs-up or thumbs-down ultimately comes down to whether the U.S. sticks with the blue shorts. If they do, then these uniforms represent a subtle but welcome return to traditional American sporting colors. All-white could be anybody/everybody and in 2015, Nike even dropped the blue and red trim from the primary kits and went with black and fluorescent yellow. The USWNT’s away uniforms in ’19 were bright red, which works for Canada or many countries in Europe or Asia (although the Americans did wear blue socks in the semifinal against England). The away kits in ’11 were all black.
Courtesy of Nike
Compared to that, a white-blue-white primary and a blue-blue-blue secondary feels pretty patriotic. Most of the tiny details Nike trumpets, however, are invisible from more than a few feet away. That’s now standard for many modern soccer kits, especially in the American professional leagues, where uniforms are marketed as retail fashion rather than designed to look distinctive on the field.
Nike said that USWNT members “wanted an unexpected take on their tradition of wearing white at home.”