This article is part of our Style of Play series, an exploration of World Cup kit culture.
Given how they crashed out of the tournament at the group stage, perhaps it was fitting that Uruguay’s kit was, by design, not one to be remembered.
Nike, the kit manufacturer, described the home shirt that will be consigned to history even more quickly than the Uruguayan public will forget a side that failed miserably under Marcelo Bielsa, as “an homage to classic Uruguayan kits through the years”.
Which one, I hear you ask? Could it be a tribute to one of their two Olympic gold medals in the 1920s or their World Cup titles in 1930 and 1950? Perhaps the most recent of their 15 Copa America triumphs in 2011? Your guess is as good as mine. Just know that it is, in some capacity, a seemingly compulsory nod to the past.
In fact, Bielsa’s team, like Switzerland’s toxic, luminous-green horror of an away kit that they wore against Qatar in the group stages, may at least have some staying power with fans because they were uniquely bad. The Uruguay home kit, however, marks yet another tired example of nostalgiamania: the phenomenon sweeping through football kit manufacturers and silently ruining innovation.
Nike’s marketing spiel lazily positioned Uruguay’s home World Cup strip as an homage to kits of the past (Image Photo Agency/Getty Images)
In recent years, there has been an increasingly tiresome requirement that football jerseys be, in some way, related to the past.
That said, there is nothing inherently bad about looking to past glories or tradition to inform a new design. Though it was banned by FIFA before the tournament due to its political messaging, Haiti’s initial home shirt referenced the Battle of Vertieres, the last battle of the Haitian Revolution, which may have resonated with a small nation preparing to compete and fight as an underdog in its first World Cup.
Morocco consistently use local and indigenous motifs on their football shirts, with this year’s effort from Puma detailing “traditional embroidery patterns… reimagined on the collar and cuffs, nodding to a rich heritage that’s instantly recognisable”. As with Croatia’s iconic checkerboard design, few people, if any, are suggesting that nations do away with the historic idiosyncrasies that make them unique.
Nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, however, is uninspired and hollow.
Nike is not the only manufacturer that habitually calls on the past. You would be hard-pressed to find any kit description at the World Cup that does not reference glory years gone by. Ahead of the tournament, Adidas released a “Bringback” collection for five of their elite partners (Germany, Spain, Sweden, Japan and Belgium), retailing near-exact copies of shirts made by the German manufacturer from previous tournaments.
Adidas’s “Bringback” collection saw them recreate a host of retro international shirt designs (Adidas)
Germany are ending their 72-year partnership with Adidas next year, with a deal running until 2034 in place with Nike, so this was their last opportunity to benefit from their generations-long association with the four-time World champions and most their tenured partner.
They were knocked out of the tournament by Paraguay in the round of 32, which will not have helped sales, but much of this collection now sits on websites including JD Sports and Pro:Direct Soccer in the United Kingdom at a heavy discount from the original £90 retail price. Similarly, Nike’s Total 90 collection last year, an unimaginative reimagining of the brand’s most popular range in the early-to-mid 2000s, was a damp squib, and shirts continue to sit on clearance shelves at retailers at steep discounts.
Why don’t international shirts have sponsors?
Tifo Football
On one hand, you cannot really blame manufacturers for returning to a well that had served them previously, with the success of retailers such as Classic Football Shirts a strong case in point that retro looks are not due to go out of style anytime soon. In 2024, the company, founded on a desire to source shirts from the founders’ childhoods, attracted £30million in investment from a firm in U.S. and has multiple stores on both sides of the pond.
A store in Jakarta, Indonesia, sells football shirts both old and new (Faisal Ramadhan/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
As much as they are relics of golden eras of club or national team success, retro shirts are a fashion statement, with the rise of “Blokecore” on social media and celebrity traction only serving to build demand for quirky designs from the past. Retro re-releases are not entirely unsuccessful, either. Nike released a “stitch-for-stitch” reissue of the 1998 Brazil World Cup jersey earlier this year, with Ronaldo’s name and number nine on the back. It sold out immediately and is now retailing on third-party reseller websites like StockX for north of £300, excluding added fees.
Or take a trip to the pub on Wednesday to watch England’s semi-final against Argentina. You will see as many people decked out in retro-remade shirts from the 1990s and 2000s, many of whom were not born and won’t remember the team that wore them — not least because one of the most popular was worn only once. But is that because these shirts evoke nostalgia and appreciation for the designs, or because the newer alternatives are unimaginative and too expensive?
If this World Cup has proven anything from a design perspective, it’s that when retailers get it right, fans will come out in droves.
Team success is a major contributor but Adidas hit a major home run with designs for Curacao and Spain, among others, leading to both of their unique and stylish “trefoil” away shirts quickly selling out. The same can be said for Nike, which sold out of many of its best designs, including the slick turquoise France away shirt, both USMNT kits, and the Norway home shirt. These new designs were better and more commercially successful than yet another tired re-release.
When the social media algorithms eventually (if they are not already) veer away from retro, nostalgiamania will experience a rapid decline. To get ahead of the curve, Nike, Adidas, Puma: you have four years to brainstorm your next designs. Let’s keep trying new things.
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