MLS Jersey Week, Ranked

With the MLS season kicking off on Saturday, all the clubs spent last week rolling out new kits.1 The every-other-year cadence adidas2 and MLS have established is downright sensible but still gives us something new to discuss for every team each year.3 Some are good! Some are bad! Some are nearly impossible to have an opinion about! I will yammer about them all regardless.

Here we go:

There’s a lot of replacement-level work across the league, but when adidas really wants to, they operate at a level just about no one else can touch. Five such shirts this year:

Los Angeles Galaxy: What a stunning color palette and gradient application. Inspired by LA skies and completely in line with the Galaxy name. The only miss here is they’re trying to make “RIZON” a thing which… please do not.

Seattle Sounders: Designed in collaboration with Native American artists from around Seattle, the print emphasises that Water is Sacred and looks completely at home in the PNW.

Portland Timbers: The concentric growth rings emanating out from the crest turn what is at first glance a nice-but-underwhelming shirt into a work of art.

New York City FC: NYCFC has been killing the visuals lately. They got a brand upgrade from Gretel and a lovely asym shirt last year, and followed it up with a beautiful refracted glass-lookin’ situation for 2025. Hate to hand it to City Football Group but they’ve got at least the looks right in the Big Apple.

New England Revolution: A lovely print that recalls the glory days of 90’s football shirts while clearly hitting the pine tree from the Flag of New England.

A bunch of shirts this year are not quite out-and-out bangers but are well put together and fit into the visual tradition of the sport:

Real Salt Lake: Classic checkerboard shirt. A little let down by the Adidas template’s panel shapes but successful nonetheless. The yellow sponsor logo is not especially readable which is frankly a plus.

Atlanta United: The gold piping on United’s shirt feels a little like the Teamgeist era, which is always great.4

Inter Miami: Tonal stripes. Classic. Clean.5 Pretty in pink, indeed.

Austin FC: Tonal stripes. Classic. Less clean with the contrast black accent panels. Unapologetically green.

I do not particularly like these but you simply have to respect clubs that are willing to go for it:

Philadelphia Union: She’s electric! Big bonus points for the isolated snake in place of the full crest.

Columbus Crew: This apparently pays tribute to RL Stine of Goosebumps fame? Sure. It’s hard to screw up black and yellow and the bold print approach for 2025 does not disappoint.

San Jose Earthquakes: Making a print out of news clippings, scribbles, notes, things of that nature will always give you something compelling to look at. I think this shirt as a whole is a little heavy-handed, but it’s interesting and that’s valuable.

This is where we start to see the challenge of designing 30 new shirts every season. These are fine! But also, they’re fine.

Houston Dynamo: Love the elegant lines of this print. Works will with the template. Light/dark shifts help it resolve at a distance. Well-executed all around.

Charlotte FC: Much harder to see this print but very nice when you do pick it up. Charlotte leaning into the ‘royal’ thing is pretty weird given America kicked England out two centuries ago but at least they have an identity.

DC United: The ‘Soul’ Kit, they’re calling it. Like recent Wizards City Edition uniforms it has a novel color palette and some interesting details but doesn’t quite come together into something compelling. DC Sports: Almost!

Minnesota United: Between the isolated Loon crest, the color palette, and one of the best sponsor logos in the sport, it’s tough to mess a Minnesota shirt up. And they didn’t mess this one up!

Colorado Rapids: Maybe the hardest shirt for me to rank out of the 30. I really do not vibe with the print but the colors are great and the C crest is well done so it ends up slotted right in the middle. Fitting for Colorado to serve as the metaphorical continental divide for this ranking, I guess.

Orlando City: This print is A Lot™ and is not really my jam, but it has some very nifty depth to it. Supposed to be unique sections of the pattern on every kit, which is always a cool touch. Non-uniform uniforms, what a world.

Yup, these are shirts. They have some design elements. Neat.

FC Cincinnati: Cincy with a sash. Yup! It’s big and relatively low this year. Lotta tonal blue going on here that doesn’t help anything.

CF Montreal: Store-brand Inter Milan. It’s not bad but it’s not special.

LAFC: Gold as a core color is cheating because modern embellishment techniques can make it look so good so easily, but I am begging LAFC to really Try Something instead of just mailing it in like this.

Sporting Kansas City: Every single SKC shirt since the dawn of time has looked exactly like this.

Toronto FC: A shirt that celebrates Toronto’s diversity and global connection should not be this boring.

Vancouver Whitecaps: I don’t have anything truly bad to say about it but I have even less to say that’s good. It’s a shirt.

Yeah, look, I got nothing. Please try next year.

Chicago Fire: There actually is a print here, inspired by the Municipal Device, but I was nearly finished with this post before I noticed. At that point, why bother?

St. Louis CITY: It’s red. It has a collar. The sponsor is still awful.

Nashville SC: Team colors applied to a template. Wow.

San Diego FC: The slightest of passes to San Diego for being boring as it’s their inaugural season. But seriously, the kits are so boring. The branding is boring. Lots of room to grow.

FC Dallas: I love her lack of energy, go girl give us nothing!

New York Red Bulls: This shirt saw Generation Kill and got bummed it missed out. This shirt knows that fool me once, shame on me, but fool me twice? Can’t get fooled again. This shirt has a 19% interest rate on a 96-month Hellcat note. This shirt is banned from at least two bars in its hometown but “it was just a misunderstanding.”