Brooklyn FC have revealed their first jerseys ahead of this weekend's USL Super League debut.
(Update 8/30: No weekend debut, as the team's first match is PPD due to Maimonides Park turf issues.)
When the Brooklyn FC women step onto the pitch at Maimonides Park in Coney Island for the first time, they'll do so in pinstriped black kits made by Diaza which feature Liquid Death as the primary sponsor.
The moment we’ve all been waiting for…
— Brooklyn Football Club Womens (@_BrooklynFCw) August 27, 2024
A debut for our inaugural 2024/25 season kit! Designed in collaboration with Diaza, here is our home kit for our first season in the USL. ⚫️⚪️ #usl #bkfc
Now available for purchase at this link.https://t.co/l6bWW01gxN… pic.twitter.com/dBXoCJa07o
The Los Angeles-based canned water startup was valued at $1.4 billion as of March, continuing to prove the popularity of selling aluminum cans of water that look at first glance like IPAs or energy drinks. They also announced further details of a partnership with Brooklyn FC that will include a prominent Liquid Death presence at games at Maimonides Park.
So far, the very unofficial and imprecise barometer of "what people said on social media" has been positive for this first Brooklyn kit drop. The shirt is well-received, as has the link-up with Liquid Death. The jersey feels like a sharp if simple one that can only help in the club's efforts to make inroads in its home borough and city.
It's a soccer shirt that doesn't overwhelm you with soccer shirt-ness. In part, it's due to the muted color palette of Brooklyn FC — it feels like something you could easily see someone wearing on the streets of Brooklyn, and not just at a BKFC match.
You can buy the women’s kit here, and there are also men’s cuts of this first-ever Brooklyn FC jersey available here. They run you $85 before shipping or any customizations, and the Diaza site says it'll be three weeks before any kits bought online are shipped.
The Kappa-Diaza switch
These kits were first set to be made by Kappa, with the Italian sports apparel company announced as the first-ever Brooklyn FC technical sponsor on May 30.
That arrangement was short-lived, as on August 22, Brooklyn announced a multi-year partnership with Diaza Football, with that company becoming the USL club’s technical sponsor. It was fun while it lasted, Kappa—84 days if you’re counting.
Why the change from Kappa to Diaza? The ownership group behind Brooklyn FC, a multi-club conglomerate dubbed Club Underdog, announced the purchase of a significant ownership stake in Diaza back in June.
That resulted in a shift to bring apparel production in-house for teams like Brooklyn FC which operate under the Club Underdog umbrella. Club Underdog's portfolio of lower-league teams includes Brooklyn FC, both Campobasso FC and Ascoli FC in Italy's Serie C, Dagenham and Redbridge FC in England's National League, and FC Locarno in Switzerland's sixth tier.
Retro Brooklyn merch coming, too
Diaza already has a large collection of Brooklyn FC apparel on offer beyond these inaugural kits, with plans for more, including a "Vintage" collection that will include a two-toned camp collar shirt, but also some homages to Brooklyn the place's extensive history, soccer and otherwise.
HRB can share images of a trio of Brooklyn FC hoodies that will be in the team's Vintage line, all featuring the Brooklyn "B" crest on the front with historic Brooklyn visuals on the back.
That includes the team photo of the 1913/1914 Brooklyn Field Club squad that won the first-ever National Challenge Cup—what is now the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup.
Brooklyn Field Club won that inaugural Cup against another Brooklyn side, Brooklyn Celtic, at Coates Field in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on May 16, 1914.
An advert for the match that ran in the Pawtucket Times also gets dipped in Brooklyn FC's color palette and displayed on the back of a sweatshirt, as does an illustration of a mid-construction Brooklyn Bridge.
These sweatshirts will be available here soon, perfect for the US Open Cup historians in your lives.
Coney Island, not Rhode Island, will host the latest bit of Brooklyn soccer history this Saturday. You can still get tickets to go watch the Brooklyn FC USL Super League team play the first competitive match in franchise history here.
Andrew Leigh
