New York City FC season ticket holders who entered a drawing to attend an MLS kickoff event on February 27 were given an unintentional pre-party gift: The confirmation page includes photos of what seem to be the 2022 NYCFC away kit.
Note that the shirt hasn’t been officially released yet: The leaks are coming from inside the house.
The NYCFC fans who called for an orange shirt got what they wanted, kinda. While the kit meets the legal definition of orange, it isn’t the Orange Julius-level orange of the handsome NYCFC training kits. It isn’t the orange HRB expected when we first reported on the 2022 away kit back in January.
Looking at the teensy-teensy screengrab shared with us, the sartorial experts at Hudson River Blue note that sleeves are different shades of orange, while the left register of the kit is deep indigo. A Shazam!-like lightning bolt is inscribed right down the middle.
In other words, this wasn’t exactly the kit that supporters envisioned they would see when they undid the combination locks on their cedar-lined NYCFC closets this season. The response on Twitter has been one of confusion.
Some fans are passionately, violently, sickeningly against the shirt:
Others are more circumspect:
How will the Shazam! kit rate in this history of NYCFC uniforms? That is, if it is indeed the 2022 away kit.
According to Football Kit Archive, the greatest NYCFC shirt is the home kit released in 2017: Sky blue with navy trim, a thin orange band on the cuffs of the sleeves. The fashion desk at HRB agrees that the simple elegance makes it one of the team’s best shirts: Classic styling, subtle details, good blues.
Football Kit Archive states that last year’s special kit was the biggest “flop” in NYCFC’s short history. A bluish-teal with burnt-orange stripes and lettering on a stained-in-the-dryer-pattern torso, it tried to do too much without reflecting the history of the club. Take a look and judge for yourself:
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All of us here at HRB are curious to learn what our readers think of the Shazam! kit. That is, if it is indeed the 2022 away kit. To that end, we encourage you to participate in the following poll:
Poll
The Shazam! kit is…
This poll is closed
- 12%Gorgeous(15 votes)
- 6%Orange enough for me(7 votes)
- 20%Not really sure—I need some time(25 votes)
- 53%Nope, nope, nope(66 votes)
- 10%As long as there’s a star over the bade and a silver scudetto on the sleeve I’m in(12 votes)
125 votes total
One thing is for sure: The Shazam! kit lets us cross off #4 of the list of 22 predictions for 2022 we published last week. That is, if it is indeed the 2022 away kit.
