Soccer Equipment Reviews

For all you Socceroo fans out there, this one is for you! Tommy Oar and Craig Moore have officially unveiled Nike’s new Australia Home Kit for the 2010 World Cup.

US sportswear brand, Nike claims the kit is the most environmentally friendly and technologically advanced in football history. The new yarn that resulted from the melted bottles was converted into fabric for the jerseys. Nike believes they are 25 per cent lighter than the jerseys Australia wore into battle in Germany four years ago. The jersey features three colors – cypress green derived from the golden wattle on the national coat of arms for the shoulders, upper torso and sleeves; a white band across the chest symbolizing unity and the majority of the jersey is gold, also from the golden wattle. Inside the jersey, on the back of the Australian coat of arms, is the message “Never Say Never” in a special font. ”Its a nice jersey, cool, the lightest that has ever been produced and hopefully it can take us on to bigger and better things on the world stage,” Moore said. The kit has been designed to enhance the performance of the Australian side by keeping players drier, cooler and more comfortable in South Africa this summer. The Socceroos will wear the new kit for the first time in their May 24 game against New Zealand in Melbourne.

SER Opinion-

As an Australian and of course a huge Socceroo fan, a great looking home kit is extremely important. Unfortunately this new home kit is not as satisfying design wise as I would have hoped. I would have preferred less green on the kit like the previous kits over the past 4 years. At the same time though, the green makes our kit look different to Brazil’s. Something else I would have preferred would have been a different template to our away kit. The same template every release just kills the excitement. How great would the Netherlands away kit in Australian colors look! That would be fantastic and I wish Nike would have thought of something like that for the Socceroos kit (maybe I’ll tell them myself!).

Although I have said a lot of negative things about this kit, I still think it is a quite good looking one. I believe once we see the Socceroos in action wearing this at the World Cup, all the fans who currently dislike it will start to like or even love it. It’s just a matter of getting used to as it is so different from the previous ones.