MLS kits 2023

[tBBP]

22 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

 

No argument from me on Athletic perhaps working better with this logo. I presume one of their objectives in choosing names was to avoid anything that harkened back to one of the various minor league clubs that immediately preceded getting the MLS team. In the case of St. Louis, AC St. Louis lasted one year in the USSF D2 Pro League and had a really strong following before folding in 2011. 

 

That might seem insignificant, but even for one year I'm told AC St. Louis still carries some affection with the supporters group. This new ownership group seems to have had no interest in tapping into what used to be. 

 

 

 

 

 

I can't fault them for that. Some ownership groups really embrace the whole challenge of forging something new, as this group has done. And quibbles about the shape of the arch aside, everything they've done thus far is top-notch from a branding and fan experience perspective at least in my opinion. This even extends to their team app, which I have...whoever designed the UX/UI for that app deserves a gold medal. Shoot they had me feeling like I was really a part of the team while setting my account up...even got a customized (virtual) jersey and everything! Plus I can do all my correspondence through there.

 

As for the club name, yes we've definitely been overrun with the Euro-conventional naming cosplay at this point, BUTTT...at least CITY makes some modicum of sense for St. Louis, seeing as how the municipality itself literally is that, separate from St. Louis County (though we all know most of the money is gonna funnel to CITY from the county/ies). So I will give them that, at least.

[Digby]

Okay, some other name that's not Athletic that starts with an A. Point being that STLCSC's logo is really nice, but also, it's an A. 

[McCall]

6 minutes ago, Digby said:

Okay, some other name that's not Athletic that starts with an A. Point being that STLCSC's logo is really nice, but also, it's an A. 

Arch City?

 

[Digby]

55 minutes ago, McCall said:

Arch City?

 

 

Do people call it that? Sure, what the heck.

 

"Archers" would be a cool and distinctive mascot if, heaven forbid, a new MLS team used an American-style nickname. But I know it's not that kind of arch, and affluent yuppie millennials associate the word with the cartoon and not the bow-and-arrow thing.

[McCall]

17 minutes ago, Digby said:

 

Do people call it that? Sure, what the heck.

 

"Archers" would be a cool and distinctive mascot if, heaven forbid, a new MLS team used an American-style nickname. But I know it's not that kind of arch, and affluent yuppie millennials associate the word with the cartoon and not the bow-and-arrow thing.

St. Louis Community College is the Archers.

[aawagner011]

New pics of the Galaxy, again from our friends in France

 

 

 

 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

That's really nice. Good job LAG.

[Digby]

Unfortunately takes me back to the 2002 MLS Cup, and this photo.

 

 

[upperV03]

Footy Headlines (grain of salt) is reporting that Charlotte’s new away kit will be purple and pink:

If true, not hard to find the likely inspiration behind the color scheme:

 

Would be embarrassing and shameless IMO.

[sky1324]

I don't mind the colors on their own, but the Ally connection, if real, is embarrassing and once again makes CLTFC feel corporate and impersonal. The black and mint set was obvious for year one so this is adidas' first real test for making something great for the Crowns. I can't think of what else the colors could be a reference to so I'll wait until the reveal.

[Digby]

I'd have guessed it was a take on Hornets purple without being a total ripoff. Which would be a pretty reasonable thing for them to do and it looks cool on its own. But seeing the Ally Bank Nascar, yeah, now I can't unsee that. A very convenient synergy.

[VampyrRabbit]

In a vacuum, the colours pink and violet work really well together and if you get the right shades, the colours pop. And the leaked colours certainly do that.

But with the knowledge that its the colours of the main sponsor, it just feels like a really cynical move.

 

48 minutes ago, CDCLT said:

I don't mind the colors on their own, but the Ally connection, if real, is embarrassing and once again makes CLTFC feel corporate and impersonal. The black and mint set was obvious for year one so this is adidas' first real test for making something great for the Crowns. I can't think of what else the colors could be a reference to so I'll wait until the reveal.

Purple is the colour of royalty, and the state flower of NC is the Flowering Dogwood which can have pink flowers. But I somehow doubt that is where they got the inspiration for the colours from.

[MJWalker45]

6 minutes ago, VampyrRabbit said:

In a vacuum, the colours pink and violet work really well together and if you get the right shades, the colours pop. And the leaked colours certainly do that.

But with the knowledge that its the colours of the main sponsor, it just feels like a really cynical move.

 

Purple is the colour of royalty, and the state flower of NC is the Flowering Dogwood which can have pink flowers. But I somehow doubt that is where they got the inspiration for the colours from.

I remember when Manchester United's blue away kits were looked at because they were reportedly using the colors of Chevrolet, which was their primary shirt sponsor at the time. They obviously weren't, but if they were I think most United fans would have rioted. The Nike kit even had two shades of blue on it. 

 

[Brian in Boston]

My original critique of St. Louis CITY SC’s branding still stands.
 

Name / Wordmark
The team name - particularly the emphasis on CITY - is tone deaf given the acrimony that has historically existed between the municipality and surrounding St. Louis County since the 1840s. Team ownership can trumpet all it likes about how "the name celebrates the area's diverse, iconic neighborhoods"... blah, blah, blah... "region's recent growth"... blah, blah, blah... "cultural renaissance"... blah, blah, blah. All of those niceties aside, the fact remains that following the official split of the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County in the 1870s, the invisible political barrier that separates the two entities has been a continual source of friction with very real socioeconomic impact visited upon residents of both the city and surrounding, independent communities. Anger, mutual misunderstanding, and resentment has been a very real part of the relationship between those who call the city home and those who reside in municipalities within the county. A chorus of "Kumbayah" under the St. Louis City SC - pardon, St. Louis CITY SC - name isn't going to suddenly make that disconnect disappear, no matter how much Carolyn Kindle Betz and Company might want it to. 

You want your Major League Soccer franchise to serve as a rallying point for the entirety of the St. Louis Metro Area, both city and county residents? Here's a tip - don't play up one half of the region's historic city/county divide in the team's name. Instead, try leaning into "the city's rich soccer tradition as America's First Soccer Capital" and go with a name like St. Louis Legacy SC. Or, if you truly want your club "to be bigger than soccer... and a symbol of [the region's] future",  adopt a name like Gateway St. Louis SC. There's just no upside in even remotely running the risk of antagonizing either side of the traditional city/county schism.   

Colors
I'm a fan of the City (Not) Red and River Blue. They complement one another nicely, with the Raspberry/Magenta shade of red particularly unique upon the North American pro sports landscape. With the iconic Gateway Arch destined to play such a significant role in team branding, Arch Steel Gray also strikes me as a welcome part of the club's palette. All of that said, the Energy Yellow gives me pause. I get that the team is trying to come up with its take on the Red, Blue, and Yellow of the St. Louis municipal flag, but I fear that the Energy Yellow is going to be overkill, particularly when paired with the City Red. I found the combination over-the-top when used in the teaser videos leading up to the identity unveiling and I'm not at all convinced it's going to prove any more pleasing when utilized in logo or uniform applications. If it were me, and I wanted to include a nod to the flag's Yellow, I'd have taken a page from Cerezo Osaka's book and gone with more of a Gold.  

Crest
When I learned that "[a] diverse group of over 20 local designers created" the St. Louis CITY SC crest, I couldn't help but think "design-by-committee" and "too many cooks spoil the broth". I can't say for certain that the number of designers led to what I consider to be a misfire, but I don't believe the scenario helped matters.

It strikes me as being a very disjointed mark, with little thought given to how the various components of the logo might most effectively integrate. For instance, the description of the crest says that the top of the shield "[f]ollows the shape of the Gateway Arch". Except it doesn't, really. Not quite. Given that the top of the shield and the top of the depiction of the Gateway Arch within the shield are rendered at two different sizes, they follow one another's shape for what amounts to a very short length of space. If anything, the curve at the top of the shield and the depiction of the Gateway Arch within the crest serve to inspire one to wonder why the designers didn't elect to enlarge the Gateway Arch and shift it upward within the logo so that it's curve would define the curved portion of the top of the shield. It seems a lost opportunity, aesthetically, not to do so.

Then there's the logo's depiction of the Gateway Arch itself. It really doesn't reflect the actual structure very well. The angle at which the legs descend and the curve of the upper section are all wrong. While I understand that this is an "abstract representation of the iconic landmark", given that it is arguably the centerpiece image within the crest's design, it just seems to me that more care should have been taken to render its depiction a bit more accurately. And speaking of accuracy, I can't help but think that I'd like to see how the badge might have looked with the Gateway Arch rendered in Arch Steel Gray, as opposed to City Red. 

Similarly, I wonder how the depictions of the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers would look if the outer lines of said waterways were rendered in White, with the center lines remaining River Blue? I'll concede that it might be a bit busy, but it would be interesting to see the contrast compared to the current color way that leaves the Arch and Rivers resembling - at least to my mind - an abstract depiction of a highway interchange.

The righthand third of the crest is, to put it bluntly, abysmal. The band of City Red cutting off nearly half of the depiction of the Gateway Arch, as well as the rotated word mark descending down said strip of color, come across as design decisions made solely for the sake of trying something "new" and "outside the box", with little thought given to how they might have been better incorporated into the crest's overall design.

Overall, St. Louis CITY SC's logo strikes me as looking like an early draft within the conceptualization and design of a major professional sports franchise's logo. I don't consider it a successful finished product. I'd say it's a missed opportunity that ranks in the bottom half of MLS club marks and, off the top of my head, may well slot in amongst the bottom third of the league's team logos.                      
            

[gosioux76]

4 minutes ago, Brian in Boston said:

My original critique of St. Louis CITY SC’s branding still stands.
 

Name / Wordmark
The team name - particularly the emphasis on CITY - is tone deaf given the acrimony that has historically existed between the municipality and surrounding St. Louis County since the 1840s. Team ownership can trumpet all it likes about how "the name celebrates the area's diverse, iconic neighborhoods"... blah, blah, blah... "region's recent growth"... blah, blah, blah... "cultural renaissance"... blah, blah, blah. All of those niceties aside, the fact remains that following the official split of the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County in the 1870s, the invisible political barrier that separates the two entities has been a continual source of friction with very real socioeconomic impact visited upon residents of both the city and surrounding, independent communities. Anger, mutual misunderstanding, and resentment has been a very real part of the relationship between those who call the city home and those who reside in municipalities within the county. A chorus of "Kumbayah" under the St. Louis City SC - pardon, St. Louis CITY SC - name isn't going to suddenly make that disconnect disappear, no matter how much Carolyn Kindle Betz and Company might want it to. 

You want your Major League Soccer franchise to serve as a rallying point for the entirety of the St. Louis Metro Area, both city and county residents? Here's a tip - don't play up one half of the region's historic city/county divide in the team's name. Instead, try leaning into "the city's rich soccer tradition as America's First Soccer Capital" and go with a name like St. Louis Legacy SC. Or, if you truly want your club "to be bigger than soccer... and a symbol of [the region's] future",  adopt a name like Gateway St. Louis SC. There's just no upside in even remotely running the risk of antagonizing either side of the traditional city/county schism.    
            

 

When the name was first revealed  I had similar reservations. Living here, and being immersed in the debate about our city/county divide, I also felt like it was an odd choice given the circumstances.

 

It's now more than two years later and if there's any lingering feelings that the team is favoring city over county, then I haven't seen it. In fact, if anything, the ownership's gamble here was that sports is something that tends to bring St. Louisans together. And on that front, they were spot on.

 

As much as I generally agree that marketing speak is worth ignoring, in announcing the name the team actually attempted to address this regional parochialism. We can get hung on definitions (city, county, metro area), but they billed it as a region coming together as one city, no matter where you reside. "From Old North to South Grand, from the Metro East to west of 270, come together, St. Louis. Rise like the Gateway Arch and let the world know this is our home, this is our city." 

 

If this name choice was a failure on this point, then you'd have a hard time noticing it from the ground here in St. Louis. 

[MJWalker45]

How much of that is, "Oh! New and shiny"!, As opposed to people genuinely liking it? 

[gosioux76]

3 minutes ago, MJWalker45 said:

How much of that is, "Oh! New and shiny"!, As opposed to people genuinely liking it? 

 

It's a fair question, but I'm not really assessing it on those terms. I'm just pointing out that any consternation over City as being exclusionary to the county or other parts of the region doesn't seem to exist. 

 

No doubt if you polled a majority of St. Louis sports fans, they'd pick something else. But they don't seem to hate it enough to avoid buying season tickets or merchandise. 

[upperV03]

Nashville going with Johnny Cash “Man in Black” for their new secondaries:

Going the blackout route makes sense given the inspiration, but aesthetically it’s pretty underwhelming. Blackout/stealth kits have also been played out IMO and the musician-inspired direction is no longer original.

[Digby]

Ah yes, Johnny Cash, such an important figure in the history of Nashville soccer

[YELDARBfield]

4 hours ago, Digby said:

Ah yes, Johnny Cash, such an important figure in the history of Nashville soccer

Could always be worse. If I were an NSC fan, I would take this 1,000,000 times over a Florida-Georgia Line collab.