When a World Cup kit is good, it becomes iconic.
Due to the competition’s quadrennial nature, each time the world’s biggest sporting event comes to town is one of a very limited number of opportunities to show the fuck out.
Not only do hometown fans rush to swoop up their selection’s latest offering, but so too do neutral fans who want to find a reason to support more teams than just their own.
Come World Cup time, some countries, like France and Brazil, double down on their storied tournament history, choosing to always opt for the traditional over the sublime.
Others, however, take their time on the world stage to exhibit what makes their own personal brand of swag.
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The Nigeria football team played its first official game in October 1949, while still a British colony. In their first matches in the UK, they wore a dark green shirt.
Nigeria's first outstanding jerseys were released in the early 1990s, when Adidas supplied the country with some typical early 1990s Adidas designs.
Adidas again became Nigeria's kit maker after the 2002 World Cup.
The most boring Nigeria kits in history were likely released in second first first years with Nike after the Swoosh took over from Adidas.
When Nike took over from Adidas in 1995 / 1996, Nigeria's kits got the first big notice in the world.
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Enter Nigeria ‘18. When Nike revealed its full lineup of World Cup kits, Nigeria's was the obvious star.
Sure, eyes may have paused at Australia’s wild yellow kits, or the classic cut of England’s all whites, but it was one flashy white-and-green jersey that stole the show.
Nigeria’s triangle patterned home kit became not just the best one revealed for this tournament; it instantly became the hottest piece of soccer gear since Juventus’s Drake-modeled pink jersey from the 2015-2016 season.
Alongside the Super Eagles’s hit jersey, Nike also released a collection of other gear, including track jackets, bucket hats, and boards shorts, all boasting the same shades of green and that distinct pattern.
To get a better sense of how an instantly-iconic World Cup kit comes to life, we hit up Nike FC’s Design Director Pete Hoppins, who is in charge of not just the jerseys worn this summer but also the apparel that brings the “story” of a country to life through soccer.
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We work to a timeline, a plan...if you have to make 100,000 jerseys or a million jerseys, those jerseys have to be manufactured and shipped.
We have a calendar that is over two years out from the event.
For example, we’re designing Euro Championship jerseys for 2020 right now. We’re almost finished.
The kick-off for the process starts even earlier than that sometimes, as much as three years out.
We use the big moments in time, Euros or World Cup, to rally behind a new innovation.
A new aesthetic for Nike Football. We start off working with our innovation partners within designs to create a chassis for the kit, a new innovation.
That is often a fabric or yarn that’s going to increase performance; lighter weight, or faster drying than before.
That’s the goal: improve on the chassis of the uniform with design.
To align with that innovation, we create a new aesthetic and look for Nike Football.
That can be something that helps tell the story of that innovation, or a mood and feeling that we want to portray to the world.
We want to also help the players feel faster and more skillful than they have ever felt before.
We get briefed by the various countries or clubs around what they want in their kit...or what they don’t want to see.
If you take Brazil, for example, it’s going to be yellow.
There’s no skirting around that one, this is what it’s going to be.
That’s more about us bringing out the soul of Brazil into something that is always a yellow jersey.
Some countries will have very specific briefs of what they want, others won’t.
We’ll always do our own research ourselves, within those countries, to capture the mood and feeling of that country and what they want to stand up for.
Each country is completely different, what suits their style. Brazil, it’s always clean and purist, always vibrant but it also has this kind of toughness to it.
Then you look at someone like France, and it’s always about sophistication and style.
WIthin that, there are still some shared Nike filter that brings the entire collection together.
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The big hit seems to be the Nigeria kit this time around. With the Nigeria kit and collection, what we wanted to do is take a team who there is less expectations on from the media and fans in terms of both on the field performance and kit design.
There is less pressure to not mess with the kit than, say, England.
While no one expects Nigeria to challenge for the World Cup, we felt that there’s something going on with Nigeria as a young team.
There’s a confidence in all these young players, they’re going to go for it and we were attracted to that.
We’ve been following them from afar, and the players on social media...a lot of them are playing in some of the top clubs in Europe, and there’s that boldness that aligns in Nigeria and Lagos and in London.
Often, the kit might have an amazing story but sometimes you only have one platform to tell it.
If you look at this one from a collection point of view, it’s like, “Why wouldn’t you do that?”
Not everyone wants to wear the uniform, but there’s something for everybody there.
Every other company would love to have the assets that Nike does, and we’re trying to stretch them into the world of fashion and culture, not just performance.
Was Nigeria the hardest kit to design this time around? Nigeria was actually the easiest!
That’s everyone having fun.
We worked closer with the players and the Nigerian federation to make that happen.
The hardest were Brazil and England, just like always.
It’s got to be a yellow kit and a white kit, respectively.
You have to deliver that.
Otherwise, you’ll be shot. [laughs] How do you move those forward every two, four years? Especially when you’re trying to innovate the performance.
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