🎽 How Caribbean national teams started looking cool again
Plus a look ahead at CCL second legs
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When Bermuda qualified for its first-ever Gold Cup in 2019, it was cause for celebration. The Gombey Warriors’ showings in Concacaf Nations League qualification was good enough for a place in the continental championship.
Simply showing up, however, was never going to be enough. This is an island that knows how to make a statement, especially on the international stage. Even its Winter Olympians wore Bermuda shorts to the 2018 Opening Ceremony.
Bermuda showed up to the tournament looking good. Their primary shirt was a relatively standard navy number, highlighting an issue David Sabir, Bermuda FA General Secretary said they ran into doing research. Thanks to colonialism and a lack of vexillologogical risk-taking, a huge number of countries already wear some combination of blue, red and white.
The secondary kit, however, made sure Bermuda would stand out. Taking their cue from some of the famous beaches on the island, the FA decided Bermuda would wear pink.
“To be honest with you, we hadn't seen a pink jersey at all. Like there was no pink jersey. Nowhere, in all the research we did. No national program had pink,” said Sabir, who in addition to his work in the FA also is an executive member of the Bermuda Olympic Association and president of the country’s Association of National Sport Governing Bodies.
Looking good wasn’t the only benefit of the redesign. In addition to at home, Bermuda sold jerseys to fans in the UK, the U.S. and other parts of the world, giving Bermuda a surprise source of funding for programs.
The FA decided simply changing the jersey color wasn’t enough, this summer ditching its previous logo, the outline of the country on a soccer ball, for a new mark incorporating many design elements unique to Bermuda, including the FA’s foundational pillars of football, community and opportunity.
“They said they wanted something that represents the three pillars, and they wanted the three colors implemented,” said Ajani Tucker, who designed the logo as a freelancer but joined FA as the Head of Marketing and Sponsorship in summer 2020. “We got to this one where it has the three triangles, which expand into three different strokes that create a ball or circle, as well.”
It’s no accident, either, that the logo utilizes triangles, a shape strongly linked with Bermuda in the minds of many.
Other Caribbean countries are following Bermuda’s lead and bringing their look into modern times.
Anguilla is the lowest-ranked team in Concacaf but is rolling out a number of programs to change that. With the increased efforts also came a redesign, with a spark that was larger than simply inspiration.
Keith Laubhan, a designer in Denver, heard about Anguilla, its history and design in the country on a podcast he listened to and decided to toy around with a rebrand
“It dawned on me that like, it actually might be viable for them, so I put together a pitch deck and just sent it to them unsolicited,” Laubhan said.
While most teams and organizations toss those in the trash, Anguilla’s FA was just beginning to explore a new look.
The result is a look that is different from any other team in the region.
As any good designer would, Laubhan didn’t mess with the ‘spinning dolphins’ and wanted to lean on the national colors of white, turquoise and orange.
With his day job typically putting him the world of designing for corporations, he also looked to provide something that would work not only on a shirt but also in a large space like a billboard or a small one like a Twitter profile picture.
“I think a lot of Caribbean and Latin countries have cool national symbols, and vibrant cultures and unique landscapes and topography and so little of that gets carried into their team identities,” Laubhan said. His Anguilla work “was really just an effort to try to do something that felt unique, and still modern and practical, but unique to that island and unique to the region.”
These redesigns wouldn’t be possible without boutique suppliers (so far all are based in the U.S, though that’s obviously not required) working directly with the FAs and giving them the attention they need to create a unique look. Laubhan said there also has been technologies previously inaccessible to smaller brands, such as direct-to-garment printing, that now is attainable.
“I think all this stuff's kind of coalescing at the right time,” he said. “The smaller nations are getting more brand savvy than they've ever been, and there's more accessibility to creating cool things. They're not as reliant on teamwear from the Nikes and Adidas of the world.”
Bermuda works with Score in the United States and enjoyed the custom touch as they hammered out the particulars of the pink shirt.
“We showed them the colors that they had to work with, and they just flipped out,” Sabir said. “They design everything in house. It's not off the rack. They had to create that color and everything from scratch for us. They didn't have that in their stables.”
Nike alumnus Tiago Pinto can speak to both sides of the coin, launching soccer-only brand BOL Football with Montserrat’s March World Cup qualification matches the debut of the young supplier.
With BOL’s bold, graffiti-inspired shirts and accompanying streetwear items playing on the Emerald Boys nickname, it’s clear the shirts were custom-designed rather than a template selected out of a catalog.
“I think it starts with working together with the FA and even before that we do the work prior to pitching to the FA, that we do our homework. Then it gets dialed up as we as we grow together, it’s to study exactly what's the identity of the team? What brings that team, the fan, the country together?
“Especially in our case, we really like to look at the future. What is the trajectory? What are these guys aiming for? What can this team represent?”
Being based in Miami and seeing how soccer and streetwear have become extremely comfortable bedfellows, BOL also designed a pair of shirts that work on the field but also look nice paired with jeans or sweats.
“You want to show out in the streets that you are connected to the game,” Pinto said. “That's our our mission is to cater to that to that audience, the football lover that lives and breathes, reads football and express that in apparel.”
That becomes a lot easier to do when the shirt or jersey or other item actually looks nice. Luckily for fans in the Concacaf region, the trend will continue.
Pinto teased another client (or clients) in the region soon to be announced, Bermuda is set to drop another shirt in the near future and Laubhan is among many talented designers eager to work with FAs. The hope is every Concacaf member will have a look that is unique, recognizable and cool, leading to a shirt and crest players are proud to wear not just because of what it means but because of how they look doing it.
🏆 CCL tripleheaders retain plenty of drama
There are tripleheaders tonight and tomorrow in the CCL, the deciding matches of the first legs that took place last week. There also is a doubleheader on Thursday, but after the away side won those matches 4-0 and 3-0, that may be a good night to catch up on your Netflix queue.
MLS teams all avoided defeat in the first leg, but that won’t be worth too much if they fall at home. As it often can do in the English-speaking market, it also feels like América’s impressive win at Olimpia and Monterrey dismantling Atletico Pantjoa somewhat escaped fans’ view. This round of the tournament is shaping up to be won by the favorites.
What looked like the marquee matchup, Alajuelense’s visit to Atlanta with Atlanta United up 1-0 on aggregate, has been marred by a saga of travel regulations due to COVID-19 protocols, visas and general frustration.
Should Liga have been more careful with its national team players? Probably. Should they have investigated what other teams traveling to the U.S. were doing to make sure their players are eligible for competition? Yes. Would it been good of Concacaf to make sure those expectations and requirements were understood? Of course. What I’m getting at here is I’m not sure where ‘the blame’ goes in this situation, but the situation is a bummer.
On the field, manager Andres Carevic says the tactical idea will remain the same, and, to be fair, it sort of has to be given that only a win will do for LDA.
This also will be a showcase for some of the LDA players I’m most excited about: Jurguens Montenegro leading the line, Bernald Alfaro in the middle of the park and Fernán Faerron at the back.
The Timbers ended up with a 2-2 draw in the first leg against a Marathon team that, as veteran defender Emilio Izaguirre noted Monday too often plays down to the competition. The Honduran squad will need big performances from their veterans but need less-experienced players like Kervin Arriaga and Luis Vega to again put pressure on Portland’s back line to have a true chance of pulling the upset.
Arcahaie and goalkeeper Gooly Elien somehow kept Cruz Azul off the scoreline in the first leg. They ran into some travel issues, arriving in Mexico on Monday thanks to an assist from Concacaf with a charter flight. It will be interesting how much stronger of a team Maquina manager Juan Reynoso puts out as he looks to lock up the result. It may not take much, but the Haitian club already has outperformed expectations once.
Tomorrow’s tripleheader is highlighted by Toronto FC’s matchup with León. The Canadian side got great showings in the first leg from green players like Jacob Shaffelburg and Ralph Priso but also were lucky Angel Mena and Co. didn’t wear their shooting boots with some truly terrible finishing in front of goal. Watching Chris Armas and Nacho Ambriz manipulate their squads Wednesday should be fascinating.
We’ll also see if any of the hard feelings from the first leg of Philadelphia Union’s 1-0 win against Saprissa carry over into the second leg.
🎰 Viva Las Vegas!
The Concacaf Gold Cup Final will take place in Las Vegas, as readers of Getting Concacafed have suspected since February. The confederation officially announced the decision Tuesday, with the match set to take place at Allegiant Stadium, home of the NFL’s Raiders.
The stadium will be playing host to a fair amount of soccer in the future. Organizers already loved putting games in Vegas, with Mexico friendly matches and even the Leagues Cup final taking place at Sam Boyd Stadium, a facility that it’s fair to say has far fewer amenities than the new venue off the strip.
There should be plenty more venue announcements coming soon with Concacaf yet to announce other Gold Cup host sites or where the Nations League Final Four will take place. I’ve heard rumblings about where that will be, so hopefully I can tell you more later this week!
Love reading about these fun new shirts, Jon.