Category Archives: Detroit City FC

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

The Kit Post 2023

Hello and welcome all to the ninth annual Detroit City FC kit post! Whether you’re new to Detroit City or new to this site, each year I do a run down of the previous Detroit City FC season, review the out-going kits the club wore, and I mock up three potential kits for the upcoming season – home, away, and a clash/charity kit.

Here are the links to the previous kit posts:

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022

There are probably people, mostly people whose personalities are born and bred on the birdsite, who will consider 2022 a not great year for Detroit City. Whether for the impact USL-C had on the club and supporter culture, for the growing pains that popped up throughout the year, the bitter cold of those first handful of games, or for the “disappointing” (heavy emphasis on the quotes) result.

I must attest that, at least on the pitch, I was extremely satisfied with the product and the results the club put out. Moving from NISA to USL-C was a move up in more ways than one, and I was expecting a season where we attempt to not be embarrassed more than actually attempt to win. However, the NISA All-Stars put out quality games. Sure, we didn’t make a deep run into the playoffs, but back in March I wasn’t expecting to make it to the playoffs at all. So that’s a massive success already, and it means that the club has a strong foundation to build off of.

The next few years are going to be so exciting for Detroit City. I can see us really becoming a power house over the next few years, especially with the right signings and coaching. We’re so close. We can do this.

Meanwhile, a lot of controversy was going on off the pitch – mostly in the stands. I will not comment on every event, first because it’s not the point of this blog, second because I don’t remember them all, and third – I don’t want to come off as an authority. Generally though, my opinions run from unhappy and rebellious to unhappy but pragmatic.

Personally, I think my time in the midst of all the smoke and the pounding of drums might be reaching its conclusion and thus so too my pontificating on the matter. Perhaps I am getting bougier, perhaps I am getting older. It is very likely that it’s a combination of those things, but also a subtle shift in what I want out of the game day experience. The Niamh of 2023 is quite different than the person who was going in 2012. Less is the need for tribal belonging and aggressive venting, and in its place a need to be seen, to enjoy, to exist outside of my home office, to have my cocktails and catch up with friends and perhaps throw eyes at potential new friends.

Starting next year, I will be in the VIP section more than not. I basically consider it pre-paying for about $300 of drinks and food, which I do regularly get each game. My plan as of writing (October of 2022) is to coëxist both in the stands and the VIP section, but generally, I expect to make those retreats when needed.

But what about the kits?” you might be asking. “I’m here for the kits” to which I might reply, “Oh! Kits! You said Kits. Sorry, I misheard you. I thought you said- you know? Never mind.”

The 2022 Detroit City kits will always be the kits from our first USL-C season, which in-and-of-itself is a big deal. Potentially that is enough to make them something special, though I am hesitant to go all-in on that idea. Looking back to the 2020 kits, those aren’t exactly the most memorable set, but there was a lot going on in 2020 that might’ve prevented them from solidifying in my mind.

Detroit City donned four kits across 2022 – home, away, and two charity kit designs (one for the women and one for the men) and from those four it’s hard to pick a “best” in the worst possible way. It will have to fall to either the home or away because… sublimation, but outside that I think all four kits are less than great.

The home kits – all rouge with a rouge-colored sash was an interesting choice for a follow up to one of the best DCFC kits of all time. I like the sash as an element, but I think these kits fall into a serious uncanny valley of being needlessly complicated? I never really thought of the two-tone kit this year as anything other than just solid rouge, if that makes sense. I think the lacking piece was the Adidas piping being the same color as everything else. You might as well have deleted the piping and left them as is. The sash never popped in such a way to stand out. Even my wiki kit mockup was pretty plain, and we all know I hate plain. In that way, the 2020 and 2022 home kits share a bit in common – I forget that they had anything going on at all.

I think, on paper, the 2022 away kits would’ve made more sense if the home kit had been stronger. I just legitimately have zero attachment to the away kit at all. The design elements make sense, but again, there’s not much going on. Had the home kits had more, been better, the away kits would’ve snapped into sharp focus. They definitely meet the definition of “clean” I constantly bandy about on this site, but… I don’t know, they just didn’t mean much to me. Maybe it was the lack of trophies? Maybe there was a malaise over the entire season, coming out of the libertarian madness of NISA and into the corporate mundanity of USL-C that just subtracts from these two kits. Maybe if we won more. Maybe if we lifted more trophies. Maybe if something these kits would’ve magically worked. Inevitably the kits both define and are defined by the season. A great season can bring great meaning to a kit. But a great kit can make a mediocre season memorable. And that’s the problem. We had a good season, we broke expectations in mediocre kits, and that leaves them both unmemorable.

Lastly, and leastly, the charity kits. I hated both of them? They were awful, cacophonous messes of sublimation. I’m stoked we raised money for great causes, I’m so happy we got to do good with them – just wish we had looked good in the meantime. I assume this signals a trend – the custom Admiral kits for charity and the Adidas kits for the “main” kits. Part of me wishes we’d return to a special kit for the charity, still Adidas, but just a little bit more off the beaten path. I wish we’d consider another go like 2019 with a full third kit. We’ve shown that we can do stuff like auctioning off normal kits. But as we get bigger and are able to get more out of Adidas, maybe that won’t be the case. Perhaps we’re nearly at the point of considering another supplier.

Perhaps I am overusing “perhaps” in this post.

We live in a time of uncertainty. A time of ‘perhaps’ when we need certain answers.

I have no certain answers for you, dear reader, only thoughts and conjecture. I read the tarot of the kits. Some things are clearer than others. However; somethings are obvious:

  • I don’t work for the DCFC front office
  • The DCFC front office fucks with me
  • Kits shown here are not official direction
  • Logos, league, and sponsors are used without permission
  • Sponsors and league are not official nor necessarily endorsed by our front office
    • I refuse to include the Chevy logo on my work, deal with it
  • The reality of 2023 might be very different than what I predict here

The Home Kit

The 2023 Home Kit Prediction – Rouge with horizontal pinstripes and gold trim

I went through a lot of iterations on my home and away kits this year, slowly honing in on something that worked for me. Like the club, I usually alternate between years with a lot going on and years without so much. Last year for the home kit, we had the hoops, this year pinstripes.

The 2021 Kits were something amazing, and I want to build off that more. Some clubs are defined by features as much as colors (e.g. Celtic and green/white hoops, Newcastle and black/white stripes), but Detroit City isn’t one of those clubs. We can have hoops, sashes, pinstripes, nothing at all so long as the kits are that lovely, rich rouge color. Making the gold trim something that all home kits have going forward would be amazing, and draw a serious line of continuity even as features come and go. I’m not sure if I want to see bigger gold features, for example, a gold sash, but I’d at least be interested in seeing it.

This is what I mean by the difficulty of designing a home kit. I can’t imagine having these difficult discussions regarding the away kit. Want a gold sash? Done. Want a rouge band? Done. There’s no problem there. But when you talk about making a serious change to the home kit there’s a hesitation I feel in my gut. Will this be something that adds to the history of Detroit City kits? Or subtracts from it? I’ve done mockups with, for example, gold hoops and I cannot help but feel that it’s not a Detroit City home kit. A training top or a one-off charity kit, but it’s not a home kit.

So perhaps this is a “safe” design. Clean and simple. Three tones of rouge (the base, the lighter piping on the shorts and hems, and the darker stripes), but I think it is a strong design balancing everything I’ve talked about above.

The Away Kit

The 2023 Away Kit Prediction – White with a rouge and gold chevron

Working on the away kit is always a ton of fun, and I often get caught up in making dozens of potential designs, many just iterating on one strong design, drilling it down to something amazing. In previous posts, I’ve talked about wanting to do an homage to the 2013 kits with the rouge band across the chest. The 2013 away kit was the first DCFC kit I’ve ever bought, and I absolutely love it. It’s a fun kit with a variety of elements: the white body, the rouge band, the champagne sleeves.

Here I went to a sort of parallel homage – substituting a multi-colored chevron for the rouge band. Sure the sleeves are still white, but the champagne is captured in the piping and the chevron. Rouge piping on the shirt hems and on the shorts with a little two-tone going on in the collar.

Part of me wants to start a completely alternative discussion to the one above? Is it time to consider having a bit more fun with our away kits? White makes up the majority of our away kits despite us being the rouge and gold, so my gut is thinking do we move more permanently to champagne? Or do we let go all together? Can Detroit City pull off an orange away kit? Or a purple one? I Legitimately don’t know. Something about having both home and away kits fit the club’s color profile is uniquely American to me, a carry over from gridiron. But maybe that’s not actually the case, maybe I just don’t know because I’m used to clubs in the EPL having a very solid home design and the away kit having a bit more variation. Newcastle United has shown this over the years.

But what I do want to reiterate is what I said above – you gotta have at least one kit knock it out of the park, and I feel like the 2022 Detroit City kits didn’t provide. So for 2023 we need a strong slate of kits. Which brings us to my favorite kit to work on…

The Clash/Alternative Kit

The 2023 Clash Kit Prediction – Black with rouge sleeves and socks

The clash was the third of the three kits I started on and the second I came to a final decision on. It started with black and pastel pink. But as I played around with the options and variations, I really couldn’t shake the Inter Miami vibes, which was extremely disappointing. When I eventually moved on to the black/rouge combination.

I wanted a look that would be instantly iconic. I think I hit the bull’s eye with this design. We’ve seen some black and gold kits but something I’d like to see is black and rouge. When the two colors are so close together, you’re going to have to take steps to really emphasize them, so here, instead of just piping or some small features, I went with the sleeves and the socks. The more heavily contrasting gold comes in as piping on the shorts, in the collar and sleeves, and the hem of the top.

This sort of design, one that fits in with the rest of the options is perfect for an alternative or clash design, not just a a charity match or two.

There are some kits that years later folks still talk and think about, those ones that made bold choices and stuck to them. I think the black and gold third kits really embody that, or for another example, the Kitman Moy kits from the same year. I don’t think we’ve had a design since that really bucks the convention and gets not just talked about, but used. I might sound a little curmudgeonly here – but I’m fucking sick of the one-off sublimated kits. I really am. Let’s see something with some meat.

Three amazing kits, I think! There’s a lot that makes them different, there’s even more that ties them together!

The Sketches

The sketches for this year’s trio of kits.

Despite the ending in Memphis, 2022 was an extremely memorable year for Detroit City FC. Our first season in the USL-C, our first playoff spot, our first playoff loss. I for one certainly did not see it coming, though I dared to hope. I dared to hope quite a bit through the 2022 season – whether it was a playoff hosting spot or even just a playoff spot at all. The club and the staff really rose to the occasion on the pitch and despite growing pains off the pitch, I think we saw a lot of progress and improvements.

As my time as a “hooligan” comes to a close, my involvement with the club only grows. First with the 2022 Prideraiser campaign, which many of you contributed to and made a massive success. And now as a member of the Fan Advisory Board. I hope to continue to support and represent all fans, but especially queer fans, as the club continues to grow.

I have high hopes for 2023.

Hit me up on Twitter or Mastodon with your thoughts about 2022 and 2023, what did you think of the kits in particular and what would you put Detroit in for the upcoming season? If anyone wants to commission me, I have a portfolio and pricing page on this site. Feel free to drop a line.

Cheers, everyone!

Background Photo Credit:
Photo 75098233 © Jesse Kunerth | Dreamstime.com

Detroit, Detroit City FC, Life, Michigan, Soccer

Ten Years of Detroit City

I don’t know how long this post is going to be. Originally I thought I’d do it as a twitter thread, but I actually have an app that limits how much time I can spend on that hellsite.

Detroit City kicks off its first game in the second tier of American soccer in roughly two hours as I finish this up. Founded in 2012, Detroit City has consistently pushed what it meant to be a community-led capital-C Club, one invested in the community, not one invested into by the ultra-wealthy as a form of bread and circuses. Owing the idea of a “zeroth” anniversary, this is actually our eleventh season, but a decade of City is worth talking about.

It’s particularly worth talking about for me because I have built a weird parallel with Detroit City since the first season. I graduated on an off semester from Purdue University at the very end of 2011 and soon after got a job that moved me to Detroit working on the edges of the automotive industry. My first day at work, if I recall correctly, was the 28th of January, 2012, months before Detroit City kicked off.

I found Detroit City searching for MLS in Detroit, as I had read that there was interest in bringing a club here at the time. At Purdue I mostly just followed EPL and when I didn’t it was because I was following Newcastle down into the Championship. My roommate had an MLS team, Chicago, and I vaguely followed the Seattle Sounders because as an aerospace engineer, I assumed I’d be moving to Seattle sooner than later.

My first game was the 16th of June, 2012. According to Detroit City historian Michael Kitchen, that was a three to nil win over FC Buffalo. I have two pictures from that game, one taken by Brigid of my friend Zak and I. We showed up with some shoddy flags and custom t-shirts, driven by my own need to recreate what I had seen elsewhere. To build.

It’s not quite ten years later. But it’s getting there. Brigid and Zak didn’t catch the bug the way I did. I started going to games alone, which for an extrovert like me means I started talking to people, which meant I soon got caught up in the nascent Northern Guard Supporters.

City means something in particular to me because it has become so intertwined with me over the last ten years. I’ve been to secret meetings. Sold Darren McCarty a scarf after drinking a pint of whiskey. Met countless people from all over the world. Carried a drunken footballer out of a bathroom. Invested in two major campaigns to grow the club. Lit more smoke bombs than I think most people ever even see. Traveled to states I wouldn’t’ve otherwise. My first tattoo was for Detroit City. And City got me interested in playing, so much so I helped re-found a beer-league team that is playing an international friendly in a little more than a week!

Detroit City has impacted a lot of who I am, is what I am saying. And the big this is that the community around City has greatly enabled the biggest change of my life.

A man pushes over a small domino labeled "read a wikipedia article on MLS expansion" that will eventually topple a very large domino labeled "come out as trans with a ton of supportive friends".

I’ve talked at length about being trans, I’m not going to rehash too much of that here, but as the meme says, there is a direct line between fatefully looking up MLS expansion on wikipedia to searching on google to learn more about potential teams and finding Detroit City to joining the NGS, to meeting amazing people and building a support structure, to getting involved with more LGBT+ folks, to eventually my coming out as trans back in 2020.

Isn’t that crazy? Like if I were to go back in time and be able to pull ten years younger me aside and point out onto the pitch and up at the smoke and go “That. That is what enables you to finally come out.” I don’t think twenty-three year old me would’ve been able to grasp it, even fully understand the enormity and the utter correctness of that statement.

Detroit City means a lot to a lot of people, and like a fractal faceted diamond, it reflects and refracts all of us at once, and the sparkles dance in our eyes forever. Over the next few months and years and decades I expect we’ll see a lot of emotional posts like this. Of people who found City because of some cheap tickets or a quick blurb in ESPN and in doing so find a life-changing community. They, like me, will find themselves swept up in something amazing.

Here’s to many, many more years of Detroit City Football Club!

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

The Kit Post 2022

Welcome, welcome to my eighth annual Detroit City FC kit post. For those new to the site, new to Detroit City, or both, let me give you a quick idea of what this yearly even is about: when a Detroit City kit reaches the end of its life, usually at the end of a season, but sometimes at the end of the year (this time it’s both), I do a review of the out-going kits and design a set (home, away, third) of new kits for the upcoming year/season.

If you need a handy guide to my previous updates, here you go!

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021

2021 was an amazing year for Detroit City, quite possibly the best since the inception. An utterly dominant season that technically started in the fall of 2020, Detroit City won everything that we could. We were so dominant that to keep up appearances and competition, buys and spots in the finals were consistently given to a number of teams with a growing number of asterisks behind their names.

I helpfully updated this graphic for NISA when they tried to hand-wave away that every possible path to the Championship had actually been seized by Detroit City. But I don’t think the league appreciated my efforts.

In the end, though, City saw it all the way through to the end, beating LA Force and gaining that fabled star over the crest. It was an emotional moment for all of us, but for the team it was the plateau that would hold through the end of 2021, when we won our third consecutive NISA “season”-thingy.

It really is hard to emphasize how much of a powerhouse Detroit had become, and instead of the tide lifting all ships, things seemed to get worse. Bad teams just upped the chippiness and physicality, taking advantage of NISA’s unpaid refs and willingness to let red cards just be forgiven with no real fall-out. With all that in mind, it’s not surprising that Detroit City chose to fauxmote to the USL Championship, a move that is rather fraught, so let’s start there (because this really is as much as season retrospective as it is a kit post, despite the title).

My thoughts are mixed to say the least, when it comes to this move. USL has long been a bogey in the dark, looming over Detroit City since our early days and the on-and-off proxy battles with Dan Duggan and the Michigan (now Flint) Bucks. Their model, especially in 2013 and 2014 was MLS but not as good, going as far to act as an MLS stand-in during these battles.

The closed system. The high fees to enter. The countless MLS 2 teams. USL was not where anyone wanted to see Detroit City, and I assume there are folks who continue to not want to see us there, and I won’t fault them that.

While Sean Mann has assured us that our IP is safe and that the gameday experience will almost certainly not change, the latter still needs to be proven, and I’d bet many people will remain apprehensive until the end of time, because if anything, the USL has proven to be as fickle with rule enforcement as NISA has. Lastly, when talking about USL, is how did we afford it to begin with. Word is an angel investor stepped in, one who wishes to remain anonymous, but I don’t think that soothes anyone’s minds. Really, it only bristles us more. So now we have a league that could, at any time, step in and fuck with how we do things and an anonymous owner who could step in at any time and fuck with how we do things – either through direct action or inaction.

On the other hand, we had clearly outgrown NISA and all the worrying warts that made us sigh or roll our eyes aren’t as forgivable two years into the experience, especially given the arbitrariness of them. COVID doesn’t stop NISA from living up to its own rules and its own disclosed values, but shitty league owners do. NISA is “independent” but independent seems to have less to do with not fucking with teams and fans (which NISA is happy to do) and more like “letting certain owners get away with whatever they want so long as they throw a big enough fit”. Plus vetting is apparently non-existent as a number of vaporware teams appear in equal standing with Detroit City, threatening to water it all down for us.

Sure, for many of us NISA was the equivalent of the Titanic in the vicinity of Liverpool circa 1912 – but we’re not in Liverpool anymore, we’re off the coast of Newfoundland and given the choice of staying on the Titanic or jumping over to the Carpathia, some of us see the choice as easier than others.

Does it make hypocrites of all of us?

Unpopular answer – yeah, yeah it does. But you roll with the punches knowing that’s the only thing folks got on you and keep on supporting.

Luckily for me, the kits are a much easier topic to tackle. I absolutely loved both of our primary kits. I especially loved that the squad itself grew so attached to the away kit they were requesting to wear it for big matches and the championships. They couldn’t’ve have picked a better kit to win trophies in, except for maybe the home one. But that’s just me.

The home kits were a perfect example of a clean kit – a phrase that I’ve used in contrast to a plain kit quite a bit on this site. Like pornography and art, sometimes you need to see it to know the difference. A plain kit comes off the rack, or does nothing to look like it didn’t. Whereas our home kits used the gold adidas striping to frame the otherwise “plain” shirt, giving it an extremely intentional and professional look. The gold trim is something I had wanted to see for quite some time, I hope we stick to it. While the all-rouge or rouge-on-rouge-on-rouge kits are okay, I’d rather keep that for elements like hoops or stripes while the gold details can be kept.

Meanwhile, the away kits were absolutely gorgeous. Gold bodies with white sleeves, gold trim on the sleeves and shorts kept them unified with the home kit. And boy did those kits get plastered everywhere on the media. Every time we needed to lift a trophy, there they were. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few new comers who didn’t wonder if we were really Le Champagne. A little-noted feature of all three kits that I adored was that the crest changed to match the kit it was on – rouge and gold for the home, champagne and white for the away, black and grey for the charity kit.

And while we’re on the charity kit – they never grew on me, quite the opposite really. Intricate, sublimated designs aren’t my thing. Plus it required us to use Admiral kits which probably meant that more could go to the Give Merit charity, but eh. I don’t like kits as picture canvases and prefer that designs stick to the old limitations even as everything becomes sublimated now.

Anyway, my usual list of disclaimers, which I’m just copy-pasting from last year because why the fuck not?

  • I don’t work for the DCFC front office
  • The DCFC front office fucks with me
  • Kits shown here are not official direction
  • Logos, league, and sponsors are used without permission
  • Sponsors and league are not official nor necessarily endorsed by our front office
    • I refuse to include the Chevy logo on my work, deal with it
  • The reality of 2022 might be very different than what I predict here, I love the challenge regardless

Before we got to the designs, I want to talk briefly on process, because I often touch upon it when writing these posts anyway. Since I am a stickler for very traditional designs, I often “sketch” kits in wikipedia format before scaling them up. I mentioned this forever ago in a post about working on the first Harper’s kits. Recently, I made a photoshop template for free-hand sketching wiki kits, so I don’t have to rely on the finicky template system, instead allowing me to potentially churn out dozens of designs with little or no trouble.

And as of late, that’s where I’ve been starting for bigger projects like this. Getting my thoughts out and on a piece of digital paper allows me to test things out, or get a better grip on the reality of what I’m thinking. Some designs die here because their flaws become obvious or seeing them for real makes me aware that they don’t really look like a Detroit City FC kit.

I’ve been finding this process to really help, especially when it comes to broadening my designs, proper framing, and getting ideas out and on the page without committing too much energy to them. That’s the best thing – the experimentation. Since I’m working in a tiny format with barely any resolution, I can sketch an idea, see it sucks, and move on all in like three minutes, instead of thirty. It means I don’t rely on crutches as much, even though, a favorite of mine is about to appear again.

This year one of the designs to not make it was a throwback to the 2013 kits, with the rouge stripe through the chest on the away kit. I was conceptualizing what a “better” version of that would look like. It just never worked and I knew it wasn’t working without feeling committed to the design. I moved on to another idea I had and it looked much, much better. So that’s what you’ll see here.

And with all that out of the way, let’s see some kits!

The Home Kit

The 2022 Home Kit Prediction – Hoops with gold trim

I’ve often said that the home kit can be hardest, though perhaps the better word is it can be more daunting. There’s a lot of focus on getting the home kit right and folks can be much more picky about what is and isn’t on it. This year I wanted to return to a focus on kits that can be produced by a company like Adidas, after a few years of allowing some slips into the sublimated hell that is dominating US kits right now.

After such a stellar year, I wanted to go back to a reoccurring Detroit City kit – the rouge on rouge hoops. City has worn hooped kits twice before: 2014 and 2017. Of the two, I think the 2017 did it better, and not just because it was Adidas over Nike. The darker “base” with the lighter “hoops” just looked overall better to me, and I wanted to follow up on that. I also wanted to keep the gold framing – we are rouge and gold after all. Having both colors on the kit at once is a good nod to that. I kept it cohesive with little light rouge touches in the shorts, using an extra little line to break up the vertical stripes and at the hem of the shirt, which gives good definition to the overall makeup of the kit.

The Away Kit

The 2022 Away Kit Prediction – Half-and-half champagne and white

Champagne is a difficult color to work with, admittedly. Generally, it doesn’t come out looking like “gold” so much as sandy tan, while “gold” is usually just a highly saturated yellow (think the Packers). Such is the disconnect when working with a color named after a shiny metal. The alternative, for Detroit City, would be white, which is our usual away kit color. Personally? I prefer the champagne, I think it looks better, it’s not a common color for kits, and again, we are the Rouge and Gold, so it’s nice to stick to that.

But as in many things in life, it can sometimes be important to compromise. Gold? White? Why not both. And thus we arrive at a staple design that rarely makes its way to the United States – the half-and-half. Here I’m working with a base of champagne, with the right half of the kit colored white. The sleeves are both champagne, as they are often a separate “item” to be colored on sites like Adidas, with no option to split them. Like the home kit, I wanted to showcase both colors, and so here I use rouge as the framing color in the cuffs and the stripes. And bucking previous trends, I went with the champagne socks – something unseen since 2012.

The Clash/Alternate Kit

The 2022 Clash Kit Prediction – Verdigris

The template I work with is admittedly not that impressive, but it is cheap and it does work for someone who is more of a spirited amateur than a professional. A few years ago I turned off the layers that are intended to add the photorealistic shading and texturing to the kits, in favor of this more cartoony/sketch look. One of the downsides to that was when you made clean kits it effectively came out looking like a romper, with nothing dividing the shirt from the shorts. But this is an actual design concern and this year I wanted to address it with the hem at the bottom of the kit.

Verdigris, the color of oxidized copper, has been a popular recommendation when I seek them out. The Spirit of Detroit, the statue that is at the heart of our crest, is in person a large copper statue and is, in fact, verdigris. It goes without saying, then, that this would be a fantastic choice for an alternate kit, though I think the color would be hard to do in reality. I used gold and black to frame the kit, leaving it otherwise unblemished by design elements. The sleeves have some vertical elements that I saw in my head as going partway around the sleeve, so it wouldn’t just be the ones visible.

The Sketches

The wikified sketches I did before kicking off proper renders.

I mentioned above that I use tiny wiki-sketches to get my ideas down on paper first, so I wanted to include the actual sketches at the bottom of this post. There are some differences for sure – for example the solid bar gold tops of the rouge kit wandered over to the clash. Part of that was just about look. The verdigris kit also had a slightly different collar look, with the gold not completely surrounding the neck, but I just couldn’t get it to look right in the render, so it was dropped. Otherwise, I think I stayed pretty true to the original sketches, and they look amazing in miniature, if I do say so myself.

A fine trio of kits!

So that’s that for the 2021-wrap up and the 2022 kit post. As you can see by the sorry state of my site, I don’t really post much to it but this annual shindig, but hey – what can you do? 2021 was a hell year, just like 2020 and there wasn’t much for it.

As always, if you’re interested in commissioning me, you can check out my portfolio/commissions page for what to expect. Have a lovely holiday everyone, and I hope to have more stuff to put on this site eventually other than just “I’m trans” and “I love kits”, but honestly, that’s probably all it’ll be for a while!

Cheers!

Background Photo Credit:
Photo 75098233 © Jesse Kunerth | Dreamstime.com

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

The Kit Post 2021

To be honest, I actually though I had until this summer to work on this post, which I usually do as a wrap up to the previous season, but noooo~ we’re going to do a mid-season kit change. So here it is fuckers, the kit post twenty-twenty-one

For those new to the site: HI! I mostly post about sports and kits, sorrrrrrry! If it helps I do have something in the works combining kits and trans that will happen eventuallytm. At the wrap up of a Detroit City FC season kit’s lifespan, I do a little write up about the last set, things I guessed wrong or right, and then come up with three new kits (home, away, alt) to get everyone excited for the unveiling of the upcoming kits.

If you want to check out any previous Kit Post, here’s a handy guide:

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020

So in last year’s post I went a little off the beaten path and came up with some designs that were a little different both for Detroit City and for myself. I went with heavily sublimated kits in the vein of Inaria or Icarus with details across the actual bodies of the kits that would require some level of customization on the part of the manufacturer.

I think I was closest with the away kits, in which I predicted a white with rouge hooped kit and off-colored socks, and while literally none of that happened, the actual away kit was white with rouge pinstripes and has very much grown on me over the last year. It is, in fact, the 2020 kit that I own, as I rarely buy more than one. It was in the white kits that Le Rouge dominated the Fall Championship, and in those kits we hoisted the cup, which given the climate of 2020, was an amazing and cathartic thing to see. I, for one, will always associate the image of Stephen Carroll pouring an entire can of Stroh’s into his mouth with the Fall trophy with 2020. Victory in the face of adversity, celebration in the face of uncertainty will always be 2020 to me.

The home kits, however, were frustrating to me, visually, the pin stripes so small as to be effectively invisible from far away, yet so painfully obvious when up close, ruining an otherwise crisp kit. They didn’t do it for me, I guess, and this is obviously a quite subjective take. I think it was particularly rough following the very popular 2019 design, which was very, very clean and of course also came with a lot of baggage and trophies. Somehow, though, I don’t feel like I’m missing out not seeing another trophy or three lifted in that particular design.

And there were no alternative kits last cycle, thanks in no small part to COVID. So Nothing to say here.

Anyway, my usual list of disclaimers, which I’m just copy-pasting from last year because why the fuck not?

  • I don’t work for the DCFC front office
  • The DCFC front office fucks with me
  • Kits shown here are not official direction
  • Logos, league, and sponsors are used without permission
  • Sponsors and league are not official or necessarily endorsed by our front office
  • The reality of 2021 might be very different than what I predict here, I love the challenge regardless

I am pleased that so far Detroit City has resisted the temptation of highly sublimated kits, and happy that they’ve stuck with Adidas. We shall see if that continues (I suspect it will given the respectability and reverence for the brand). Say what you will, getting good kits from Adidas just has a certain something to it, it elevates Detroit City, and that’s not worth nothing, especially when you’re talking about charging $80+ for a soccer kit.

Assuming we stick with Adidas, we can actually have some potential throwbacks to our 2013 kits, though maybe those should wait for 2023, then? I sketched them up in October of last year. It’d also be really cool for 2022 being our tenth anniversary or even this year being our tenth season to see the club release a poster with all the kits so far made by Dave at Historical Kits. That would be a legitimate instant grab for me.

Anyway, we’re about 700 words into this beast, so why don’t we move on and get to the goods? Here are my designs for the 2021 Detroit City FC kits!

The Home Kit

After a couple years of more complicated designs, I wanted to get back to something simpler this year, and that’s the theme of this trio – clean. Clean is a hard thing to describe. Clean to one person is plain to another, and plain is bad, it’s boring. So how does one design for clean while avoiding plain? Well, that’s really hard to say. For me, plain kits have no details, and they elicit little emotional investment. Small details, like the gold cuff stripes on the shirt and shirts, the fleurs de lis on the socks mirrored onto the shirt and shorts in small ways to me builds a cohesive whole.

For the home kit, I went with an old-school design that will be familiar to fans (and enemies) of teams like Arsenal and Ajax. The core of the kit is a darker, more purpley rouge, with the outside being brighter. The cuffs and the collar are the darkest, giving a boarder to it all, and of course small golden lines throughout make it cohesive. I always suspect my home kits will be the most divisive, and that’s no different here.

The Away Kit

I really liked the gold and black kits from my 2020 set, and I started with that here. You might notice the same Adidas stripes turning into a colored inset in the pits and on the sleeves. But I wanted to walk away from the black because this is the away kit, which needs to get tied more strongly in with the over-all colors of the club. So here I went with rouge as was the case for the 2017 kits. Detroit City’s first away kits were gold, and they’ve popped up here and there, but gold is a difficult color to work with in manufacturing. In the end you are effectively left with two choices: sand or yellow? In the past, Detroit City has gone the route of sand, avoiding the garish yellows of teams like the Green Bay Packers.

When designing these, it felt very subtractive, which is an unfortunate feeling. I was removing features rather than adding them and here I was having trouble finding a place to add anything of note. I did bring back the fleurs from the home kit, this time only on the shirt, as I have let the shorts remain more clean, letting the white dominate. It is easy to overpower white, especially in the shorts. And I wrapped it up with tow-tone rouge turn-overs on the socks.

The Clash/Alternative Kit

This one is by far and away my favorite of this year. I took a lot of inspiration from the popularity of the 2019 alternate kits, a keepers kit that appeared like exactly once as far as I am aware, and FC St. Pauli. When you have the word “Ally” written across the chest of every kit, it was hard not to want to lean into that in more ways than one. This kit probably took the longest, had a very strange evolution, and was workshopped a bit more than the away kit and far, far more than the home (I rarely workship home kits).

Pink and black are an amazing combo, it’s hard to do wrong, if I’m honest, and that’s good because there might be some fun stuff with Harper’s dropping soon that I’m very excited for. This kit was the hardest when it came to balancing clean and plain, or clean and over designed. Especially when you introduce the pride flag into things, you have a lot of colors competing for attention, which is why reducing them to thin stripes ended being just what the doctor ordered. Originally, for example, the whole cuff was a pride flag, which then makes the sleeves look busy, which then makes the shirt look paradoxically empty. I think the balance was struck here, and it is certainly my favorite design of the bunch.

Once again folks we have come to the end of another Kit Post. Like I said up top, I thought I had another two or three months to work on this, and with all the other work I’ve been doing lately, I was worried that I wouldn’t have the juice to get through this one on such short notice.

I’d love to hear any thoughts or other idea you might have on twitter, and if you like my work, as always – please check out my commission page for pricing and what to expect, as well as some of my recent designs.

Cheers, everyone!

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

The Kit Post – 2020

This is a bit delayed what with so much more Detroit City than we’ve ever had before. This is the sixth Kit Post and it’s the closest to it’s actual year, though I am unsure if Detroit get’s its new kits before the Spring session of NISA or before the premier of our women’s (!!!) team in the summer. Or, alternatively, after the women’s season and before the start of the 2020/21 season of NISA.

If I had to guess, it’d be option number three. Anyway, let’s cut the chaff and get to this, shall we?

For the uninitiated every year after the DCFC season ends, I write up a review of the previous kits (or current as it might very well be) and draw up some potential designs for the upcoming season (hence the title being a year in the future).

The post from previous years can be found here:

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019

First, for the interested, you can actually see a wiki-fied list of Detroit City’s kits in as many combinations as I could remember. If you know of any other combinations, let me know! Especially if you have photographic evidence. I’d love to build a robust list. Some of the designs are not quite up to snuff, but I’d like to fix that in my free time over the next year.

So we didn’t go all out with our home kits, as I “predicted”, rather quite the opposite – DCFC returned to the dark purply maroon with a simple, clean kit with the dark red used in the piping elements on all three (the socks I’m not 100% about, tbh) pieces of the kit. Initially I think this caused a bit of a stir after a number of years of more complicated kits. The last time we wore plain kits were the much more off-the-shelf Nike kits of 2016.

The away kits were certainly a thing, though. White bodied and red sleeved, they used the red in the piping and after a humorous mistake by Toledo, appeared in the “Kit Man Moi combination” using the red shorts and socks in order to prevent a clash. These were certainly a thing to behold, beautiful even, in their simplicity without just being plain white. I loved the look personally, even though I didn’t get one from the store.

Lastly, this is the first time Detroit City has ever had a true “alternate” kit, and boy were they better than anyone could ever imagine. Pure black with gold piping. What a marvelous look for the club and I’m so happy they got to be used more than once. The boys in rouge looked absolutely stunning in black.

With three solid hits, it’s almost impossible for me to imagine what could be next. And that isn’t just a remark about kits, that’s also a remark about everything. The season was spectacular. Top of the table, Midwest finals, Members Cup champion. Our new Gaffa created a powerful side that played well and looked like a cohesive team, something I think was sorely missing the last few seasons.

But let’s give it a try anyway, shall we?

Anyway, the usual disclaimers before we continue:

  • I don’t work for the DCFC front office
  • The DCFC front office fucks with me
  • Kits shown here are not official direction
  • Logos, league, and sponsors are used without permission
  • Sponsors and league are not official or necessarily endorsed by our front office
  • The reality of 2020 might be very different than what I predict here, I love the challenge regardless

First things first.

Hummel?

Or Adidas?

Obviously for my kits it doesn’t matter, but for the unaware, NISA has signed a preferred supplier deal with Danish kit maker Hummel. This deal, as far as this writer is aware, basically gives teams access to cheaper, customizable kits from a supplier large enough to handle the quantities needed while allowing other teams to choose other suppliers if so desired.

Here’s the thing. I like Adidas, but I also understand that they are expensive and that their recent batch of templates leave a lot to be desired, especially in an era where even most small suppliers offer full sublimation of kits at a fraction of the cost of Adidas’ prices. A savings which can hopefully bring kit costs back to a more reasonable $50 or $60.

Hummel also was a leader in the sport hijab business as the main supplier for the Afghan Women’s NT. We’d be partnered with a company that holds many of our ideals and has partnered with some big names.

I guess what I’m saying is – if DCFC ditches Adidas for Hummel, I won’t lose much sleep over it. And hopefully I can afford more kits, which isn’t that just swell?

Okay, moving on to the part that I’m sure you’re all actually interested in, my 2020 designs for the Detroit City FC kits.

The Home Kit

Despite some earlier comments on thinking of going 90s, I ended up retreating from that pretty quickly. My focus on neotraditional design is pretty incompatible with the variety of design that embodied the 90s in football and despite doing some research, I don’t think it’s an æsthetic I could replicate in the time frame I had set aside for this project.

Here I went with a rather clean design, focusing only on trim and small flourishes. I touched up the collar and cuffs with a dark maroon, small touches of gold. On the left shoulder, a gradient of fleurs de lys come down roughly in line with the crest and are echoed in the socks with a very faint pattern there as well as the two gold stripes.

I like the over-all feel of this kit, though it is not my favorite from the three this year. It’s simple without being plain; the elements like the fleurs and the gold flashes on the neck and cuffs given extra weight from a design that isn’t fighting itself for your attention.

The Away Kit

This was the first kit I finished this year and it’s arguably my favorite. There’s a different sort of feeling when you work on a home kit than an away kit an especially a clash/alternative kit.

When asking for ideas for the home kit, I got some suggestions for sure, but there were definitely some ideas where I thought to myself, “I’d rather not start a riot.” Home kits are sacred territory and making big, uncalled-for changes can get a certain reaction from a fan base.

Away kits, though, have a bit of leeway and I wanted to play with that leeway this year. This idea struck me while doing research on historicalkits.co.uk, Specifically I was looking at Hearts kits and I noticed the black socks with maroon and white hoops on many of their kits back in the teens through 1940s. The idea of combining those with a white and maroon hooped kit was too much to resist, so here we are.

The Clash/Alternative Kit

This final kit was going to be an important piece of the puzzle. Alternate kits are used to fill any gaps between the home and away kits when it comes to color. It is easy to see a situation where the rouge home and the white/rouge away kits are both ruled to be ‘clashing’ with another team’s, for example that’s what happened with the game against Toledo at Keyworth.

I think these pretty much fill the gaps.

It’s sort of a take on the alternates from this year with a pretty obvious tweak. We’ve done gold and white a number of times and it’s not a bad look, but black and gold look so damn good together, and it’d be true even if I wasn’t a Boilermaker. I followed New Balance and went with half-and-half socks, this time with a bit of a chance to transition from one to the other without looking like the sock was accidentally only dipped halfway into the dye. The crest is in alternate colors, this time majority gold with the statue in black.

The sash, probably the most prominent feature here, was actually a late addition, spurred on by the suggestion that the gold felt empty. I do think lighter colors are more at a risk of feeling empty than dark. Instead of fading normally, it actually pixelates out of existence as it goes up to the shoulder, which is what gave me the idea of making the fleurs de lys on the home kit fade out quickly going the opposite way.

They, in a way, echo each other.

So that’s all she wrote, my friends! Another annual Kit Nerd Post come and gone.

As always, I hope everyone enjoyed the read and loves the designs, if you have any comments feel free to reach out via twitter. I’d love to hear your thoughts or any other ideas you might have. If you’re interested in perhaps having me work on some kits for you, you can check out my kit design commission page with details such as pricing and what to expect.

I wish everyone a happy holidays and hope to be post more soon!

Cheers.

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

The Kit Post – 2019

Cheers and salutations to the fifth annual Kit Post! Five years of talking my head off in these Sisyphean attempts to further my clout and reach as a kit designer so that one day I may be sipping martinis with Cristiano Ronaldo while one of my kits barely contains his physique.

For those new to my site, whether you hate-watch it or I freshly picked you up during the 2018 Detroit City FC season, welcome! Every year in August I make a post about Detroit City FC’s kits from that season and then make some “predictions” on what we can look forward to next season.

If you’re interested in the previous four, you can find them here:

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018

Over the last several years, I’ve learned a lot about designing kits and how they are made. I’m not far from making the jump from “hobbyist” to “freelancer” and have actually had a few (three or four) false starts on that front. But each time I learn a bit more and come back a bit stronger. I’m also on the cusp of figuring out a way to just design kits and sell them, which I might experiment with. Things like my fantasy kits are probably the best place to start. So if you’re a fan of the Union Macenburgh kits, perhaps you should watch this site or my twitter for details.

My designs, I think, are significantly stronger than they were even a few short years ago. Partially because I’ve started using professional templates, but also because I’ve become better at translating the vision to the page. Still not great at logos. Not sure what I can do for that but keep working on it.

So let’s start with the 2018 Detroit City kits. I have some mixed opinions here and I actually managed to get a few things right:

  • Away kits used white socks with red flip-overs
  • We dropped Detroit Metro Chevy Dealers
  • I predicted the chevron for the home, we used them on the charity kits

Some things that I was completely wrong on:

  • I predicted we’d use the darker, purple-y maroon again for the home colors, we returned to just dark red
  • The away kits returned to white
  • I have *always* predicted a black charity kit, once again that proved not to be true (more on that in a bit)
  • We still didn’t pick up Stroh’s as the primary, but we did pick up Lyft; so welcome to the team Lyft
  • The Metro Chevy Dealers deal did not have multiple years left on it

Okay, but I got some hits! That’s better than nothing.

Last seasons kits can be ranked as thus: Away just barely hedges out Home, then a massive gulf in quality, the charity kits. If we were talking purely the tops it be a much closer race but… let’s just start there.

The charity kits, when first unveiled were already divisive. There’s the undercurrent of anti-blue in the DCFC fandom that is not surprising.  Our biggest rivals all wear blue (Lansing, A2, GR, the Cavs… apparently), so for us to don it as well is not going to be well received. There’s some evidence that the FO is just trolling, but whatever. I liked the sky blue tops, I liked that they still incorporated touches of gold and the rouge chevrons. The problem was everything else. When they were unveiled, they were unveiled with the white shorts and socks. That looked good. Later in the season, I noticed that the white socks that had been worn at the unveiling were not the white socks we were using that season, so I put a vote up. People supported using the away socks or perhaps sky blue socks. What we got was so much worse: the home socks and the home shorts… for some reason. It looked like utter garbage, a very rare miss for our kits.

The home kits, on the other hand, were great. I really liked the subtle nod to Dave Edwardson’s hometown for what turned out to be his final season (apparently, as of writing). The vertical stripes of Newcastle looked good in the two-tone rouge. I prefer the hoops, if I’m honest, but I also like breaking up plain-looking kits. I’m thinking that next year we’ll return to a more plain look. I really hope we avoid the mess of patterns offered by Adidas for the upcoming season. Some are descent… but others are just… bad. Like snow flakes? Really? For fuck’s sake Adidas.

Finally, the away kits, which were absolutely stunning. Loved them. Didn’t grab one because I’m a clutz and I don’t want to ruin a $90 kit. The touches of rouge in the collar and on the cuffs was sublime. That’s how you do an all white kit… by not taking “all white” literally. A few teams in our league, including DCFC a few seasons ago have worn what are essentially bargin-bin white kits from Dick’s that have had the logos and sponsors ironed on. That’s good for a team that pulls fewer fans out per game than it concedes goals, but for DCFC you gotta be cutting edge. This year’s away kits? Italian chef finger kiss Divine.

Before we continue, I have a few disclaimers for readers:

  • I don’t work for the DCFC front office
  • The DCFC front office fucks with me
  • Kits shown here are not official direction
  • Logos, league, and sponsors are used without permission
  • Sponsors and league are not official or necessarily endorsed by our front office
  • The reality of 2019 might be very different than what I predict here

So we’re nearly a thousand words in by this point so you’re probably going, “Nick, just show us your fucking kits,” which I think is a rational response, so we’ll get the show on the road.

Last year I wanted to focus on the possible, that is to say I studied some of Adidas’ available templates and based my designs off those. This year I’m not sticking to that so much. I want kits that are both possible, but also are a bit more involved. So with the next three designs I have one that fits the “fully sublimated” design, the “easily available template” design, and another that falls in between. I liked mixing it up and I liked getting to do some more complicated things.

I have a feeling one or more of these designs might be a tad controversial, but we’ll see.

One last point to address before I get started is that I actually reached out for feedback and ideas and really I only got three: pink/black combo, “verdigris”, and for the sashes from the 2014 season to return. I’m only going to address one of those points here: pink/black. I just designed a pink/black kit for a client and so I was not necessarily keen on doing it again. I love the pink/black combination and I’ll certainly revisit it in the future, but the timing was off for me so it’ll wait. However, I do hope everyone enjoys the one I did make when it comes out in a couple months.

The Home Kit – Soul of Detroit

My 2019 Detroit City FC home kits feature the Detroit city flag sublimated onto the front in the two-tone rouge that has become a mainstay for our home kits in the last few years. For an added touch, I alternated the colors of the sleeves as well to give the traditional feel of a quartered kit, a pretty common design in Europe but very rare on this side of the Atlantic, especially in the US.

I have a love-hate relationship with sublimation. I feel that it’s often misused to create these vastly complicated designs instead of bringing a fresh take on older designs (like using the quarters to create the Detroit flag). Gold trim on the collar, shorts, sleeves, and socks bring the overall look together – an otherwise disjointed design framed and united. Not unlike the city itself.

With the constant war in US soccer on an increasing number of “fronts”, including Detroit and now Chattanooga, I wanted to make it perfectly clear what team is Detroit’s team.

The Away Kit – Heart of Detroit

The idea of bringing back the sash from the infamous “kitless” season of 2014 (which also gave us the hoops for the first time) has crossed my mind, but having it specifically called out when I requested input made it too much to avoid.

The sash itself is two-tone rouge, like the home kit, to give it a bit of dimension, and then “trimmed” in gold. The gold trim on the sleeves and shorts remains from the home kits, but the collar switches to rouge, not unlike the 2018 kits, and I kept the red flipover with white stripes for the socks.

A repeat of the 2014 and 2017 seasons would be fantastic, picking up this under-rated beauty would be a great place to start. That and picking up a certain WMB.

The Charity Kit – Spirit of Detroit

So the suggestion of “verdigris” was a fascinating one, certainly got my gears turning for possibilities. For the unaware, verdigris is the color of weathered copper… featured prominently on old statues like the Statue of Liberty and our own Spirit of Detroit, which has been featured on every single Detroit City FC kit from the very beginning.

I knew right away I wanted to go into one of those “traditional” kit designs that are not common in the United States. Originally I started with the quarters, but I quickly shelved this. It just didn’t click in my head, so I switched the the halved design thinking that I could add some smaller details in it to give it some life. Sublimation ideas crossed my mind, including the statue proper, but like I said the statue is on every kit and I didn’t want it to look like it was a larger crest sublimated over the entirety of the kit. I also considered some golden pin stripes, but again getting too complicated.

What I chose is what’s here: the gold collar and trim on the shorts, sleeves, and socks as well as the verdigris and white alternate logo. Sleeves alternate color like the home kit (or really the home kit picked it up from here as this was the first kit I worked on) with the YMCA as the charity sponsor. Between the two halves I applied a bit of a staggering design to give it a bit of needed life without over-complicating the entire design.

This is absolutely, hands down, my favorite of the three. The choice of verdigris as a color was amazing, it works brilliantly with the gold and white and is definitely being added to my dossier of color combinations for later. If I had to pick one kit, just one kit for DCFC to actually make real, no competition: it’s this one.

So that’s that! Kit Post 2019 has come and gone and we’re still under 2000 words!

I hope everyone enjoyed the little discussion today and I really hope everyone loves the designs. As always, keep your eyes on my twitter where I often post snippets of, or even full designs for kits and in the coming weeks definitely stay tuned for some big unveilings that I have planned.

And what do you guys want to see? What did you like, what didn’t you like from the 2018 Detroit City kits? Let me know!

Cheers, everyone!

Detroit City FC, Soccer, Worldbuilding

Mythology

Eight thousand (ish) years ago, my ancestors sat on the banks of the Black Sea in a region that is now Ukraine and looked out over the waves, probably telling stories. By all accounts they had a language, but what it was is unknown, and they had religion, which we do know a bit about. The stories they told around the fire or in holy places were probably not all that different from the ones we tell now. They’d speak of divine intervention, the power and might of warriors, the calm and love of healers.

Today, we speak of the same things with the same reverence. We build the same mythologies, these stories that might have no importance to someone outside of the tribe, or might be thought of in the opposite like, a tale of woe a tale of glory; a tale of victory a tale of defeat. But the sharing of these stories, the telling of having been there, of having felt the emotion first hand, will only last so long. These beloved memories will slip fully into myth.

But they also slip into myth today, in real-time, whenever they are recounted to someone who had not been there. Or every time we add a little detail, subtract a little detail, or embellish something a wee bit. When we let emotion get the best of us and blind us from an objective retelling, because an honest retelling not need be constrained by reality.

I’ve been thinking about these modern myths recently because a coworker asked about my desktop backgrounds, modern cave paintings depicting warriors in celebration or battle. Warriors wearing rouge and gold and those who see them off to battle sounding horns and manipulating the battlefield with smoke and fire. He asked what they meant and so I told him in a rather round-about way. I didn’t tell him the objective truths behind the images; I told him the myths, as real to me now as they were when I witnessed them with my own eyes, my own ears.

I told him of the great warrior WMB, swift as the wind, as nimble as a bird, who with strength and resolve dashed our foes, the vile Lansing, breaking them forever, never to rise from field again.

I spoke of the Dragon, who with rippling abs too numerous to count, dug in and rescued our forces from defeat in such a glorious way that the songs of our people summoned forces far greater to extinguish our fires.

I regaled him with the story of the beast Louro and his one-man-stand against a great stag, and beating his chest when he left that monster bloodied and dead in its own meadow. And of when he raised that golden belt above his head, surrounded by a grateful tribe who had traveled seeking revenge.

And the mousy knight, with his right foot of destiny, when things looked tight and bleak, and that our wall of brick would be called upon to save the day, did lay low that monster from the suburbs in the ninety-third minute.

But not just warriors, I also told tales of great journeys to far off lands. Of invading Cleveland (a story that I told second-hand), of bus trips to sleepy towns in Wisconsin, or converging on a field of corn in the midst of a thunderstorm.

Of friends from far overseas who came in celebration, of culture shared, history shared, of pride shared.

I told him of foes.

Of dances that could’ve lasted forever.

I spoke of friendships that were forged with one who should’ve been our enemy, but when we saw him on the field, leg shattered, we rallied around him, brought him care and comfort. Sent him home more one of us then one of them.

There were great community gatherings, of celebration, of care, of community coming together to fix a chariot, or to heal one of our cherished sisters.

And too, I told him of that darkest moment, when things looked grim, and the vile enemy did have the advantage three to nil, with one of our warriors out of the fight. And how our songs never ceased. How our voices lifted and united. And slow and steady our warriors fought back, and before the day was over, found ourselves evenly matched. And the great warrior Seb did celebrate as a windmill, standing strong over a field of rouge and gold tulips.

He listened with eyes wide, he understood what it meant, that these were no ordinary tales of gallantry, these were myths, enshrined forever by the tribe. They would only grow brighter with time, a little fuzzier sure, but no less true, no less glorious.

In the nascent days of a kingdom, these myths bind us together, and they tell of who we are, what we stand for.

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

The Kit Post – 2018

Welcome to the fourth annual Kit Nerd Day!

That’s right, I’ve done three of these already, and so far I’ve successfully predicted literally zero of the kits. Of course, that isn’t necessarily the point. The point is for me to have fun and for you guys to get a gander of all the crazy ideas constantly going through my head.

For those new to the site: every year around the end of August I do a post with some ideas and thoughts about next season’s kits. So just to repeat, these are ideas for the 2018 season.

And, like always, let’s start with some disclaimers. First, I am not a professional. I don’t work for Detroit City FC or any of the major kit design companies. I’ve used all images without permission. Nothing I post represents an official direction of the front office or any one tangentially involved. Remember – the FO actively works to fuck with me and they’ve even told me.

Any potential sponsors/leagues, these are not endorsed by the FO, the NGS, or anyone else. I make them for fun.

So the first thing is thoughts on last year’s kits.

Fuck. Yeah.

I mean, that was a crazy season. Beat two professional European teams. A new record-sized crowd was there. We won the Midwest. We attracted attention from all over the world through our friends at Copa90US. Keyworth’s stands are nearly completely opened. The “Wolfpack” started as a meme and ended up as a rallying cry. I got to meet Peter Wilt, who’s setting up NISA, in the stands at the Key. So that was pretty awesome from just a soccer-nerd standpoint.

Oh.

And Lansing blew a 3-0 lead.

As for the kits: the hoops returned! We did actually get throwback kits (to the ’67 Cougars). We even made the long-desired, long-awaited switch to Adidas! That’s fucking awesome. These kits were way better quality than the Nike’s. Way better. They did come at a higher price tag for us, but damned were they fucking gorgeous.

Across the board they were fantastic. From the hooped rouge on rouge on rouge kits to the golden away days kits (which saw quite a bit of use at home) to the fantasticly simple charity kits to those drop-dead gorgeous Cougar throw-backs. There are three 2017 kits in the Kendall-Collins household. I feel that is too few, but it is what it is.

Adidas pretty much owns US soccer, namely through their agreement with MLS, which IIRC was just renewed. Nothing of their really struck me this year. Portland’s home kits are more reminiscent of their third kits from previous years, which is nice.

Atlanta’s kits are pretty good. I’m a fan of the black/red combo and the grey and red makes for an interesting away. Columbus got their yellows back. That’s good. New England has an interesting 50/50 kit, rare on this side of the pond.

I noticed a few “default” designs either leaked into MLS or out. Atlanta’s home kit. NE’s home. Columbus’s away. Houston’s away. Plus any solid color kits. Not a good or bad, just something I found interesting.

Okay, some thoughts about DCFC kits in general before I move forward with unveiling my designs.

According to Crain’s the deal with Adidas is a multi-year agreement. That means I can pretty easily open up the Adidas miTeam app and fiddle around. But instead of using their kit builder, I’ve chosen to instead create some designs based on what’s available in the kit creator. So these designs should be entirely possible for Detroit City to don for 2018.

Moreover I’ve learned about when they actually put in the orders, so… I know that I’m ahead of the curve here. Fingers crossed. Is this the year we get the Nick Kendall kits?!

We’ll see.

One last note:

Sponsor – Stroh’s

After the loss of Flagstar as a sponsor, I’ve had to switch it up. I’ve more or less fallen into the rut of using Stroh’s because damn it looks great on our kits. Now, I don’t actually think this will be a thing because I think the deal with Metro Chevy Dealers also has multiple years left on it, but I’ll be damned if I stick a bowtie on my designs.

The Home Kit – Wolf’s Bite

Starting from the top, my prediction for the 2018 home kit. Based off Adidas’ chevron design – the chest is broken up by a bloodied dagger like a wolf’s blooded maw. Put five or six of them together and you’ve got yourself a fearsome beast.

I’ve stuck with the darker shade of rouge for the main body, adding just the barest hint of a lighter shade for the accents on the side and on the edges. And at the very bottom, just above the hem, is the flag of Detroit.

The Away Kit – Upwards

Next up is the away kits, I want to continue the gold and white kits. I was extremely happy to see them make a return after too many seasons away. We’re the blood and treasure, rouge and gold allez allez, so let’s keep it going. Whether we end up in NISA, NASL, or remain in the NPSL it’s all coming up City.

This design is based on the same design that they use for the New England Revolution’s home kit and has since become a default design, only here the stripes go the whole way through. The rouge accents are far more visible on the gold and white, but remain consistent with the home kit.

The Charity Kit – Soccer’s Heel

Not everyone gets to be a good guy, someone has to play heel so some self-righteous prick can play face and tell himself that no matter his own faults, at least he doesn’t light off smoke, swear, and have too much fun in the stands.

Harking back to arguably one of the greatest teams of all time and certainly back to the single most beautiful Adidas kit ever the charity kits are a combination of black and rouge that begs, begs to be unleashed on the pitch.

Let the soccer moms tremble, everyone’s favorite team to hate is here.

There it is everyone, Kit Nerd Day 2018! What did you like? What do you hate? What do you want to see the Boys in Rouge don this year? Let me know either in the comments or on twitter.

I’ll keep posting extras on twitter as I usually do.

And as always; Lansing blew a 3-0 lead.

Cheers everyone!

Detroit City FC, Opinion, Soccer

Kleinstaaterei – NISA Joins the Mess

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As is often the case German has the perfect word for any situation. Kleinstaaterei literally “small state -ery” is a great description of three things: Germany before Bismarck, the Balkans after 1992, and American soccer in 2017.

Today, as unveiled by Midfield ϕress, the giant goatsee-esque gaping hole in the American soccer “pyramid” might finally come to a close. For those not keeping up (and why would you?) the pyramid is currently very not pyramid-like as we currently have the MLS on top, both the NASL and the USL in tier two, noöne in tier three (because that fucking makes sense), and then PDL and NPSL in tier four.

(Detroit City is in that tier four clusterfuck.)

What is bringing this to a close? In an interview between Chris Kivlehan and Peter Wilt apparently it is NISA: the National Independent Soccer Association the USL to the NASL’s MLS.

Now, a large portion of the hype driving this, that pro/rel has finally reached America is cut down quick; Wilt is pretty straight-forward and honest that there is no agreement between NASL and NISA. He says (emphasis mine):

I presented the concept of the third division league to both the NASL and NPSL.  Both thought it was a great idea, and was needed.  The idea was a link league that would eventually lead to promotion and relegation.  Everyone agreed it was a great idea, but  the devil was in the details.

Over the next several months the focus became who would organize it and lead it, NASL or NPSL.  At the end of the day both said they needed to focus on their own leagues…

This bit of honesty, when showmanship could’ve reigned, is one of the reasons I tend to let Mr. Wilt speak. It’d be easy to promise the sun and stars and deliver New Jersey, but expectations must be reasonable.

So what are those promises? Well, Peter continues by outlining four “pillars” of the league:

I. An affordable pro division national soccer league with regional based competition

II. An independent league with team owners controlling their markets and intellectual property

III. Our intention to incorporate promotion and relegation once the league is fully populated with 24 teams

IV. Have a strong league office with quality staff supplemented by expert consultants

I’m going to break this down from my perspective. One and two say “we’re going to mix the NASL with the NPSL” – regional with low travel costs and independent teams, no franchises here.

The first problem I see, though, is immediately followed by number three: twenty-four teams? But that’s a fourth what the NPSL boasts and about the same as the MLS. It’s also twice the current NASL roster of teams.

How is one supposed to be regional when there are so few teams? Or is the plan to have two divisions? “No” says Wilt. One. One division of eight to ten teams in 2018.

Ooookay.

However, Wilt continues, this will break into two conferences as the goal of twenty-four teams is reached.

I’m ignoring that other part for now.

Lastly, that fourth pillar is just saying to investors “we learned from the NASL blowup at the end of last season and we’re going to move forward smarter”.

Whether or not that is true has yet to be seen, but acknowledging that you have a problem is always the first step to fixing it.

Next few sections are business talk I’m not smart enough to understand.

Flip flip flip.

Wilt brings up an interesting point, which I will use to jump off to that discussion a bit earlier than planned (emphasis mine):

There is the potential that NISA could fully populate at 24 teams before NASL can populate to its goal of 20 teams.  So NISA can work as an incubator of sorts for the NASL, at first, before promotion and relegation.  A team could play for 2 or 3 years in NISA, then join NASL via expansion.  This would allow those teams to get their feet under them from a business standpoint.  They can build their fan base and revenue model while operating at a lower budget.

Well isn’t that a whole lot of common sense, but it still (wisely) skirts around the whole pro/rel issue – which I guess is the point.

I’d like to think that every team in NISA will have the ambition to either buy their way up or earn their way up through a promotion and relegation meritocracy.  Our ambition is to grow the sport.  We want to promote teams to the higher division, and eventually do that in a merit-based way in an open system, which is obviously another contrast to USL.

So the plan seems to be a sort of hybrid system, which makes sense in a round-about way. NISA will probably still be operating without paid players, hoping to maintain the ability to tap into the NCAA’s player base.

Or maybe they’re not.

A longer season might make this harder. Ten teams means eighteen home/away games. Currently DCFC plays fourteen with a pretty packed schedule that relies on favorable geography.

Will the longer season mean fewer NCAA players? Probably. In the past DCFC had issues keeping players from certain schools on board all season because they’d get called back early.

And college players travel notoriously poorly – primarily because they don’t travel so they can work a part-time job. Low-tier soccer in the US doesn’t pay. And without TV deals it probably never will improve too much. That’s what makes MLS squads so much stronger than even NASL or USL squads – there’s a huge cliff between them, a cliff bridged with money from sponsors who want national exposure on TV, not just some YouTuber’s stream.

In the end I think that will be the largest hurdle between NPSL and NISA, but not as big as a hurdle between NISA and NASL. You can’t really be semi-pro, because the NCAA basically dictates that you either pay everyone (and get no NCAA players) or pay no one (and get no professionals).

Now there is some grey room – but it is limited to those willing to essentially work two jobs to play soccer.

I’m going to move this entirely into the realm of my personal thoughts, because the interview, while well-written, starts to get into business stuff pretty quick and I want to just think aloud rather than regurgitate.

I am not convinced by this. I’m just not. If Detroit moves into this league, and given hints from Sarge on twitter, it seems likely, I am worried. I am worried about my club being dragged down by the weight of another ASL. Remember ASL? No? Well they were a thing and they were essentially dead on arrival.

On the flip side I trust Peter Wilt more than most people.

On the flip flip side, USL is also getting ready to launch its own tier three division. There are pros and cons – USL has the “B” squads and affiliate squads that can help bolster their second division in the rough early waters; however that can also stagnate interest in the league from outsiders. It also means that the USL will be running two leagues while the NASL and NISA operate independently, meaning each can focus on their own interests while only paying respect to the other.

Whether they are “relegated” is not my concern. Boot them before they drag the league under.

That sort of decentralization might be healthy and give NISA a good advantage.

I also think that NISA and Peter will attract some interesting teams that will help the league in those early water days with good, strong attendances.

Another issue, though, is that I can’t think of that many teams to make this worth-while. NISA needs to be willing to cut the chaff and not give fledgling teams enough time to sink the entire league. If a team is floundering they need to be kicked out, period. Whether they are “relegated” is not my concern. Boot them before they drag the league under.

This also means that this war between the independent leagues and the franchise leagues has no end. And the hill that seems to be the one NISA/NASL/Peter are willing to die on is this idea of pro/rel. I think, in the end, pro/rel is a marketing ploy – a tag line for the articles to employ to get more clicks. Whether in five years or ten, whether between two leagues or three, I don’t give a fuck about pro/rel as a hill to die on.

Would it be fantastic to have? Yes.

Is it worth losing DCFC for? No.

When is the league healthy enough for pro/rel? When all the sides are pro.

When will that happen? If the NPSL is involved? Never. Without the NPSL? By 2030.

In the end I don’t think pro/rel is here, I think there are ten teams taking a massive risk and I really, really hope it works out for their sake.

And where does this leave DCFC?

I still don’t think MLS will really come.

As always, we are linked to every expansion announcement since 2013 so let’s think this out.

Currently there is a push for “MLS to Detroit” from a couple billionaires. I doubt strongly they are going to actually move DCFC either because they want total branding control or because the owners will stick to their guns before selling out. Or really – both those things.

So that means a tier three DCFC potentially up against a tier one MLS team. Can Detroit support both?

I say “maybe leaning on yes?”

I still don’t think MLS will really come. I think that when Gilbert/Gores don’t get their stadium land, it’ll mostly fall through. And Gores’ recent(-ish) comment on not even wanting another team probably doesn’t sit well with Garber, who will want strong, united owners.

Moreover Garber probably wants to avoid adding a second Miami FC to the mix – with MLS Miami still looking for land on which to build a stadium, the last thing they need is two teams sitting around waiting for property. Or to finally get Miami into the queue only to refill the waiting spot.

I think Garber will aim for “easy” expansion (his comments about St. Louis reflect this) and no messy, political ones.

I think, in the end, Detroit City is moving to tier three and the city is going to remain a one-team-town.

So? Who are the other nine? Here are the ten teams I think will inaugurate Peter Wilt’s NISA (based on twitter rumor, speculation, and bullshit alone):

  1. Detroit City FC
  2. AFC Cleveland
  3. Chattanooga FC
  4. FC Buffalo
  5. A Chicago-based team
  6. An NYC-based team
  7. A Florida-based team
  8. A Mid-Atlantic-based team
  9. A Deep South-based team
  10. A Missouri-based team

Sorry that lacks any form of specificity. Cheers, everyone.

Detroit, Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests

Northern Guard Kilts Part Deux

So we’ve had a less-than-stellar start to the 2017 season, but the victory against Glentoran on Saturday is definitely a well-needed boost to morale.

If you didn’t notice, I took that chance to parade around in my NGS kilt and tens of you might’ve thought, “Damn, where do I get one of those?”

Well you get them from  me. Using this order form. Before 31. August.

So if you’ve read the previous post on this you’ll know how I calculated the prices and how they are subject to conversion rates and tariffs. I can’t see the future, so once I get the 25% of the expected price, you’ll pay the rest once we get the actual price.

In 2016 the actual price and the expected price matched, so that was awesome.

The run-down is (all prices exclude any extras):

  • Base kilts range from $245 to $332
  • The Works kilts range from $285 to $373
  • The Ultimate kilts range from $345 to $433
  • Women’s base kilt range from $245 to $289
  • Women’s Ultimate kilt range from $345 to $389
  • Baby kilts $74
  • Toddler kilts $79
  • Youth kilts $128
  • Raw material is $45/yard

Tartan:

I will try to remember to bring my tape measure to help people with sizing out in the parking lot at Fowling. Otherwise there are measuring guides inside the order form.

I hope to get a few more of these floating around!

Cheers guys!