Toronto FC drop 2022 Prime Blue Jersey, and it’s a yikes

So yeah, like clockwork, This year’s parley/prime-blue MLS-wide kits dropped this morning. They are easily the worst examples of this ongoing endeavor, and it’s not particularly close.

LOL. Yuck. and if you think that’s bad, wait until you see the white version the other half of the league gets (or the Goalkeeper stripes).

According to FootyHeadlines, these kits are a riff on the Adidas 2021 Condivo template, only these are made with extra ocean garbage, so they can look terrible and breathe terribly, too.

I’m actually a fan of the first two TFC Parley kits, though I don’t own one. They were pretty smart if minimal black on white/teal TFC merch that looked clean, if massively uncomfortable (“Who’s up for black plastic mesh in July?”) but these, these are unforgivable.

It’s probably best to pause and remind everyone that Toronto FC gets absolutely no say in these, from design to implementation. This is a league wide initiative. In fact, it’s luck of the draw that we don’t get the white one this year, a quirk of the scheduling Gods over anything else.

I mean, come on Adidas/MLS. This is a lazy Adidas sunday league template, made out of trash, with absolutely zero thought put into it, for upwards of $100, before tax. I’d rather set my money on fire. And I’m talking about the blue one. The white alternate is such an abomination I cannot bring myself to type about it.

These kits are dangerously close to insulting me as a consumer.

Should I talk about that hideous collar? The lazy badge in rust brown for no discernable reason? The shade of green they chose for the GK kits? The lack of women’s cut/sizing AGAIN? Maybe. But that would require effort, and considering zero of that went into this design, it feels like overkill on my end.

Grade: F-

This is terrible. Zero redeeming qualities. I’d rather wear nothing. When the Blue Jays are GIVING AWAY better quality stuff as a loss leader to get you in the door ... we have a problem.

Anyway, you can buy one here, I guess.

As always, resident Kit-Nerd Mark Hinkley has graciously offered a few words and his letter grade:

“I don’t know who these are actually for? Perhaps the intersection of “save the planet” + “I like (name of team)” + “I collect all kits” = audience.

The first year felt deliberate, and every year since then it feels like repurposed overstock. Toronto’s receipt of the blue with red trim one is slightly lesser than the white with pinkish cream trim that their opposition will wear. But my problems lie with the colour combinations. Both teams will have an equally difficult kit to read from a medium to far distance. I understand that “everyone gets either A or B” and while the secondary colour across all kits must be an issue, why can’t MLS/Adidas just offer badge/sponsor colour variants for, if nothing else, legibility. I’d have put pink on the blue kit, but I’d also chosen a different shade than the “knock off box of crayons” blue they went with.

Most importantly, they don’t look all that good. The pattern is the most interesting thing on it, and it’s so on the nose that it’s water because we got it from the ocean... but is this kit $120-150? No. At half price, it feels like too much, and not well planned.

Grade: D+

But what do YOU think? let us know in the comments.