Thoughts on the Philadelphia Union's New Secondary Kit
The Philadelphia Union dropped their new secondary kit for the 2023 & 2024 seasons on Wednesday
The Philadelphia Union set a remarkably high standard for themselves when they released the “BY U” kit two years ago.
The light blue and lightning bolt kit was a radical change from the boring-ass white secondary kits that the Union wore in previous seasons.
Because that kit was so successful, we were always going to compare its successor to it, fairly or unfairly.
That’s why I think there is more mixed criticism on the new secondary kit, which let’s be honest, looks like an English muffin down to the Thomas’ sponsorship on the front. The contours and the beige colors give it the English muffin qualities. If any of your English muffins are blue, you probably have a third-grader working on a science experiment.
The new kit, like an English muffin, is good, not great, but is still respectable enough where you are not ashamed of owning it.
English muffins are the perfectly fine breakfast food. They are versatile enough to be better than waffles in some instances, but not close to a bagel. You can put butter, jelly, peanut butter and plenty of other things on an English muffin, but it does not beat a bacon, egg and cheese on an everything bagel. (My personal GOAT of non-cereal breakfast foods).
But enough about my eating habits let’s get back to the kit.
I like it. I really do. It still stands out among the other secondary kits in Major League Soccer. I will applaud more teams for catching on to the creativity bandwagon in the last two years, even if the shirts were not as well executed as the Union’s “BY U” kit.
The English muffin kit is another departure from the boring old days of the past where we had to wait and see how teams would try to spin their creativity on their latest white, or cream, or off-white kits.
Creativity is good. New things are awesome. It’s a fun design, and if the English muffin succeeded a strictly white kit, I think it would been received even better than it is.