Colombia (Home 2019)

So, we leave Europe for a while and look elsewhere in the world. With three big national team competitions (plus the Gold Cup) this summer, there surely is enough to cover in terms of new jerseys. And I want to start with the Copa America as this very jersey might feature slightly altered in the Premier League next season. More on that in a bit.

It may not be the big story (jersey-wise) of the upcoming Copa America, but the new Colombia shirt is definitely a looker and thus, let’s make this the first Copa America jersey we will look at this year:

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  James Rodriguez and Radamel Falcao celebrating in honor of Quintero at Japan-Colombia 0-1 (Yokohama, March 22, 2019)

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  New font used on the 2019 Colombia jerseys.

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  Presentation of 2019 home kit

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  Colombia 2019 home jersey

‘Bruised banana‘ was one of the first things that came to mind here. And if that was truly the inspiration (Colombia is after all a major banana producer), then kudos to Adidas. But I do have my doubts. I rather think that another 90s inspired print needed to be shown off at a major tournament and of the three South American Adidas teams (there is also Japan) present in Brazil, only Colombia with its yellow tops fit the bill.

However, Adidas fared much better with re-creating a classic kit a year ago than with this one. There is just too much navy on there and the whole look is decidedly cluttered. The wavy bruised banana pattern is created by horizontal lines of differing widths in similar fashion to the current Germany jersey and is also present on the sleeves. But it is all a bit too much as I think the pattern is too big. It also is very much present behind the crest and the Adidas logo on the front and thus de-emphasizes them. Not a very good idea. The placement could have been done in a more clever way. To top it off, the top part of the red numbers on the front is also affected.

I also think the jersey lacks some visual punch due to the even lighter shade of yellow used. It was already too light at the World Cup, but this one takes it a step further into a wrong direction. It increases the contrast even more and thus from a distance, the overall look is a bit “muddy”.

My two favorite features here are the nice fold-over V-neck and also the new number font. Very clear and nicely rounded. It is pleasant to look at and reminds me of numbers used in the 1950s and 1960s. Nice touch.

The back is in complete contrast to the front totally plain. Given that UEFA is trying to ban these two-sided shirts soon, I hope this is also the last time we see this on the international stage. I like that the numbers are clearly legible, but I do not like the contrast between front and back.

Now, back to the ‘bruised banana’: the reason, I chose to write this post first is that I really think that Arsenal could wear a very similar shirt in the ’19/’20 campaign. We already have reports that the ‘bruised banana’ design will come back and this is very close to it. So, you hear it from me first: this is not only the new Colombia home jersey, but also the new Arsenal away jersey! Well, time will tell if I am right here.

As Colombia jersey, this one is meh. At the moment, I do not see the obvious connection to the country (except for the bananas and the colors) and I really do not like the light shade of yellow. The red numbers are saving it from the abyss, but considering the size and the placement of this pattern, this one is not a very good jersey. Sorry, Adidas. However, if you do this for Arsenal, I might give out a higher grade!

My rating: 3/10 stars.

How would you rate this jersey?

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Colombia (Away 2018-19)

And here, with much less emotion, is the other single jersey post for now:

Similar, to Argentina, Colombia was wearing a great away kit since 2015 and of course, common wisdom tells me that in the soccer shirt world great things are rarely carried over to the next instance. However, Colombia is even more interesting (and sometimes frustrating) as they do not have a clearly defined away kit and as varied as the home kit: among others, the national colors yellow, blue and red were all used as an alternate color. Well, given that the team now settled for yellow as their home color, the question was whether the away jersey would either be a red one or a blue one:

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Well, blue it is with orange accents added in for good measure making for a good Dutch away jersey. But this is not the Dutch away jersey! Why orange then? Turns out, the Dutch had a hand in this one as in the 1970s they were so inspirational, that the Colombian national team just decided to copy their shirt and play in orange. And this is sort of an homage to that era. Overall, the shirt is quite simple enough with the orange accents only moderately applied on the collar outline, the sleeve cuffs and all logos and lettering. In this case, the orange enhances the jersey and it looks quite nice. Also, this is one of the few cases, where it makes sense to dish out a monochromatic version of the federation logo. The original colors would not have worked here, but you could also argue that orange was not a good choice then. Well, up for discussion, but I somehow do like the reference to history.

But let’s address the elephant in the room and no it is not the lettering: What’s with this dark blue/black pattern on the proper left? Well, clearly, like the Spain jersey it is a reference to one 1994 template, but a) Colombia did not wear Adidas at the time and b) isn’t it on the wrong side? Yes, absolutely! And while I would like to have it placed on the proper right (like Spain), I find it does enhance the crest a bit more. However, I wonder if a simple darker band wouldn’t also have done the job and why one had to resort to such a complicated pattern. Lastly, couldn’t we have integrated a slight bit of orange there to make it a bit more visible. It may have interfered with the crest, so therefore put it on the other side.

Edit May 2, 2019: Well, I am about to own this jersey and thus dug once again into this pattern and I found something interesting on the positioning of the pattern: While the graphic is undoubtedly 1994 Adidas, the placement is in reference to the mulera, a traditional scarf that Colombian coffee growers (cafeteros – also the nickname of the national team) wear. So, this makes a whole lot more sense and makes this shirt a tad more special. And for that, I raise the grade below slightly.

Edit May 3, 2019: While writing for the 2019 home jersey, it also became apparent that this jersey will not be replaced for 2019, but updated with a new font on the back – a much better one. Check it out here.

Well, I look at it and I do like it a lot if it was a Dutch jersey. For Colombia, the color combination is not quite perfect, but given the inspiration defensible. The dark pattern is a bit of a missed opportunity. Still, I do like this one better than the home jersey as it is still simple and quite bold. It also makes me wonder what could have been: it would have fitted nicely for Argentina if the orange was swapped for light blue or white. And Argentina was using this template, after all …

My rating: 7 8/10 stars.

How would you rate this shirt?

In Search of the Greatest World Cup Goal Scorer – Part II: Adjusting for Word Cup Goal Average

As mentioned in the previous post, goals scored are not entirely comparable. While today’s players get more games, the games played in the early years of the World Cup had more goals. So, in a way it was easier for Just Fontaine to rack up 13 goals in just 6 games, when in 1958 there was an average of 3.6 goals/game. Here is a quick visualization of the World Cup Goal Average (WGA) over the years:

As we can see from that graph, there were a lot of goals before 1960 and since there is a small but steady decline. Maybe things are pointing up again after Brazil 2014, but I doubt it. The solid line is a LOESS trend-line which should take out all random variation. As we can see, the huge outlier 1954 is taken as such, while most values are scattered closely around the line. Of note is also that this way, the 1990 World Cup is really seen as an abnormality. Whether this is actually the case is a good point for discussion: prior to 1992 a goalie could handle a back pass from his own players, which allowed a defense to manage a lead much better. But also, the weather in 1994 was a lot more demanding which often leads to more goals. So, let’s see which is better, the raw data or the smoothed line.

So, how do we adjust now? Well, first of all we need a reference point to compare the value of a goal of say 1950 to say 2010. To me it makes most sense to put everything in reference to the current (i.e. most recent) standing and that would be the 2014 World Cup. Let’s stick with raw data at first and we have a reference WGA of 2,67 goals/game. Now goals scored in tournaments with a higher WGA should count less, while goals scored in tournaments with lower WGA should count more. To achieve this, we divide the reference WGA, WGA_ref, by the individual tournament WGAs, WGA_t, and compute the tournament goal values as

GV_t = WGA_ref/WGA_t.

Here is the full list of these goal values (based on raw data as well as LOESS smoothing) with reference 2014 (i.e. a goal at the 2014 World Cup has value 1.00):

Year	Raw Avg	Raw GV	LOESS	LOESS GV
1930	3.889	0.687	4.049	0.618
1934	4.118	0.649	4.118	0.608
1938	4.667	0.573	4.156	0.602
1950	4.000	0.668	3.999	0.626
1954	5.385	0.496	3.724	0.672
1958	3.600	0.742	3.400	0.736
1962	2.781	0.961	3.107	0.806
1966	2.781	0.961	2.895	0.865
1970	2.969	0.900	2.768	0.904
1974	2.553	1.047	2.741	0.913
1978	2.684	0.995	2.695	0.929
1982	2.808	0.952	2.626	0.953
1986	2.538	1.053	2.565	0.976
1990	2.212	1.208	2.545	0.984
1994	2.712	0.985	2.547	0.983
1998	2.672	1.000	2.566	0.976
2002	2.516	1.062	2.494	1.004
2006	2.297	1.163	2.421	1.034
2010	2.266	1.179	2.454	1.020
2014	2.672	1.000	2.503	1.000

Now, how do we use these GVs? Well, let’s look at Miroslav Klose as an example. In 2002 and 2006 he scored 5 goals each, in 2010 it was 4 goals and an in 2014 2 more goals. So, his time adjusted goal tally using raw data is

G_adj= 5*1.062 + 5*1.163 + 4*1.179 + 2*1.000 = 17.844.

So, his 16 goals in 4 tournaments from 2002 to 2014 are the equivalent of 17.844 goals in 2014. Given that Klose scored most of his goals in tournaments with low WGA, it was obvious that his score would get slightly inflated. We can of course do the same for the smoothed WGAs and arrive at an time adjusted smoothed goal tally of 16.268 for Klose. With this method it is of course hard to see how Klose could be unseeded from his top spot in the overall scorer standings:

		Name	Goals	Gadj	Gadj,LOESS	Rank LOESS
1		Miroslav Klose	16	17.844	16.268	1
2		Ronaldo	15	15.987	15.033	2
3		Gerd Müller	14	13.187	12.698	3
4		Jürgen Klinsmann	11	11.551	10.791	4
5		Gary Lineker	10	11.148	9.790	7
6		Thomas Müller	10	10.897	10.100	5
7		David Villa	9	10.386	9.202	11
8		Grzegorz Lato	10	10.269	9.205	10
9		Gabriel Batistuta	10	10.004	9.812	6
10		Pelé	12	9.974	9.706	8
11		Just Fontaine	13	9.648	9.571	9

OK, that surely did not improve things compared to the unadjusted table. Adjusting for goal value demotes the players from yesteryear and promotes players that played more recently – especially in 1990. Fontaine’s incredible 13 goal tally is now worth a lot less, while Lineker and Klinsmann get quite the boost. If we use the smoothed version, the Top 4 remain the same, but Pelé and Fontaine do not drop as much. Kudos to Gerd Müller who as a more senior player steadfastly remains in the Top 3.

So, how about adjusting for games played in addition which gives us the players adjusted goal average, GA_adj.

		Name	GA	GAadj	GAadj,LOESS	Rank LOESS
1		Oleg Salenko	2.000	1.971	1.965	1
2		Just Fontaine	2.167	1.608	1.595	2
3		Eusébio	1.500	1.441	1.297	5
4		Guillermo Stábile	2.000	1.374	1.236	6
5		Tomáš Skuhravý	1.000	1.208	0.984	9
6		James Rodriguez	1.200	1.200	1.200	7
7		Sándor Kocsis	2.200	1.092	1.479	3
8		Salvatore Schillaci	0.857	1.036	0.843	12
9		Christian Vieri	1.000	1.028	0.988	8
10		Gerd Müller	1.077	1.014	0.977	10
11		Josef Hügi	2.000	0.992	1.344	4
12		Leônidas	1.600	0.931	0.965	5

Hmmmmmmmm … There are elements of this list that I like (Fontaine, Eusebio and Stábile high up, good mixture between older and newer players) , but two things totally discredit it to me: the Bomber is only in 10th place for both rankings. If it comes to pure goal scoring ability, I think one would be hard pressed to find any better player. So, a #10 ranking just does not look right. And then of course the player on top! Thinking about it, it was obvious that Oleg Salenko would rank very high: a high GA in only a single World Cup, which also has a relatively high GV. And while I could see an argument for Salenko having the best single game goal scoring achievement in his 5 goal game against Cameroon (if we forget the shambolic defense and poor motivation of the Africans), I truly have a hard time crowning Salenko as the best World Cup goal scorer of all time. In addition to running up the score on an inferior opponent, these goals also came in a game with nothing to play for.

There are also smaller things, that I do not like. In particular, Skuhravý is ranked higher than Schillaci. Both played in the same tournament (Italia 1990), but Skuhravý’s goals came in tow games: 2 in a 5-1 rout of the USA and 3 in a 4-1 rout of Costa Rica in the second round. Compare that to Schillaci, who scored in 6 different games and 4 of these were game winners and 1 the go-ahead goal in the semi-final! In every regard, Schillaci’s performance was more impressive.

Now, comparing the GAs based on raw data and LOESS smoothing, I do like the raw data better as is mixes the different World Cup periods slightly better. But again, I think that overall both adjusted lists do not satisfy me.

Also, the problem with some players racking up goals against weak opponents, while others consistently score important goals is also present in the previous ranking of adjusted total goals. And while it is easy to knock on Salenko, the same argument can be applied to certified super striker: Gabriel Batistuta. 10 goals surely look impressive, but 3 of these came against a weak Greece team in 1994 and 3 more were add-on goals against a similarly out of sorts Jamaica. That leaves 4 more goals, two of which were penalties in the second round. Batigol was one of my favorite players of the late 90s, but this is not very impressive. Compare this to Eusébio’s 9 goals, where Portugal had to play in the group of death with Brazil, Hungary and Bulgaria, Eusébio had to bring back his team from 0-3 deficit against the pesky North Koreans and then lead Portugal to a third place finish with 2 more goals …

So, while I still think that adjusting for tournament GV is a good and necessary step, there is still some way to go to find a satisfying list taking care of the problems inherent in both of the above. So, to improve the listing, I come to three conclusions:

1. We have to consider not only the fact that a goal was scored, but also how important that goal was. Scoring the third to fifth goals in a 5-0 rout is a nice feat, but all these goals were not important in securing the win. Conversely, scoring three game winning goals in three consecutive games is a highly impressive streak. Also, scoring the game winner in the World Cup final is more important/valuable than doing so in the group stage.
2. Relative performance is a nice measure, but I do start to prefer the absolute performance. While on a very small scale, the Skuhravý vs. Schillaci comparison highlights the shortcomings of relative performance. If we also take importance into account, I think a player scoring many important goals over a larger number of games should be considered a greater goal scorer than one scoring two game winners in two games.
3. The smoothed curve was a nice idea, but the raw data so far led to more satisfying results. I will keep comparing the two adjustments methods, but as of now advantage raw data

Well, the journey has just begun and I hope to get you deeper into World Cup goal scoring history and some statistics in the next post.

Colombia (Home 2016)

Colombia’s shirt history is a very colorful one. Indeed beside the three national colors (first blue, then red, then yellow) they also used the light blue of Uruguay and the orange of the Netherlands. So, when it came to celebrate 100 years of the Copa America, it was a good opportunity to show off some “historical” shade from the past.

White? Yes, white! When Colombia first participated at the Copa America, they did son in white. So, what at first looks a little bit disappointing makes some sense. And in a way, it looks quite classy: white with navy accents as well as red sleeve cuffs. The navy accents are used for the side striping, the manufacturer logo, any lettering as well as the collar. The collar is the same faux shirt-collar that we already saw for Russia, Japan and Spain, where I did not like it. Here, however it is not the same color as the jersey, but rather is the accent and looks more like a proper shirt collar and even if it is not, it looks somehow better. There is also vertical shadow pattern which nicely accentuates the jersey. The only thing I really do not like is the red inset on the back side of the collar. But this does not ruin the overall impression.

While I wish this one was in yellow, the shiny white with navy accents is a very strong look. As a one-off tribute, I find it more than OK.

My rating: 8/10 stars.

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Colombia (Home 2015-17)

The current Colombia home jersey reviewed in this video with links to the 2011 and 2014 versions.

My rating: 8/10 stars.

How do you rate this shirt?

Real Madrid (UCL Away 2014/15)

Well, after Atletico, it is only befitting to look at the defending champion: city rival Real Madrid. After many years of failure, the team finally got its obsession: La Decima. But it has to be said, that not only was victory in Lisbon somewhat lucky (late, late equaliser by Sergio Ramos who already had a big hand in dethroning Bayern Munich), but probably consumed the team so much that they more or less ceded the league to their big rivals. And, although not the stronges team in La Liga last season, they somehow ended up with two trophies. This comes to show you that this team really focused only on the big moments.

Now, I could go with the new home jersey or the somewhat debatable away jersey, but since I am running through Champions League teams, why not look at the somewhat spectacular UCL away jersey designed by Yamamoto:

So, after a few years experimenting with unusual colors like dark green, orange, blue etc., we are back to one of the more popular away colors for Madrid: black! In a way, a logical choice since it is the perfect contrast to the all-white home jersey as well as the only color that is as elegant. And at its core this is a very elegant black jersey with a white Mandarin-style collar and the three shoulder stripes also in white. On the front, there is not much color added as sponsor, crest and Adidas logo also are in white. I may bemoan the monochromatic crest, but it does fit well on this jersey. However, the big feature is of course the dragon pattern on the front in grey. Clearly, Asian-inspired and -targeted it supposedly portrays the strength of the team. Due to the pattern, however, crest and logo have been pushed up a little bit too high for my taste.

While the front does look somewhat “organic” (for lack of a better word), the back is more “geometrical” (again lacking a better word). First of all, there is the arc that we already saw on all Adidas World Cup jerseys, but also the font used for names and numbers is rather angular. Definitely an improvement over last year, but I find the numbering style odd with that fold-over effect.

So, where do I go with this one? The dragon is definitely a stand-out and probably quite contentious. But you may be surprised to read that I like it. The overall look of th jersey is great, but there are a few touches that I don’t find that well done as the placement of the crest as well as the font used for the numbers. But overall, this is a sound jersey and one of the best Adidas has to offer this season.

My rating 9/10 stars.

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