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For the Glove of the Game

soccer gloves

A short while ago I got a note from reader Harrison Hamm who wrote “I’ve got a pretty good story idea: A look at soccer goalies uniforms and gloves. You have one on hockey goalies, why not soccer?” I said, “Sure, that sounds pretty cool, whatcha got?” and the rest is what is below.

Enjoy — Phil

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A Look At Soccer Goalie Gloves & Unis
By Harrison Hamm

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Star Bayern Munich goalie Manuel Neuer is one of the best in the business. He also wears some of the best goalie jerseys as well. That beautiful light and dark blue combination is the best uniform I’ve found him in. That is easily the best keeper uniform I’ve seen out of all of them. That is while playing for Bayern.

While with Germany in the World Cup, it wasn’t as nice.

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. . .

The point of goalkeepers having separate uniforms is obviously to tell them apart, and that is important. But what more teams should do is have their keepers wear their own alternate uni, like Mexico’s Guillermo Ochoa, who wore this beauty in a game against the Netherlands. I love that it is the same design as his teammates, but still distinctly different.

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I wish that other teams would do this more often. It really would make games look better.

. . .

Lets take a look at what other top goalies wear (These are in my opinion the best that these guys have worn):

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Thibaut Courtois: The Belgium and Chelsea goalie has worn that nice-looking yellow design at times. The gradient sleeves are definitely the best part.

. . .

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Petr Cech: Another Chelsea keeper is one of the few top goalies in the world that wears headgear. The reason he wears the helmet is because of a fractured skull back in 2006. It kind of overshadows the actual uniform, which in itself is pretty good.

. . .

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Samir Handanovich: The gray design below is worst I’ve seen so far. His best is this Oregon-like uniform.

Goalie

. . .

Overall, goalie uniforms are very similar to regular soccer designs. What makes them stand-out is the gloves. Of course, this is something that us keepers like customize. If only goalies wore gloves that went with the particular jersey they happen to be wearing. Just look back at Neuer’s gloves in first picture. They look nothing like the jersey. That seems to be the case for all the pictures, even Ochoa’s, who’s are actually orange, although they look red. I looked for the best glove designs out there, and here’s what I came up with:

. . .

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• I chose these because I am a Steeler fan, so of course this is my favorite color scheme. And it is worth mentioning that I have these.

. . .

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• These gloves have a nice color scheme, but what I really like about these is the perfect mix of the colors, and the subtle striping to go with the Predator title.

. . .

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• In my opinion, this is one of the most underrated color schemes out there. A lot of people may not like it, but I do. I would buy these in a heartbeat.

. . .

And there you have it! I’m sure there are plenty of great goalie uniforms and gloves out there. And one last thing: The worst jersey of all-time. Period.

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Shoe ’nuff

Interesting occurrence during yesterday’s Golden State Warriors versus Dallas Mavericks game: Dallas Mavericks center Tyson Chandler swatted Marreese Speights’ shoe into the courtside seats. You can check out the video below:

According to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon,

Speights had lost his shoe a couple of possessions earlier, stepping out of it as he attempted to drive. He played an entire possession with just a sock on his left foot. Golden State guard Stephen Curry tried to help out his teammate, picking up the shoe and passing it to Speights near midcourt as the Warriors brought the ball up the court.

Not in Chandler’s house.

Spotting the shoe in the air, Chandler changed directions and swatted it away with his left hand, drawing roars from the sellout crowd at the American Airlines Center and confused shrugs and points from Speights and Curry.

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Here’s a vine showing the rejection (over and over):

Big hat tip to Paul for pointing this out (and suggesting it for the board).

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colorize this

Colorize This!

Occasionally, I will be featuring wonderful, high-quality black and white photographs that are just begging to be colorized.

It’s been a while since there was a “Colorize This” but we’re back today with an original colorization from Gary Chanko, who’s now probably better known to you for his wonderful Classic Scoreboards segments seen here on Saturdays:

. . .

MWA Baseball - Gary Chanko

Hi Phil”“

Last Saturday featured the unusual bib overalls of the Modern Woodman of America baseball team from Two Rivers, WI (circa 1900). I was intrigued along with other readers and thought it deserved to be colorized.

I was able to locate the players shown in the picture:

First row left to right: Oscar Becker, Harry Hurst, Ed. Lemere.
Second row: Conrad Baetz, Bill Doolan, Charles Kirst, Otto Kahlenberg.
Third row: A.M. Kalus, Frank Seibel, Mgr. & Umpire, Gus Kirst.

”‹Enjoy.

Gary

. . . . .

Thanks Gary. Great to have another of your colorizations. Please keep them coming!

I also got an e-mail a while back from Ryan Dowgin, who has some shots that would be great colorized, if any of our colorizers is up for it. I’ll let Ryan explain:

Hey Phil,

See below: first link is a pic begging to be colorized and second link is where I found it. Don’t have the time to devote to it right now, but maybe someone else wants to take it on.

Link One

Link Two

Ryan

Thanks, Ryan. If anyone is up for a bit of colorization…you know what to do.

Finally, got this one a LONG time ago from Johnny Flannagan, which is another request for possible colorization:

Hey Phil,

I don’t know if this picture of the 1916 USMNT has ever been colorized, but it might be a fun one for your crew of talented UWers.

Also, randomly, those pics you posted on FB of Forevertron in Wiscy were killer!

Cheers!

John

Thanks to Gary for the great colorization and the others for their suggestions!

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UWFFL banner

Monarchs vs Reign Fire 14 Dec

Premier League Games
By Andrew Seagraves

S-U-N-D-A-Y MORNING!

S-U-N-D-A-Y MORNING!

Just doesn’t have the same rhythmic quality as the Bay City Rollers hit about the night before.

The UWFFL Premier and La Lega are continuing their interleague tilts this weekend as all levels of play are grinding toward the post season. The excitement is building as teams are trying to take it to the next level as the Premier is going toward the UWFFL Bowl and La Lega makes its way toward the World Bowl.

. . .

LON-SF

. . .

This week our cynosure set-up will see the London Monarchs come to the city by the Bay and face the San Francisco Reign Fire. Both of these squads have been pioneers in their respective leagues. London was in the final four for La Lega last year while the Reign Fire staved off relegation with a win over their division rivals, the San Diego Storm.

Her Majesty’s Marksmen are coming into this matchup on their globetrotting tour trying to keep a foothold on the Western European division in La Lega. You cannot overlook their basic look of Blue, Red and White of the Monarchs when you either show up in Foggy Londontown or when they venture into your city. For their matchup in the Fire Pit, they are bringing out their blue lids, Blue cross on blue jerseys with red yokes and white pants.

The Reign Fire are fighting for life in the Bigs, once again, as they are in the thick of competition in the tough Western Division. Just when you think this team is down and out, they find a way to survive. Last year, it was a late season win and an ownership change. This season they are finding ways to win and keep their Premier membership intact. Their kits for this game will feature their flame kissed black helmets, home white jerseys and black pants.

. . .

 
pollcode.com free polls

. . .

Other key matchups from this weekend’s interleague matchups will see Atlanta fly into Moscow to take on the might Meat, Texas will venture into the Russian Far East to face Metallurg Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Stockholm will try and stink things up in Miami while Abu Dhabi will try and devalue the Seawolves of Vancouver.

Get on over to uwfantasyfootballleague.com to vote on this weekend’s matchups. This is the league where YOU can make your voice heard. Also, if you feel you can compete in the UWFFL, get your concepts entered at the Prospective UWFFL teams Google+ page.

Have a great week and we’ll see you next weekend right here for more UWFFL action.

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EPL Tracker

Each Saturday or Sunday, Alex Gerwitz will be tracking the kit combinations (shirt/shorts/socks) of the teams in the English Premier League from the previous weekend and the current weekend.

Here is the EPL tracker for Weeks 15 & 16:

EPL Weeks 15 & 16

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Uni Watch News Ticker:

Baseball News: As expected, the Pittsburgh Pirates have unveiled a camo alternate jersey for 2015. According to Joseph Gerard, who was at Pirates Fest, they’ll wear it for home Thursday Games this season. Joseph took a few photos, and the jerseys are every bit as bad as we thought they’d be. Joseph also shot me an e-mail and had this to day about Pirates Fest and Pirates uniform rumors: 1. The Pirates brought out a double-amputee Army vet before officially unveiling the uniforms. As mentioned before, they will be worn all Thursday home games this season. Some of the proceeds from camo jersey sales will benefit the various veterans charities as well as Pirates Charities. 2. The players didn’t wear the camo hats out, but they were announced. The Bucs did have the hats available for sale, though. The “P” is black with gold trim, and has a solid black bill. I took a picture of one hat for sale, but for $40 I wasn’t buying one that moment. 3. During the Pirates Management Q&A, I asked Pirates president Frank Coonelly about the possibilities of wearing the camos on the road to support local troops stationed elsewhere. (e.g. San Diego) He said that while the team is open to wearing camo on the road, they would prefer to be invited by another team like the Padres to wear camo. In short, the camos appear to be for home games only for the time being. 4. I also asked Coonelly about the rumors that the Sunday 1971 throwbacks were being converted to button-down. He immediately said no and that the rumor had been something the team had heard for a while. … Our buddy Chris Creamer has a bit more on those if you really want to read/see more. … Washington Nationals fan Ryan Abesfeld was at the Nationals Fan Fest yesterday and took this pick of Anthony Rendon wearing a jersey showing off the Nationals new “10 Years” patch. Odd they’ll be wearing it in their 11th year, no?

NFL News: As you probably know, today the Buffalo Bills will be wearing blue jerseys and blue pants for the first time ever with this new uniform set (they used to go mono-blue all the time in their old, awful unis). … Reader Daniel Merz saw Adrian Peterson coming out of the courthouse Friday and noticed a reporter with a Houston Oilers tattoo on his arm. … For all of you who think a Browns helmet with a logo on it might be a good idea: “I was at a memorabilia store and they had this helmet,” says Jonathan Dies. “I know there’s no way it would ever be used, but I absolutely love this. The guy in the shop said it was signed by Manziel.”

College & Youth Football News: Yesterday’s Army/Navy game looked about the way you’d expect it, and one question I had from yesterday was answered: Just how many alternating red & white stripes would the center stripe of the Navy helmet have before it became solid red (screen grab by Mike Gentile). Also note the new Navy logo on the ball. … Also from yesterday’s A/N game, this Army helmet suffered some serious paint peeling/chipping (nice grab from Chris Perrenot. … Yesterday, as in previous years, players wore unit patches on their jerseys. … You can see more photos from the game here. … Question from Christopher C. LaHaye, who asks, “Did Notre dame play on this game too?” as he noticed this shirt for the Wrigley Field game between Northwestern and Illinois (look at the tags on the shirt). … Here’s an interesting photo of Bear Bryant with the Ford Motor Company cheerleaders (thanks to Douglas Ford). … The Marshall Thundering Herd will be wearing jerseys with names on back for the “Boca Bowl” (yes, that’s a thing). Thanks to Coleman Mullins for the info. … “I was watching an episode from the 1970s TV show The Odd Couple on Hulu.com in which Felix Unger coaches his son’s youth football team,” writes Matt Larsen. “A few things I noticed: In this photo — apparently in New York City in the 70s blue jeans were standard football attire, and helmets were optional (it’s kind of hard to tell so I put red marks under the two helmet-less players). In this photo — scoreboards were hand-operated, even electric ones. If you interested, here’s the entire episode.” … Did you mesh me?: “What is up with this Auburn uniform?” asks Alan Borock. “The QB is Pat Sullivan who won the heisman in 1971. The sleeves look like they were ripped or hastily cut and I don’t know where to begin on the mesh front.” … During last night’s Heisman Trophy presentation, Marcus Mariota’s tie matched his dad’s shirt (h/t to Heather Zeller).

NBA News: Last night, the Hornets became the latest NBA team to wear I Can’t Breathe t-shirts. The WaPo’s Marissa Payne had a nice writeup on how he “message is being lost.” … Here’s a good article on Larry Bird, and the greatest shot he took was “the one he didn’t take” (thanks to Douglas Ford). There’s also some great photos in that link. … A couple people posted on this in the comments, but reader Christopher Phillips notes, “I am sure you guys already got this but the scribble on KDs shoe was EPH 5:20 which is from the bible: Ephesians 5:20 New International Version, ‘always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’.” Thanks for the clarification!

Hockey News: Last night, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms wore faux Philadelphia Eagles jerseys for their Eagles Tailgate Night event versus the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Penguins (thanks to Jim Dornberger). Here’s a bit more information on that (reprinted from yesterday’s comments, by Chris Hickey).

Soccer News: Do we have a case of logo poaching in the soccer world? Reader Marc Viquez writes, “It looks like Major Arena Soccer League and Centrum Sports Logo look awfully similar? Is this a case of using the same clip art or logo poaching?” Nice spot!

College Hoops News: Yesterday the Notre Dame women’s basketball team joined the growing list of teams to sport the “I Can’t Breathe” shirts (thanks, Paul). … Meanwhile the Cal Berkeley Women’s hoops team wore these black shirts with electrical tape (h/t Dave Zirin). Here’s some more pics of that. … Looks like the manager for the UK Wildcats was wearing a polo with a Tiger Woods logo during yesterday’s game (thanks to Mark Russell Pereira). … Our old 5 & 1 friend Jim Vilk saw this ad for an amateur hoops tourney and “figured you’d just *love* it.” He adds, “At least at the bottom they say ‘Shoot basketballs, not people’.” … Also from Jim, in the same magazine was this beauty of a photo. “Shouldn’t they have checkerboard pants, though?” … Hmmm: Nebraska-Omaha vs. Missouri-Kansas City in hoops (sent in by Jason Johnson). Jason asks, “If the teams wear Grey vs. Black – is that Color on Color? Doesn’t seem right to me.”

Grab Bag: “The Dallas Morning News updated their brand this week and now in the tab it looks like the Detroit Tigers ”˜D’ from their hat,” writes Bradley Maybin. “Thoughts?” he adds. … The massive heist from the world’s biggest sportswear firm was, as Nike attorneys allege, an inside job. Brinke sends us this article, “Spying, subterfuge and stolen ”˜treasure’: Inside Nike and Adidas’ World War Shoe.” In the war of corporate douchebags, are their any losers? … Somewhat related to that last item, check out the first two items of this SI list (thanks to Matt Larsen). It’s gotta be the shoes, man. … “Here is a great photo of four dejected Cronulla-Sutherland players after their teams 10-7 loss to Manly-Warringah in the 1973 Sydney Rugby League Grand Final,” writes our rugby expert Graham Clayton. “At this time, players would swap jerseys after the game. The Cronulla-Sutherland players have swapped their jerseys, and are ‘wearing’ Manly-Warringah jumpers, tied around their waist by the sleeves. The practice of players swapping jerseys after the Grand Final seems to have ended in the mid-1980’s. The jerseys have been tied around the players shoulders, not their waists, by the sleeves.” … Our “other” rugby expert, Leo Strawn, Jr. checks in with this: “AFL jumpers have GPS pockets sewn into the back of the neck because the league’s Aussie Rules footballers have worn GPS tracking for coaching purposes for years, but now that info may be used during matches to ‘enhance game for TV’ viewers.”

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And that’s it for today, kids. Enjoy the NFL (and NBA, NHL, etc.) today, including the mono-blue Bills. Thanks to Harrison for that look at goalie gear, Gary for the colorization, Alex for the EPL tracker, Andrew for the UWFFL, and everyone who contributed. You guys have a good week and I’ll catch you next weekend, when the Bowls kick off. Till then…

Follow me on Twitter @PhilHecken

Peace.

.. … ..

“Army is going to be out there on the field in actual school colors looking like Army. Navy is going to be out there dressed like any random non-academy school trying too hard to look ‘patriotic’ for a special game. You know what actually is a patriotic football uniform? Blue and gold, when Navy wears it.”

— R. Scott Rogers

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Comments (35)

    Why would the Pirates even consider putting buttons on their “1971” throwbacks? I would ask why any baseball team would wear a buttoned shirt during competition, but that is a whole other discussion.

    There had been a rumor floating around–the Chris Creamer site link–that the throwbacks were being converted to button-down. Frank Coonelly immediately shot that down, explaining that while the throwback are made out of the current uniform material, they want to keep the design as accurate as possible (which doesn’t explain the last names), so that they’ll remain pullovers.

    Washington Nationals fan Ryan Abesfeld was at the Nationals Fan Fest yesterday and took this pick of Anthony Rendon wearing a jersey showing off the Nationals new “10 Years” patch. Odd they’ll be wearing it in their 11th year, no?

    Some teams do a 10th Season patch, some do a 10th Anniversary patch. I have never heard anybody say one is more correct…it is personal preference. It is only incorrect if you do what the Mets (who else?) did in 1986 – celebrate their 25th SEASON with a link. Of course the 25th ANNIVERSARY would have been in 1987. They can be forgiven though…they won their last championship in 1986.

    The Nationals patch doesn’t specify season nor anniversary…it says YEARS, so I think it’s technically not wrong.

    There needs to be a follow-up article on goalie gear solely devoted to the tire fire that was Jorge Campos. That one picture was the tip of the iceberg. And for a while it slightly influenced what I wore as a keeper.

    Regarding Pat Sullivan’s Auburn mesh jersey. The jersey was made by Russell Athletic (I’m a former Russell dealer and sold some of this style) using a very-open nylon tricot mesh body with sleeves made from durene cotton fabric. Numbers were tackle twill because screen-printing wouldn’t show because the mesh holes were so large.

    In the late ’60s-early ’70s Pro-Brite tricot mesh and Pro-Mesh warp knit were still in the developmental stages. This open-mesh jersey was a stop-gap until something better came along. Thankfully it did.

    I was born in 1953 and I don’t think that there has been one year since then that the U.S. Military hasn’t been killing someone somewhere in the world. The Pittsburgh Pirates “G.I. Joe” uniforms make me sick.

    Wow, the Bucs camo jerseys was relegated to Ticker status? Usually something like that gets its own section, not Ticker status. Meh, still had a good time yesterday, and unexpectedly got to extend my season ticket two months early.

    Admittedly, the Bucs link

    The need for a camo jersey aside, these don’t look as bad as some others to me…I think the black and gold match better with the pattern than say the Mets blue and orange.

    Honestly, seeing them in person they didn’t look so bad. The hat, IMO, was better executed. I do like the nice touch that they did on the right sleeve with the American flag.

    Its not the teams that choose what the goalies wear, its nike and adidas that choose the design and typically the color that they’re trying to promote that season. What a poorly written opinion piece, maybe next time you should do a little more research and provide more than just an opinion about what terrible generic template design you like the best.

    “…a reporter with a Houston Oilers tattoo on his arm…”

    Nominee, least-notable Uni Watch mention of 2014.

    Re: Washington MLB’s anniversay patch…

    It’s a bit large.
    Their 2005 ‘100 year’ patch was better executed:

    link

    Both pictures of Manuel Neuer are of him playing for Germany, not Bayern. This is a picture of him playing for Bayern.

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    Re: Kevin Durant’s biblical reference on his shoes…his Pastor Instagram’d a pic of the shoes and used Ephesians 3:20 instead of 5:20.

    Thought that was interesting.

    It wouldn’t be so bad if the Bengals wore orange socks and the Browns wore their striped socks instead of the solid brown. Do they not have mirrors in NFL locker rooms? Yuck indeed.

    Objectively (no Pittsburgh bias whatsoever), I’d have to say those are two examples of showing the worst of sports and merchandising trends ever have to offer. The red bandwagon was bloody (so bad that the Arizona Diamondbacks elected to take a red color scheme when they couldn’t just have an oddball red jersey in the purple and teal branding), and then dress-up soldier is another widespread fad. I don’t dislike jerseys (my law school professors literally don’t recognize me without a hockey jersey), but when Paul says society has gotten stupider (at least acted stupider) with jersey sales, I sadly can’t disagree. Sorry that Roberto Clemente’s team has to be connected to that stuff.

    As I’ve been saying, the idea of alternate uniforms and softball tops is what allows this to happen. I’d be happy if every home team was in white and every road team was in gray. But apparently that’s not what fans want, so they’ll have to take the bad with the worse.

    Win one, lose one

    Cleveland laying an egg, hopefully means we won’t see full turd any time soon. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the Bills all blues (although they didn’t look awful)

    I like the brown bottoms and white tops first and foremost

    Second fave is brown top white bottom

    No orange tops PLEASE for Cleveland

    I’ve worn that blue Manuel Neuer jersey before! A friend of mine loaned one to me when I was stuck playing goalie for my indoor team. Had one of my better games wearing it, too.

    Loved the clip of Tyson Chandler swatting away that shoe. Does that count in the box score as a block? Maybe it should.

    Ryan, those photos you found to be colorized are AWESOME! Those striped sleeves are AH-MAY-ZING!

    Oakland wearing dark gray uniforms with black numbers at Michigan State. Maybe you can tell who the players are with a hi-def TV?

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