Since the beginning of 1995 – a friendly against Uruguay in Dallas in March – the USA have worn Nike kits.
What were their last adidas kits? Well, we’re guessing that you, like us, would have said the famous ‘stars and stripes’ set from the 1994 World Cup (the striped kit is shown as used against Brazil in the last 16, though denim-style shorts were the default).
That was until an interesting tweet the other day:
Talking about the US, I just saw a few days ago unclear images of them wearing kits similar to those used by Bulgaria, Norway, Romania & Sweden in 94. I guess in a friendly, and I guess they were their last adidas kits. In 95 they were already in Nike according to what I've read
— Rodrigo Lara Weisson (@rolarawei) November 19, 2018
The fact that the information was coming from Rodrigo Lara Weisson meant we gave it credence, but proof was hard to come by. He did add that the opposition were wearing a red version of the Mexico away shirt from that time.
Our instinct was to scour the fixtures from the spring of 1994, believing the mystery kit to be an intermediate version between their first adidas Equipment strip and the World Cup outfits, but they showed up nothing.
Then, we wondered if perhaps the kit had been worn after the World Cup. Against England at Wembley in September of 1994, the US had worn the ‘stars’ kit, but there were still five more fixtures for the country before the turn of the year (four senior and one U23).
While we couldn’t find imagery from all of them, YouTube did show up the 1-0 loss to Trinidad & Tobago on November 19 and the 2-0 victory for the U23 side against the same opposition on December 9 (T&T wearing a different style in that fixture). In both games, and possibly also against Saudi Arabia, Jamaica and Honduras, the team wore this:
Not one of adidas’s most imaginative productions, we would presume that, with the Nike deal agreed, a set of kit had to be found and they had run out of the ‘proper’ strip so teamwear was used.
Whatever the reason, it’s certainly one of the rarest worn by the country.
