THREE-M: Mercury to the MNT to MLS

Look closely for the football. The image you see here at left is a fabulous photo of a previously-unknown crater on the planet Mercury, dubbed the Spider Crater for obvious reasons. The crater was revealed in a photo sent back by the MESSENGER spacecraft when if flew by Mercury a few weeks ago.

The acquisition of that photo, as well as the MESSENGER and space exploration program in general is an example of what the U.S. does when it does things right. The results are amazing, inspiring and just a tad beautiful. Now, can the same be said about the new U.S. Men's kit?


I think the general reaction to the jersey, which can be bought at Houston's very own Soccer4All, dubbed the best soccer store in the nation in a US Soccer online poll, is that they should all be hurled directly into that pit in spider crater, to be baked by the very close sun during the long Mercurian days and then frozen during the equally long Mercurian nights.

I, however, do not have this reaction. Drew Epperly over at WVHooligan has a fanastic compare and contrast series of photos of US MNT kits since 1994. And when you look at these one by one, you see that the new one really is not that bad. I do wonder what the other options were such that you'd get a group of savvy marketing executives (as I assume the people at Nike are) look at this one and say "Yeah, that's it!" My only serious objection to the kit is that it looks all too much like the dallas candystripers' away and goalkeeper jerseys from last year.

But really, when you look at the others over at WV Hooligan, it's not that bad. And if that's the worst I can say about it, I'll probably end up buying the thing, as it might be a nice thing to wear during the Olympics or on July 4th. It could always be worse, as it could be something like this.