The 5 Worst Soccer Kits of All Time

Over the past few years, the popularity of onesies has grown massively — but the Cameroon national team were well ahead of the game, debuting a one-piece strip at the 2004 African Cup of Nations.

It's difficult to say what advantage the designers of this kit thought the one-piece offered. Whatever the intention was, it caused a huge stink between Puma and FIFA. The two organizations were embroiled in a legal battle for some time after Cameroon wore the kit despite FIFA's ruling that it did not comply with the rules.

Just two years earlier, Cameroon had got into a similar spot of bother thanks to their sleeveless shirts designed for the previous edition of the tournament. The message seems very clear — stick to what works.

The Tigers as a nickname — sounds good. Roary the Tiger as a mascot — fantastic, the kids will love it. A tiger print kit — perhaps not the best idea anyone's ever had.

Back in the 1990s, wearing a football shirt to a nightclub wasn't looked down upon as much as it is today. Still, there would have been little chance of you getting in any establishment outside of Hull city centre wearing this orange and black monstrosity.

The biggest problem here is that the tiger print doesn't quite instil the sense of ferocity it sets out to. Instead, it looks like a novelty strip that might be handed out at a seven-year-old's football-themed birthday party taking place at the local zoo.

Fans were not happy when Newcastle United revealed their away kit for the 2009-10 season of the English Football League Championship. The iconic vertical stripes may have been familiar, but the colour scheme the design had adopted was far from it.

Promo shots for the new strip were full of grimaces like the one above, but it seemed to put a chip on the shoulders of the squad that helped them realize their full potential. Already humiliated by this lemon-tinted nightmare, the club managed to top the league and earn promotion to the Premiership.

Perhaps such an awful kit was part of a broader masterplan, designed to put players and fans in a frenzy that would ensure success on the pitch. In this case, it worked — but we haven't seen this design make a resurgence since.

As with any sport in the modern era, advertising is a huge part of football. Whether it's commercials during televised games, athletes endorsing products or even kit sponsorships, it's part of the financial backing that keeps the game going. However, there are times when it can be taken a little too far.

Athletico Madrid's Spider-Man 2 themed strip is a shining example of just that. Not content to occupy the same amount of space a standard sponsor's logo does, it brings with it a web that extends across most of the front of the shirt.

In short, it looks a lot like the top half of a set of Spider-Man pyjamas, or a home-made costume created by an obsessive fan lining up to see the movie on opening day. Neither of which set the right tone for a club attempting to seize the biggest prize in Spanish football.

This is about as bad as it gets for a professional sports kit. The Caribous of Colorado only played for one season in 1978, but they've been remembered ever since for this historically terrible attempt at a football strip.

The first thing you'll notice about the kit is that it is very much a product on the 1970s. The above photograph shows MLS side the Colorado Rapids posing in it in 2014 — but that was as an April Fools' joke. However, this was once a very real strip worn by a very real team.

It's difficult to say what the worst part of it is. Perhaps it's the ambiguously flesh-coloured shade that covers the stomach, arms and comically oversized lapels. Maybe it's just the comically oversize lapels outright. There's certainly an argument to be made that the fringe on the front of the kit — most visible on the rightmost player in this shot — seals the deal. Whatever the most egregious mistake, this is almost certainly the worst football kit of all time. Quite an achievement, really.