Outrage over Umbro kit

The Warriors kit, unveiled by ZIFA and Umbro this week, has triggered another public outcry despite the sports gear manufacturing company's decision to dump their original design dominated by stripes.

They replaced that kit, which was met by fierce resistance from the fans, with a plain one with traditional national team colours.

But, even the new design, and quality of the kit, has not done well with the supporters.

Many of them are still not happy with the new plain and simple outfit which Twitter users condemned for lack of creativity.

Umbro and ZIFA unveiled three strips for the official home and away matches and two more for the supporters' replicas.

The home jersey is golden from top to bottom with a fading chevron spread across the chest.

The kit is embroidered with the ZIFA badge on the left breast with the Umbro logo on the right.

The jersey also has a faded Umbro diamond print on the cuffs with matching yellow shorts and socks.

But there have been questions why the designs relegated the Zimbabwe flag to the bottom so much that it is not visible when the players tuck in their shirts.

The away shirt is predominantly green, with red cuffs that features the Umbro diamond pattern, while the third shirt is predominantly white with green cuffs that also feature white diamond pattern.

Still, the fans who had gone on the overdrive after an initial design that looked like an imitation of the one which was used by Spanish giants Barcelona in some of their away games had leaked, were still not pacified.

"The first match will have the whole world watching us playing the Pharaohs. Please, we cannot have millions of people watching that horrible kit," posted one reader of this newspaper.

"It's still horrible, revise it again! What is that ugly pattern on the sleeves? Like the Ghana one?"

Richard Chikuku said the people should be respected and they didn't want the kit.

"The voice is in the people.

"Learn that.

"This uniform has been rejected by the masses," he said.

Umbro will also provide training kit for all the national teams, tracksuits, bags, and other equipment as part of their deal with ZIFA.

Umbro also unveiled a "limited edition" Zimbabwe home shirt that has a yellow/gold base colour with solid red stripes that fade in at the top of the jersey.

This is the same design that the fans had earlier dismissed it as a poor imitation of the Barcelona strip.

Both the green and white kits had a number of colours added in what most fans felt was a huge break from the traditional colours of national football teams.

These kits, though, will not be used as official playing kits for the national team.

Some people felt the designs were too simplistic while others questioned the quality of the cloth used to make the playing kits.

"Ninja please . . . No Zimbo can even remotely tolerate zvikorobho izvo. Let alone them @umbro. The look on your models says it all!

"If plain is what you can afford . . . It's lazy creativity on the designing end; and the material looks poor too.

"Guess the lines on the home jersey (yellow) are Chevrons? @umbro," posted journalist Henry Makiwa.

Another Twitter user said it was wrong for the official kit and the replica jerseys to be different.

"But where in the world do you have fans' 'replica' that is totally different from the official team kit?

"I suspect those awful ones that have been overwhelmingly rejected by the public were the original kit that had been produced in bulk and cannot be dumped just like that."

Lashias Ncube said the kit was too simple and too plain.

"This official Warriors AFCON team strip is as plain and nondescript as the fans jersey is grotesque," he tweeted.

Former Warriors star, Cephas Chimedza, was unhappy that the two Mighty Warriors used to model the kit did not have boots.

"So, they couldn't find Umbro football shoes for the girls?" he asked.