When done right a team's jersey can bring pride and a flash of fashion to the supporters in the stands and fans watching at home on TV. However designers can sometimes get a little overambitious. A clashing color scheme, dumb fashion trend, having a shirt sponsor that sounds like a support group for cross-dressers... all of these can spell doom for your favorite team's uniform. Here are the worst of the worst from the past year:

10. FC Nuremberg Home Kit

The fastest route to destroy sales of your team’s uniform: a shirt sponsorship that conjures up images of she-males. Last season FC Nuremberg decided its kits would look better with the words Mister*Lady across the chest.

What is a Mister*Lady? According to their website it’s a German fashion company that specializes in, “Casual casual, cool jeans and trendy accessories.” Coincidentally, FC Nuremberg was relegated from the Bundesliga in May and ditched the Mister*Lady sponsorship.

Maybe Dennis Rodman should have been their mascot?

 

 

9. Liverpool Euro Kit

 

Liverpool have some of the best home and away kits this year, however their alternate “euro kit” is one of the most uninspired uniforms to ever take the field. The shirt features a drab green look, a black collar and …well that’s actually it. There’s nothing else. 

My guess is somewhere in the process Adidas accidentally printed Liverpool’s crest on a bush-league team’s uniform and nobody figured it out until it was too late.

If you’re unfortunate enough to catch Liverpool wearing these, don’t be surprised if they look like floating heads hovering over the green pitch.

8. Derby County Away Kit

So I going to assume somebody accidentally left a highlighter in the washer and decided, “sweet, let’s make that our new away jersey.”

Although Chelsea and Everton were also guilty of the neon yellow trend, Derby County accomplished the impossible feat of doing it ten-times worse.

How did they accomplish this? They assumed the best way to thank Bombardier for their new sponsorship deal was by putting their logo in white text, making it completely unreadable.

7. FC Barcelona Home Kit

After being pressured by Nike, Barcelona’s iconic maroon and blue-striped kits have been ditched in favor of a two-toned shirt divided directly down the center. Not only does this spit in the face of tradition while simultaneously looking awful, the jerseys could also lead confusion on the field.

Think about it… you’re a striker racing down the field and look left: it looks like your winger’s wearing a blue jersey. Then you look right and your other winger is in maroon.

Then again bad decisions aren’t surprising from a club that decided to kick Ronaldinho to the curb two years after winning the UEFA Cup.

6.Chivas Home Kit

Another team that threw tradition out the window, Chivas has swapped their red and white vertical stripes for some sort of warped sunrays intended to direct attention to the Bimbo Bakeries sponsorship on their chest. The kit also features navy blue shoulder pads and back, making players appear like they’re on an entirely different team from behind.

As futuristic and cool as these jerseys may initially look, ten years from now they’ll probably seem as bad as these:

5. Bolton Wanderers Home Kit

Who makes Bolton’s kit? According to their jersey Reebok. Who sponsors Bolton? Well if you look six inches lower… Reebok. The Wanderers jersey looses points for redundancy but that’s not all. This year's jersey features some weird black man-bra across the top that looks it was lifted from the set of "Aeon Flux".

4.Juventus Away Kit

Usually the color gold is associated with winning, trophies, success… etc. So if you’re a team that hasn’t won a major trophy in five years gold is probably the last color you’d choose for your kits.

Errr... well, not if you’re Juventus. The Italian giants have deicide to sport shiny gold away jerseys for the 2008-2009 campaign.

…and no, winning the Serie-B title doesn’t count.

3. Shimizu S-Pulse Home & Away Kits

I’m not really sure what’s going on here but it looks like the Shimizu S-Pulse of Japan’s J-League designed their away jersey on the off chance the team plane crashes in North Korea during a snow storm.

For some reason they felt compelled to use winter camouflage on the kit’s torso and just in case they get lost… hey look there’s a handy map on the shoulder.

Even worse are their home jerseys which look like somebody binged on circus peanuts and Tang then vomited down the front of their shirt.

2. Necaxa Home Kit

It really doesn’t matter what your kit looks like… if you have sponsors covering up every square-inch. A lot of Central and South American clubs are guilty of shilling out every spare corner of their uniform for ad space. Necaxa of Mexico’s Primera División take it one step further papering their shorts and even socks with sponsors.

Maybe the designers of the jersey took cues from the Yellow pages.

1. New York Red Bulls Home Kit

Formerly the MetroStars, the team was bought out and then re-branded the Red Bulls after the stroke-inducing energy drink.

Not only is the team name and logo completely dumb, their jersey is about as boring as a lecture on advanced knitting. The team’s crest, which features the Red Bull logo, is duplicated and then stretched across the plain white jersey and BAM! You have the New York Red Bulls’ kit.

Two years ago the team didn’t have a sponsorship… now they are a sponsorship. And if you weren’t sick of Red Bull enough, next season the team moves into their new stadium, Red Bull Arena.

With the Seattle Sounders FC inaugural season a little more than six months away we decided to get the dirt on what was going on and sent in a squad of trained spider monkeys to raid the team's front office... Sadly the snatch-and-grab mission was mostly fruitless returning only any empty tray of muffins, Paul Allen's hair piece and six bags of trash. However upon further inspection of the garbage we found this gem, a leaked memo detailing concepts for the teams new mascot. Enjoy:

Seattle Alliance Seattle Sounders FC Mascot Prototypes

CONFIDENTIAL: FRONT OFFICE ONLY

DO NOT SEND TO DREW CAREY (LAST TIME WE LET HIM IN ON THE CREATIVE PROCESS WE ENDED UP WITH A GODDAMN MARCHING BAND)

1. 'Sal' the Sockeye Salmon

Salmon might taste great, be able to swim in both salt and fresh water and do that flashy 'jumping through the fish ladder thing', but you have to admit they are one of the creepiest looking things in the water. In fact, Salmon are so intimidating that even the Victoria Salmon Kings minor league hockey team balk at the idea of having a salmon mascot and went with a fuzzy looking sea otter creature instead ...and hell, they're even named after the damn fish. So why not instill fear in the minds of opponents and go all out with Sal the Sockeye Salmon straight from Pike Place Market.

Rating: 6 of 10 fish sticks

2. The Wheedle

If you grew up in Seattle you probably already know about "The Wheedle on the Needle" children's book about the about a giant monster with a blinking nose that lives on top of the Space Needle. The big red creature, who looks like a Sesame Street reject, holds a place many Seattleite's hearts. Despite his odd, sexual-predator-like grin, the Wheedle already has a proven track record as the Sonics' mascot in late '70s and early '80s.

Rating: 4 of 10 restraining orders

3. 'Echo' the Orca

Used as the USL Sounders' logo in the '90s, a Killer Whale, or Orca, would be the go-to choice for the new Sounders FC mascot. If your knowledge of Killer Whales is limited to "Free Willy" and Sea World you, my friend, have a lot to learn. These beasts are the kings of the Sea.

Here are a few fun facts about Shamu's kin: An Orca has no known predators (even sharks don't mess with these things), they only rest half of their brains at a time (so technically they never sleep) and Orcas will often incapacitate and play with their prey before eating it. There's a reason they're called Killer Whales. The bonus here is that if a costumed mascot isn't enough, the team can ship a giant fish tank into Qwest Field and have a live Orca do flips at between play.

Rating: 9 of 10 Harpoons

4. 'Tuggy'

To avoid any sexual orientation assertions involved with making a Ferry boat mascot (Larry the Ferry?), Tuggy instead would represent the second most popular vessel on the sound, a tugboat. Although his wide body might make any mascot acrobatics end awkwardly he would be an imposing goalie in any mascot on mascot soccer matches.

Rating: 5 of 10 drunken sailors

5. 'Boom' the Sounder

I'm not really sure what a "Sounder" is, but I figure if it were a creature it would look something like the image here. Half Philly Phanatic, half Cookie Monster, Boom's gender-neutral, race-neutral, species-neutral facade would make him/her a safe bet if we're looking to avoid stepping on anyone's toes. And if Boom's gender-bending look confuses the fan-base, so what? It makes more sense than the Mariner's having a moose as their mascot.

Rating: 7 of 10 Muppet rip-offs

6. 'Boxy' the Xbox 360

After taking on Xbox Live as our sponsor and sporting an Xbox-green uniform, it wouldn't be a huge surprise to watch for us to throw in the towel, say, "to hell with it," and make our mascot a giant walking Xbox 360. As great of an idea as this may sound to the promotion hungry Microsoft execs, the last thing Sounders fans need would be to see their mascot become a boxy white video game console that's prone to crashing.

Rating: 2 of 10 Microsoft Zunes

7. Chief Seattle

How do you honor years of Native American tradition and create an homage to the cultures that cultivated the land thousands of years before others arrived? Well one way not to do it is by remaking one of their ancestors into a cheeky caricature with an over-sized head and decorative feathers you can pick up at a local craft store. If the Cleveland Indian's Chief Wahoo, has taught anything it's that history doesn't look kindly on mocking other cultures, especially for sport.

Rating: 3 of 10 Indian Casinos

8. 'Richy' McVenture Capitalist

Although this mascot might best represent Seattle, you can't trust Richy McVenture Capitalist. He may try to move your team to Tampa Bay or Oklahoma City... or maybe insist you play on fake grass because as your owner he also has a hand in one of the nation's largest synthetic turf companies.

Rating: 2 of 10 injuries cause by Astroturf

9. JP Patches

Seattle's preeminent clown and kid's show host clocked in over 10,000 hours on-air from 1958 through 1981... during most of which he was probably drunk. Clowns may cheer up crowds and bring a smile to people's faces, but Patches subversive comedy and experience as "Mayor of the City Dump" might not bode well for soccer, or for that matter any athletic competition in general.

Rating: 4 of 10 bottles of low-end scotch

10. Random Ball Shaped Mascot

Probably the fastest way to convince our fans we don't give a crap is to put some feet, hands and googly-eyes on a ball and call it a mascot. Mr. Met I'm looking at you. Something about it just doesn't ooze the fun and creativity a mascot should bring to the game. Besides, getting into in a giant soccer ball outfit just sounds like a recipe for getting kicked in the nuts.

Rating: 1 of 10 season ticket renewals