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Top World Cup team gear picks | June 2018

Tom Theakstone on Fri, Jun 08, 18

The 2018 World Cup looms and pretty soon Russia will be awash with the colours of 32 nations from around the globe. With fashion and football becoming seamlessly interlinked, there are now more ways than ever to sport your nation’s colours. We’ve looked beyond the match kits to pick out some of the finer pieces of official team gear that will be on display this month.

Nigeria’s bucket hat

Nigeria had to be on the list, didn’t they? Their dazzling home shirt received over 3 million pre-orders and sold out in just hours on the day of release in London. Fear not though, there’s an entire range of ridiculously cool team gear. It’s the bucket hat that we need to talk about here (because when was the last time a country had an official bucket hat for a World Cup?). It features the same iconic pattern as the new shirt, is reversible to echo the home and away kit colour schemes, and is bang on trend for the summer season. Guaranteed to be a collector’s item in a few years.

England’s training top

The England kits for Russia are safe, solid, and leave a lot to the imagination. They’re not terrible, but they aren't winners either. Basically, they’re perfect for our squad. The accompanying training top however, is glorious. A beautiful explosion of red and blue perfectly adorns a large three lion’s badge on the chest. If anything, it feels too cool for an England shirt. It’s a throwback to the 1982 World Cup kit sported by the likes of Keegan, Hoddle and Robson and it’ll be worn this year by the players as they train and warm-up before matches. It went down so well after release that there’s a petition for England to wear it as their official match kit.

France’s anthem jackets

Nike’s range of anthem jackets are all much of a muchness, a little splash of colour here, a different badge there. They’re nice, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not really unique. Except for France’s, that is. Not content with just the one, our fashion-forward neighbours from across the Channel will line up for their national anthem in a mix of three colours to represent le Tricolore flag. That’s right – picture Lloris in blue, Griezmann in white and Pogba in red. That’s actually pretty bloody cool, 53 million English voices can be heard whispering through gritted teeth.

Portugal’s pre-match top

Not to be outdone by England’s training top that could easily be a match kit, Portugal have one of their own. Also from Nike – who, by the way, are turning out to have a pretty stellar tournament themselves – it’s got everything that makes Portugal’s national team recognizable. That stunning red and green cross design really pops out of a classic black background. And if it wasn’t already stylish enough on its own, it’ll be worn by one of the game’s all-time greats at the tournament. Sigh.

Colombia’s re-issued 1990 home shirt

If the overriding theme of this year’s World Cup kits is retro-reboots, no one has done it better than Colombia. Not only have they modelled their brand new kit on the sumptuous home shirt from the 1990 tournament, Adidas have gone one step further and actually re-issued the original version. It’s not very often you get a second chance to own of the most iconic football shirts of all time, so it’s worth opening up a space in your wardrobe for this timeless classic. It also comes with a number 10 printed on the back, so you can emulate the style of the man that made it iconic all those years ago, Carlos Valderrama. I’m not saying you should dye your hair blonde as an homage to the Colombia legend, but I’m not saying not to.

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