It might be the quietest part of the soccer year for US domestic league fans. MLS Cup is over; the USL playoffs are nearly over; NCAA College Cup hasn’t started; and none of the domestic teams have started rebuilding their rosters for 2020. Couple that with the international break, and there is so little soccering this weekend that it’s scary.

I did get a tip about one tiny glimmer on the soccer horizon that Pittsburgh soccer nerds could get excited for, though: the 2020 Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC kit.

According to sources inside the Riverhounds, now is the time when club officials will pick designs for a new kit for the Hounds. Those kits will be in use for a two-year cycle of 2020 and 2021, and like most soccer clubs worldwide, the same kit will be worn by the Senior team and the youth academy.

The Riverhounds will be using Adidas again for the 2020 season. In 2019, the team had three jerseys, plus offsetting goalkeeper kits. For a reminder, here’s those kits again.

The yellow with the chevrons served as the club’s primary kit in 2019, and was part of the Adidas ‘Miadidas’ line – a series of jerseys called ‘Mitiro 17′. The white secondary kit was a frequent choice for the club as well. The black and grey half and half kit was featured the least of all the Hounds kits in 2019.

A feature of Adidas’ Mitiro 17 kits was a tremendous degree of custom options. Stripes, hoops, chevrons, half and half designs, snowflakes, checkerboards, pinstripes and more were all possibilities, and the Hounds went with it, picking ‘Chevron Hoops’, ‘Half and Half 1’, and ‘Half and Half 3’ for their unis.*

In 2020, Adidas new catalog has fewer options regarding wild graphics. But the Riverhounds will still have a selection of interesting and innovative styles to choose from: the ‘Tiro’, the ‘Campeon’, and the ‘Striped’.

Each comes in custom colors – the primary kit colors of your team’s choice, plus either white or black neck and tri-stripes. The Hounds are likely to get three kits again – a yellow, a black, and a white, but not necessarily. They could pick an avant-garde third kit color, like a purple or a pink. It just so happens that on the ‘complementary color wheel’ the opposite of yellow is purple. Hmmm.

The graphics above all look sharp to me, and I think any for the new Hounds primary kit would be good. I think it’d make sense to pick one of the above graphics to apply to two or three Hounds kits, rather than mix and match all three as the team did in 2019 with three unique graphics, but either method would work for me.

I have mild concerns about the middle option, the ‘Campeons’ kit. You will see a lot of teams in USL and across the globe rolling out that kit, which is a nod to the 2014 Germany World Cup kits, which *itself* is a nod to the 1990 Germany World Cup kit. Personally I think it’d look weird to see two USL squads playing each other wearing that same design in different colors. Uniforms, ironically, should not be too ‘uniform’, but instead should have some uniqueness and self-expression to them. It’s a fine kit, but I’m not sure it’d be fine if every team in USL was rocking them. Thankfully, unlike MLS, USL teams may choose any kit maker they like for their jerseys, so even if the Hounds pick ‘Campeons’, it will still remain somewhat distinct.

These are not the only options.

There are also four styles that were available last year: Condiva 18, Regista 18, Tabla 18, and Squadra 17

They’re all relatively plain. The major differences are where color might change between the torso and the arm – shoulder seam for most, but below the deltoid for the Squadra – and crew vs v-neck. Tabla has a colored ring at the sleeve cuff, while Regista has a funky white pattern draped over the shoulders.

All of these are good if you’re going to go with with an alternate kit that’s plain – or a primary that’s plain and an alternate that’s colorful.

With all that said, it’s time for the fans to have their say. What do you think the Riverhounds and their academy should look like when they take the pitch in 2020?

If #RiverhoundsSC was putting a graphic on their new primary kit, which of these three would you want to see? (Pics on thread below, imagine them all in yellow)

Attn: @RiverhoundsSC — Mark Asher Goodman (@soccer_rabbi) November 17, 2019

Which of the following would you prefer for #RiverhoundsSC on their new 2020 kit? Attn: @RiverhoundsSC — Mark Asher Goodman (@soccer_rabbi) November 17, 2019

If you could choose a third kit for #RiverhoundsSC, what color would you choose? — Mark Asher Goodman (@soccer_rabbi) November 18, 2019

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* Scroll down to page 73.

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