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One commenter and a few e-mails wondered about my more specific thoughts regarding the jerseys, so I guess I’ll throw my hat, or jersey, in the ring. I’ve got some ideas about colors and design, but it falls under one basic law: a crest does not improve the appearance of anything. Get it out.

From there, you at least have a chance of designing a good looking jersey. I prefer a simple classic look, beginning with keeping the shirt and short the same color. Thus, no mix and match. No nooks and crannies or heavy off-color stitching like you’ll find on a Fulham jersey. Forget the cookie-cutter piping found on the US MNT kit prior to our present incarnation. Forget the textured illustrations on what otherwise would be a fine Ivory Coast kit. It would be plain without the embossed elephant? Excellent. A stripe might do, and there you have our present kit, albeit with muted dark tones instead of a more royal approach that I might take. Still, the present kit drives me nuts because the stripes from the jersey, shorts, and socks don’t line up. Honeslty, remove the crest, brighten the colors, align the stripes, and you have a nice kit.

Turn the stripe 45 degrees, paint the shirt red, and you have the Nike Don’t Tread on Me jersey, a homage to the nations great Cup victory over England in 1950 and one of several - River Plate, Galaxy - that use the diagonal stripe.

Another 45 degrees and you have our away jersey, which by tweaking it away from the American race car appearance it has now, would be pretty nice. The words over-styled and iconic don’t often work together.

Hugo Perez

Cut the stripe in three and put them on one shoulder and you have another kit I liked, the 1994 Adidas Equipment kit, which paired three bars on the shoulder, three on the leg, in a similar if but more balanced way that today’s uniform works. It was admittedly one of those kits several teams wore, which I’m not a fan of, but it has to be added to the list of quality kits (this is the one I wished Agovino had mentioned in the Slate piece, but didn’t – if for no other reason but to offset the god forsaken Jem and the Holograms denim that followed.

For a third kit, I like Barcalona. It’s everything a third kit should be, which is to say something that would never conflict with another team’s home or away jerseys. Bright Orange covers that charge at Nou Camp, and though I kind of feel embarrassed to say it, the simple, solid volcanic explosion looks good on the field. It’s all about taste, and maybe my ideas are boring, but just as there’s something really perfect about a brand-new, all-white pair of sneakers, I’d like to see our boys walk out there in all white jerseys, no names, just numbers – small in the middle of the front, and larger on the back. So what if there is already the All Whites. Our away kits in the same fashion would be all blue. Our third kit, all red. That sounds like Sam’s Army to me.