Looking back at the fashion disaster that was MLS' first season
Major League Soccer celebrates the 20th anniversary of its inaugural match on Wednesday, and boy has the league come a long way from its debut season in 1996. Not only has the quality of play, and thus, its popularity increased dramatically, but so has its actual "watchability" on the most basic level.
What we mean by that is this: It wasn't the original class of players, but what the players were wearing that made the league unwatchable in its inception. Go through the archives, and you'll find that most of the league's inaugural threads make even Columbus Crew SC's new away kits for 2016 look phenomenal.
To be fair, it wasn't all MLS' fault. The '90s was a wholly confusing period for sports fashion altogether. Still, one does wonder what kind of drugs the kit designers were taking to come up with spectacular fashion disasters like the ones below.
Let's kick things off with the now defunct San Jose Clash. How appropriate!
Another of MLS' original franchises was the Dallas Burn, which is exactly what they should've done to their jerseys.
Nobody would've blamed Tampa Bay Mutiny fans if they actually revolted over these kits.
Okay, the Kansas City Wiz rainbow shirts were actually pretty legit.
These LA Galaxy atrocities, however, should've been launched into space.
The New England Revolution were lucky not to have their own fan uprising on their hands.
In any other era, the NY/NJ Metro Stars and Columbus Crew's kits would have been considered ugly, but they actually looked pretty tame in '96.
DC United, meanwhile, were by far the league's weirdest looking bunch ... for being so normal.
It's OK, MLS. We know it must have been hard to build something from the ground up and get people's attention. This probably wasn't the best way to go about that, but as is often the case with old-school jerseys, even the most awful and embarrassing ones eventually find a way back into our hearts.
Except for the Clash's. Like, seriously, guys?
