AFCON 2025 kits ranked: Tunisian carpets, a massive eagle and Uganda's FA goes it alone
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Nick Miller
The kits at the Africa Cup of Nations never disappoint, and this year's efforts are no different
Commentary
The Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) is in full swing, and while you will have mostly been concerning yourself with the business of who’s winning and who’s losing, there is one very important thing to consider.
Yes, that’s right: the kits.
At past AFCONs, the kits on display have varied wildly: there have been the good, the bad, the garish, the boring, the outlandish and the plain mad.
Happily, this tournament is no different. So read on to discover the definitive verdict on who has worn the best threads out in Morocco (we’ve only included the kits that have actually been worn as, sadly, some have not yet seen the light of day).
Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images
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If you take a look at the manufacturer’s name here, you probably won’t recognise ‘Janzi’. And with good reason, because it’s a company set up specifically by Uganda's football association to make their kit and assorted other forms of merchandise. And, erm, well… you can tell it’s not exactly a premium enterprise. You can understand why an association would take this approach, but it feels like a kit designed by some sort of committee member who thinks “It can’t be that hard, I’ll just dash off a few drawings.” Turns out, it can be that hard.
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Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images
Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images
Issam Zerrok/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
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Tanzania have pulled that quite weird trick of having an away shirt with very similar colours to their home shirt. So the home shirt is blue... and the away shirt is blue... ah, but also yellow! It's all quite odd. You could maybe overlook that if it was a nice shirt, but this just looks like something a school team would wear, possibly purchased from a local sports shop because the geography teacher who has been roped in to coach the team knows the owner. Not great all round really.
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Issam Zerrok/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
Issam Zerrok/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
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A slightly weird shirt. The relatively basic bold yellow with green patches on the shoulders is a good start, but it’s with the embellishments that things start to get a bit odd. On the chest, there’s a version of the Benin national flag, but styled in such a way that it looks like the logo of a life-insurance company - the sort that you see commercials for on daytime TV, where a kind-faced old lady smilingly discusses the arrangements following her passing with her husband. And then on the belly, a cheetah, which is fine - it is their nickname after all, having been changed from the rather less intimidating ‘squirrels’ a few years ago - but it does look a bit like it’s bursting through the wearer’s intestines, like that bit in Alien.
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
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Reasonably plain. A bit boring? The general rule is that you go fairly straightforward with a home kit, because you don't want to disrupt the standard, but then take a few more risks with the away strip, because that's the space to experiment. There isn't much experimentation going on here: it's a white shirt with white shorts and white socks and a bit of red dabbed on here and there.
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Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images
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In theory, including iconic designs associated with your nation as a background design on your shirt isn’t a terrible idea, but sometimes you get the impression the designers have just opened that country’s Wikipedia page and picked the most blindingly obvious, stereotypical images possible. Enter Puma’s current Egypt kit, which features ‘motifs of sphinx, pyramids, and sand dunes’. It looks OK, even if it is a bit ‘template-y’, but the imagery/iconography is a little... ’on the nose’.
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Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images
Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images
Visionhaus/Getty Images
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Blimey. You have to award points for creativity, because who else has a shirt that looks like something you'd buy at a 1990s beach surf shack? Whether the thing is actually nice or not... well, that's a different matter entirely. I've been staring at this for quite a while now and it's pretty difficult to come to a conclusion. Maybe that's because I've been hypnotised by whatever the design is in the middle.
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Visionhaus/Getty Images
Visionhaus/Getty Images
Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
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Le Coq Sportif is a rare sight in the football world these days, so it’s always nice to come across one of its kits. The trouble is, this one could have been made by any company. It’s just a very basic shirt with admittedly nice colours, a round collar and a slightly vague background design on the body. It’s not bad, it’s just a bit… nothing-y. Also, this is a relatively minor gripe but it looks pretty weird to have the green trim around one sleeve but not the other. What gives?
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Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
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This is a football shirt. There is very little that is remarkable about it. It’s not amazingly good, it’s not amazingly bad. The bright, primary colours make it look a bit like something Wimbledon would wear. The collar is quite nice, as are the sleeve trims, but it’s difficult to raise any further enthusiasm for it beyond that. But it is, most definitely, a football shirt.
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Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
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The problem with South Africa’s away colours being green with gold trim is that they inevitably look like the country’s rugby kits. That could be a positive, given they are the current rugby world champions, but from an ‘actually we’d like to watch a good sport’ perspective, it’s not ideal. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with this shirt, which is fine but a bit boring. South Africa are reportedly switching to Adidas from the spring, so perhaps they will look a bit more interesting for the World Cup.
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Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
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I can’t decide whether I like this or it’s just a bit boring. Maybe it's both, and I’m the boring one. Something to ponder. It’s broadly quite plain, but the four-coloured trim on the collar and cuffs is really good, and I’m a sucker for a nice bit of piping, which is used judiciously here. There is a slight whiff of ‘1990s Sunday League team’ to the design, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
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Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Visionhaus/Getty Images
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Adidas’ new trend for thick stripes on sleeves could be a room-splitter: are they good, representing an evolution in the design process, or do they look like a child has drawn them on with really thick crayon? I’m in the former camp, but I’m less keen on the brownish streaks running down the chest, which from the marketing blurb seemingly is meant to represent the country’s deserts, but really just looks like three grubby stains on the front of the shirt. The intent, to represent elements of Algeria and its culture, is admirable, but in the end their outfield players will just look like 10 guys who are about to get into trouble with their mums for getting their clothes dirty.
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Visionhaus/Getty Images
Visionhaus/Getty Images
Visionhaus/Getty Images
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Pow! Blam! Bosh! A football shirt as inspired by a cartoon from the 1960s, and I’m not entirely sure what the lightning bolts are all about here. The best I can come up with is that there are a lot of lightning strikes in Equatorial Guinea, but that seems like a slightly odd thing to celebrate, no? “Come to Equatorial Guinea: you may die!” Still, if you ignore the clip-art lightning bolts, this is pretty sweet, with a really nice collar that incorporates both white and green trim in an original way without being too intrusive.
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Visionhaus/Getty Images
Visionhaus/Getty Images
Abdel Majid Bziouat/AFP via Getty Images
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Not bad. You have to work hard not to make an orange kit pretty striking, but the one Zambia wore at the previous AFCON last year did actually manage to be quite dull. There is something appealing about a shirt that is broadly plain, as this one is, but has an original enough detail to break things up and make it… not plain… as this one does. The dashes down the left side of the torso manage that quite nicely.
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Abdel Majid Bziouat/AFP via Getty Images
Abdel Majid Bziouat/AFP via Getty Images
Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
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If the yellow home effort had a whiff of a 1990s Sunday league kit, the white one absolutely reeks of it. That’s good for crusty old nostalgists like me, but is it a viable strategy for an actual football kit in 2025? It does ultimately look like Generic Football Kit, but a) that isn’t necessarily a bad thing and b) there are enough nice touches on it to make it loosely interesting. Such as the red, yellow and black trim, the yellow piping, the nice crossed-over collar. And after all that, I still don’t really know if it’s any good, so it’s going here in the middle somewhere.
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Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images
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It’s very ‘Argentina away kit from c.1996’, but that’s not necessarily a criticism: Argentina looked pretty cool back then. It’s ultimately the same design as the home shirt, just with light blue where the black was, white where the light blue was and grey where the white was. In theory that should mean a positive review… but for some reason these colours just don’t work quite as well: you want the colours to really pop on a design like this, and white/light blue/grey just doesn’t cut it.
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Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images
Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images
Mohamed Tageldin/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
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Much like Egypt’s home kit looked like it had been inspired by the country’s Wikipedia page, so the away kit has similarly, erm, ‘basic’ imagery on it. The red home shirt featured a pharaoh as its primary background design, so what does the away shirt have? Yes! That’s right: a pyramid. Well, three of them actually, stacked atop each other so they actually look more like Doritos. Otherwise it’s a fairly basic shirt that actually looks a bit more Austria-y, but beyond that and the schoolchild-level iconography, it’s reasonably nice.
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Mohamed Tageldin/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
Mohamed Tageldin/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
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There are versions of a Sudan kit knocking around that seem to be official and from their actual supplier, that are much nicer than the versions they've been wearing at AFCON. Not sure what is going on there, but the ones they sported in Morocco are sort of fine, without being that great. The home version, red with green and black swooshes, looks a bit more 'Sunday league' than the away one, hence why it is ranked slightly lower.
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Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
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There is another version on the internet of Sudan's away shirt. One that ostensibly seems to be official but isn't the one they've been wearing. It is lovely. It only really serves to make their actual shirt - which is basically fine - just look really disappointing. Shame. The white arrangement of this design looks a little cleaner than the red home one, hence its ranking a little higher...but look at what we could've had.
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Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images
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The shirt that Mozambique wore in some of the games leading up to the tournament was so astonishingly boring - essentially just a red T-shirt with a couple of black bits on it - that it's a blessed relief their new one is actually quite nice. The black sections on the sleeve work, they're offset quite well by the yellow trim and the background design is subtle but distinctive. Verdict: quite nice.
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Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images
Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
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It’s quite… ’busy’, isn't it? It gives the vibe of a shirt that someone has accidentally asked two different people to design, so when they both turn up at head office with their suggestions, they just used both, placed atop each other. Arguably just one of them would have been fine: either the swirling design in blue and white or the black and white diamond stripes, but despite all of this it is reasonably nice.
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Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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Very nice, if a little bit plain. Still, you can probably get away with plain when your main shirt colour is bright orange. Actually, maybe it’s slightly unfair to call it plain: the background pattern is subtle and, according to Puma, is ‘drawn from the intricate beauty of Ivorian traditional costumes’: assuming that is true, and not just some marketing nonsense, then it’s a lovely touch and works beautifully.
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Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Issam Zerrok/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
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It’s tempting to ignore the outfield shirt entirely and focus on the belting goalkeepers' jersey (side question: does Nigeria, pound for pound, have the best back-catalogue of any shirts in international football history?), but let’s stay on topic here. Historically, you typically associate Nigeria with playing in mostly green, but at the moment it’s mostly white. It’s… good, but it’s almost cartoonishly 1990s-coded, a reference to those glory days when every shirt was very big and billowy. It does have a big eagle on the chest, which is to be applauded, but because it’s white-on-white, it is a bit difficult to see.
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Issam Zerrok/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
Issam Zerrok/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
Visionhaus/Getty Images
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I am quite fond of the ‘shawl’ design choice, when the main detail is having different colours around the shoulders to the body of the shirt. Often it’s quite a uniform block, but this one is a bit… well, I can’t really think of a better word other than ‘splurgy’. It sort of looks like someone has gone into one of those gunge tanks they had on kids' TV shows. Is that good? Well, it’s not bad, I tell you that much.
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Visionhaus/Getty Images
Visionhaus/Getty Images
Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images
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The DR Congo jersey that was advertised as their away shirt isn't actually the one they used as their away shirt in their win over Botswana: while the stated away was subtle, lots of gentle colours, like a light breeze in sportswear form, the one they wore is less so, much bolder with bright yellow contrasting with the red, elaborate patterns on the sleeves. But that's no bad thing, it stands out nicely and for an old man like me, it's always nice seeing Umbro back in the game.
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Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images
Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images
Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images
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At first glance, this looks a bit like the shirts from that slightly odd revival of New York Cosmos, which essentially turned out to be a fashion brand with a football club loosely attached. But put that out of your mind and you’ve got a really wonderful shirt which is a fairly standard format - broadly plain body with a background design, nice contrast on the collar and sleeves. But the classics never go out of style, and the yellow, green and a sort of purple-y colour on the trim makes it just different enough.
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Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images
Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images
Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
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The more I look at this one, the more I like it. It is very 1990s, which does appeal to this middle-aged nostalgia fiend. I quite like that the stripes eminating from the armpits aren't solid blocks, more like they're painted on. Could probably have done without the black bib thing around the collar, but that's nit-picking really.
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Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images
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The Gabon kits were a bit of a mystery until hours before they played their first game, because they moved away from previous suppliers Puma after the World Cup qualifiers, with no replacement in place. In the end they went with AB Sports, and frankly it's a nightmare for any teachers/coaches/parents who roll out the old 'fail to prepare, prepare to fail' line when a child leaves something to the last minute. Because this kit, which can only have been cobbled together very late doors, is really good: the yellow with the green and blue and white trim obviously all works nicely, but it's little details like the tiny flick on the collar that make this. Against all odds, this is great.
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Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images
Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images
Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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What’s good about this Nigeria kit is that they have really committed to it. Whether you like the design or not - and, for the record, I do - you have to admire Nike extending the design of the many green daubs onto the shorts as well as the shirts. The design is, so I’m reading, a reference to Nigeria’s lowland forests, which may or may not be true: it does feel like kit manufacturers often just come up with a design and then reverse engineer some loose connection to the culture or history of the country… and you can’t really blame them.
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Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images
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This was another pretty late reveal, announced a couple of days before Cameroon's first game, but they need not have hidden their light under a bushel: what a shirt this is. It will be a room-splitter, because the design does look a bit like you've zoomed a long way into a really low-resolution picture, but I love it - it's bold, it's different, but at the same time is identifiably a Cameroon kit, using all the elements you would expect from them. Top class.
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Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images
Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images
Abdel Majid Bziouat/AFP via Getty Images
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Well would you look at that. Glorious stuff. The repeated pattern is apparently a depiction of a crescent moon, along with four stars representing the four islands of Comoros... which to be honest isn't immediately obvious and it just looks like a nice pattern, but that doesn't really matter very much when the shirt looks so complete. The white, blue, red and yellow trim finish it off really wonderfully.
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Abdel Majid Bziouat/AFP via Getty Images
Abdel Majid Bziouat/AFP via Getty Images
Cem Ozdel/Anadolu via Getty Images
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Yesssssssss, it’s got a massive roaring lion splashed all over it. You could say this sort of iconography is quite obvious and basic, given the nickname of the team is the Lions of Teranga, but as opposed to Egypt’s pharaohs and pyramids, this works pretty well. It’s just the right side of ‘over the top’, which might be because the lion itself is in dark green on a lighter green background, which lends it an element of subtlety. Not quite so keen on the shade of yellow/green for the trim, but the good outweighs the bad here.
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Cem Ozdel/Anadolu via Getty Images
Cem Ozdel/Anadolu via Getty Images
Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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The Mali shirt for the last edition of AFCON was absolutely wild, in the most glorious way, with a bloody great eagle bursting out of the chest, complete with talon slashes down the sides. This time they have been, relatively speaking, more circumspect, but it’s still pretty, erm, lively - again, in a good way. In a world when many kit manufacturers try to just get away with template designs where they can, it’s enjoyable to see an original shirt.
Photo:
Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
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Yeah, this is excellent. What a tournament Puma is having: they’ve basically nailed every kit they have designed, and this one is up there with the best of them. It’s a lesson in how to do simple but not boring, achieved in this instance by keeping a largely plain white main body colour, but adding something extra on the sleeve and collar trim, which according to Puma comes from ‘traditional Berber motifs’, which keeps it beautifully fresh. Well done to all involved.
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Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images
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What a belter. This is a perfect example of the holy grail for the kit designer - how to balance a clean, classic look with it not being too boring. Here, there’s just the right amount of green trim to offset the red of the main body, and it features a design interesting enough to be diverting, brilliantly using repetitions of the star from the Moroccan flag, but carefully deployed so as to be slightly subtle. A triumph. Well done, Puma. Well done.
Photo:
Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images
Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
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It’s not quite as good as the home shirt, but a) they didn't wear their home shirt for some reason and b) that’s a bit like saying The Godfather isn’t quite as good as The Godfather: Part II. It’s still a marvellous design, the pattern apparently inspired by traditional Tunisian carpets… which admittedly isn’t that likely to inspire trembling fear in the opposition. It gets extra points for being ‘of a piece’ with the home shirt: it’s essentially a mirror image (white with red trim, as opposed to red with white trim), with slightly different but complementary designs, which means it isn't a complete copy like some of the other shirts here. Great stuff.
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Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Torbjorn Tande/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images
Chris Milosi/Anadolu via Getty Images
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Puma has nailed most of its designs for this tournament, but this is the best of the lot. It is absolutely beautiful, a design with the confidence to be about 80 per cent plain white, knowing that the wonderful intertwining patterns down the middle in red, yellow and green will do the job of making it stand out. The three strands represent ‘hospitality, generosity and kindness’, which is lovely, but that doesn’t really matter: the important thing is that it looks gorgeous.
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Chris Milosi/Anadolu via Getty Images
Chris Milosi/Anadolu via Getty Images
Nick Miller is a football writer for the Athletic and the Totally Football Show. He previously worked as a freelancer for the Guardian, ESPN and Eurosport, plus anyone else who would have him. Follow Nick on Twitter @NickMiller79
