Canada
Home; 2004-06
“O Canada, our home and away templates; true patriot ZZZs, in all of us command”. I’m fairly sure that these are the opening lines of the Canadian national anthem when played before a football game in recent times. In the two decades since the turn of the century, first Adidas and then Nike have outfitted the national team is some very uninspiring template kits. This is brought into sharper focus as it followed a period of classic shirts from Umbro for the Great White North. What’s even harder to stomach, is that Adidas themselves had also kitted the team out in some iconic looks in the 80s. Though at least in 2004, the Canadian football association were still using that great font for the ‘Canada’ wordmark within their crest. Sadly, that too how now been replaced by a boring font.
This shirt from is only really interesting in that two different versions of this template were worn by the men’s senior team during its lifetime. When first worn in 2004, it was the same two-tone colourway as my shirt, whit white Adidas logo stripes which didn’t quite reach the end of the sleeve. This in turn allowed room for a Canadian flag on the left sleeve. But at the Gold Cup in July 2005 a different version was used. The Adidas logo and stripes switched to black, and gone was the flag as the stripes continued right to the cuff. The bigger change was replacing the dark red with white. This changed the look of the whole shirt, and not for the better in my opinion. Overall, the Gold Cup version looked much more like a teamwear shirt, and I suspect that’s exactly what it was. But I don’t know why that would have happened because after the tournament they switched back to the original version. This was worn, unchanged it seems, until early 2006 when it was replaced by another Adidas template.
In terms of success, this 2004-06 shirt isn’t associated with much of it. In a disappointing World Cup qualifying campaign, Canada eased past Belize in their preliminary game before crashing out in the first group stage with only one win from six games. It didn’t get much better at the 2005 Gold Cup, with only one win from three games. This solitary win over Cuba, was not enough to save Canada from going home early.
