Is there anything about this upcoming World Cup — which will be taking place across the entire continent of North America — that isn’t shaping up to be a total disaster?
FIFA seems to be nakedly price gouging fans on ticket prices, and may have even outright scammed them on the seats they overpaid for. President Trump threatened to deploy ICE agents at World Cup cities and stadiums. US airports have descended into chaos as hundreds of TSA workers quit after working weeks without pay amid a partial government shutdown.
Now, adding to the chaos, Nike’s newly debuted collection of World Cup kits — which were reportedly made with the help of AI — has turned out to be a sartorial catastrophe.
As The Guardian reported, eagle-eyed fans noticed that the jerseys sported by their favorite athletes, including France’s megastar Kylian Mbappé, looked egregiously misshapen. Their fit physiques were overshadowed by a strange bulge on their shoulder seams where the fabric bunched together, as if the shirts took on a life of their own, tried to grow epaulettes, and gave up.
The strangely unnatural silhouette leaves plenty of questions unanswered. Nike manufactures the kits for numerous national teams, including England, France, the US, and Uruguay, and has done so for decades. Uruguay’s seemed to be the worst off, with captain Federico Valverde made to look like he was wearing a jersey three sizes too small during a game against England. How could this happen?
Nike has placed a lot of emphasis on its new “Aero-FIT” design that’s supposed to help athletes keep cool during what’s anticipated to be a scorching hot tournament. It supposedly “leverages computational design and a highly specialized, stich-specific knitting process,” marketing copy states. If “computational design” sounds like a euphemism for AI, you might be on to something. A source familiar with the design process told The Guardian that it involves using elements of AI to work alongside its human designers, raising the possibility that an AI tool may have been involved in the flub.
The athletic apparel maker acknowledged the shoulder bulge issue in a statement to The Guardian, but didn’t address how it occurred.
“During the recent international break, we observed a minor issue with our Nike national team kits, most noticeable around the shoulder seam,” a Nike spokesperson said. “Performance is unaffected, but the overall aesthetic is not where it needs to be,” they added, as if describing some sort of race car.
Athletes weren’t the only ones made to look ridiculous. So too were the many fans that paid up to $200 to buy the Nike jerseys, who fumed about their poor quality on social media.
“The way the shoulders are sewn together just makes them bunch like this no matter what,” one complained on Reddit. “This is a stupid, STUPID design.”
The World Cup is only months away, and possibly millions of these jerseys have already been sold to fans or given to national teams. It’s unclear how, or if, Nike will be able to redesign the kits in time.
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