The Top 22 Tops of 2022 (PART ONE, 22 - 11)
Welcome to the 3rd Annual Top Tops list from Protagonist Soccer - our past winners include Providence City in 2020 with their HAMR re-issue shirt by Inaria as well as Maryland Bobcats in 2021 with their amazing Glitch shirt. In both years, the lists were compiled and ranked subjectively by our own Josh Duder (me). However, this year we’ve decided to add a little powder to the kegs and invite on five of our favorite fellow kitnerds to help put 2022’s kits in some sort of order.
Greggo from FTC joins the panel, along with Protagonist Soccer’s Assistant Editor and Director of Women’s Soccer Content, Lis Schendel. The tie-dying maestro Soccer Goose, himself, Ben Goshorn lends his insight, as well as the indefatigable EL Johnson, co-founder of TheTown FC, Club&Culture, and 2centsFC. Lastly, and certainly not least, the Kit Connoisseur herself, Nicole Arias, adds her expertise and cultured opinion to our panel of trikot experts.
They join me, Joshua Duder, content creator for Protagonist and lover of shiny shirts, in looking at the 30 shirts which were submitted when nominations were requested, and finding the Top 22 Tops of 2022. How we did it: each guest was sent a google doc with the same 30 shirts, shown in alphabetic order, and the only notes were the name of the club, nickname of the shirt, and the manufacturer. They were asked to independently rank the shirts from 1 to 30 and reply with only their ranking and a sentence or two about their number one shirt. The final rankings are a result of finding the average rankings from the six of us and excluding number 23 to 30.
As we gear up for the countdown, we wanted to highlight some of the fantastic shirts which were either not nominated, were nominated after a shirt from the same club was already submitted, or landed in the 23 to 30 ranking zone and didn’t make the final list. I would encourage fans, players, coaches or team owners to watch this space next year and be sure to nominate their favorite kits when the time comes.
Lastly, before we show you the good stuff, I wanted to note that sometimes clubs make so many good shirts that its hard to figure out which one makes it to the final list - you’ll see that, while your favorite shirt from a certain club did NOT make the list, another one might have, and that is entirely down to which one was nominated first. On with the show…
Look for Part Two of the Top 22 Tops of 2022 HERE tomorrow…
by Joshua Duder and aforementioned guests