Welcome to the 4th Annual Top Tops list from Protagonist Soccer - our past winners include Providence City in 2020 with their HAMR re-issue shirt by Inaria and Maryland Bobcats in 2021 with their amazing Glitch shirt. In those first two years, our assistant editor and resident kitnerd Josh Duder compiled and put the lists in order; however, last year he was joined by five other aficionados in a kit panel and the Top Top in 2022, Minnesota Aurora’s Inaugural Home Kit ,was selected by having all 6 of the panelists rank the nominated shirts then order the shirts by average ranking - the lowest average ranking was granted the title of Top Top!

Sioux Falls City FC partnered with local businesses, The Boozy Bakery and JJ’s Wines, to release their pride kit by Hummel which celebrates “All of Us.”

For 2023’s Top Tops panel we brought back EL Johnson, the entrepreneur behind Fourty-One Magazine, and co-founder of The Town FC. The Kit Connoisseur and lovely Nicole Arias returns as well. New to the panel this year are co-host of Root & Branch Podcast and SoCal Soccer insider Dennis Pope; Protagonist Contributor and Podcaster MaryBeth Zmuda; Host of the USL Show and promoter of KIT SZN, Kaylor Hodges; and co-host of the Blue Grass Soccer cast and Protagonist freelance writer, Jon Hunt.

On September 23rd, San Antonio FC rocked these for warms ups then auctioned them off - proceeds benefited the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to “Kick Childhood Cancer.”

They join me, Joshua Duder, content creator for Protagonist and lover of shiny shirts, in looking at the 50 shirts which were submitted when nominations were requested, and finding the Top 23 Tops of 2023. How we did it: each guest was sent a google doc with the same 50 shirts, shown in random 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 50 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 seven of us and putting the 23 shirts with the lowest average rankings in order from highest to lowest - lowest being closest to 1 and thus the Top Top!

On Saturday, June 17th Des Moines Menace rocked their own pride shirts and all profits from were given to Iowa Safe Schools - the wonderful Olive & York made the shirts.

While Asheville City SC had THREE kits nominated for Top Tops, this beautiful Blue Ghost Firefly 3rd shirt was produced by Hummel and sales benefited The WNC Nature Center

NY International FC always comes correct and like many other clubs who do it well, had multiple shirts nominated - this collab with EV Loves NYC is special though. Produced by the fine folks at Olive & York, this shirt is a beautiful representation of the phenomenal work EV Loves NYC does to address food insecurity in the Big Apple.

FC Tulsa debuted the Indigenous People’s Kit on July 12 - it was designed by Dr Jessica Moore Harjo of Weomepe Designs and featured the Scissortail Fly Catcher.

From park clean ups to school supply drives, Lansing Common FC is always leveraging themselves to make their community better; sales of all kits, including their wild GK top, benefitted The Refugee Development Center

MPLS City is another club who has regularly made this list, and with multiple nominations too. This year’s Pride Shirt, designed by former player Miles Stockman-Willis, might be one of the best ever designed. While the calling card of a Pride shirt is all of the colors representing all of our friends in the LGBTQ+ spectrum, I’ve seen very few which blend that motif with the general club design aesthetic - not only was this shirt lovely, but sales also benefited Gray Ducks Team Trans.

Before we begin the countdown, we wanted to recognize some of the best of the rest - charity shirts and specialty shirts with ties to worthy causes. Some were not nominated and others were excluded because their respective clubs already had a kit in the competition. Additionally, we purposefully exclude charity shirts to avoid the perception that by vote, one charity is more important or worthy than another - our favorite soccer clubs are a vital part of our community and the causes they choose to champion all have merit!

Now let’s start the countdown of the Top 23 Tops of 2023…