Welcome to this website’s off-season sports sartorial content. We are counting down the world’s top 50 most iconic sports uniforms. Only current uniforms apply, we are not including one-off or alternate uniforms. Let’s stick to the basics.

#30

Croatia Soccer

The list continues with our 3rd national soccer kit as the Kockasti from the small nation of Croatia make an appearance. Arguably, no one in international soccer punches more above their weight as Croatia, a country of just 3.9 million people (or roughly the size of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area), was the runner up in the 2018 World Cup and has numerous other deep tournament runs in international competition.

Today, we discuss the red and white checkerboard.

The coat of arms on the Croatian national flag has 5 small shields on top of a main shield of their checkerboard pattern. The soccer crest has the checkerboard shield in the background on top of an old-timey football with the initials “HNS” (Hrvatski nogometni savez or Croatian soccer federation) running vertically in gold through a blue banner.

When Croatia declared independence in 1991 their soccer jersey was primarily red and through the years they’ve used varying amount of blue as a secondary color. Most of their kits in the 20th Century have fully embraced the famous checkerboard pattern since they signed with Nike for the 2000 calendar year.

In recent years, they have expanded to some different designs and moved away from a jersey largely composed of their pattern. The most recent jersey released in 2022 opened up the middle of the jersey and moved the soccer crest to the middle of the chest. With plain white shorts, they added a bit of red checkerboard to the left socks only. How many put the socks on the wrong leg in recent matches, you wonder?