11/01/2026
Zimbabwe’s uniform has received a fair assessment of the overall playing equipment at the ongoing Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) from the global sports publication The Athletic.
This is despite the Warriors’ kits having attracted a negative reaction when they were launched last month, prior to the African football jamboree, which is being held in Morocco.
Zimbabwe’s kits, the alternative (white) and the home (yellow), made it into the top 36 of strips that have so far been donned at AFCON.
The Warriors’ attire, a product of the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA), was ranked as a better brand above that of South Africa, who were sponsored by the French kit manufacturer Le Coq Sportif.
While expressing some reservations, The Athletic’s veteran football writer, Nick Miller, ranked Zimbabwe’s alternative kit in the top half of the best that have been displayed at AFCON, due to its nostalgic touch.
“If the yellow home effort had a whiff of a 1990s Sunday league kit, the white one absolutely reeks of it. That’s good for crusty old nostalgists like me, but is it a viable strategy for an actual football kit in 2025?
“It does ultimately look like Generic Football Kit, but (a) that isn’t necessarily a bad thing and (b) there are enough nice touches on it to make it loosely interesting. Such as the red, yellow and black trim, the yellow piping, the nice crossed-over collar. And after all that, I still don’t really know if it’s any good, so it’s going here in the middle somewhere,” wrote Miller.
Miller ranked the home kit lowly among the worst, but it was placed sufficiently ahead of both South Africa’s jerseys and Egypt’s home red.
The home kit was criticised by Miller for being plain without enough creativity.
“I can’t decide whether I like this or it’s just a bit boring. Maybe it’s both, and I’m the boring one. Something to ponder. It’s broadly quite plain, but the four-coloured trim on the collar and cuffs is really good, and I’m a sucker for a nice bit of piping, which is used judiciously here. There is a slight whiff of ‘1990s Sunday League team’ to the design, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” wrote Miller in his assessment.
The Warriors are one of the few teams donning locally designed kits and being ranked above South Africa’s French manufactured equipment and Algeria’s white kit buoyes ZIFA’s strategy.
This also dispels some of the negativity around the kits, which had been blamed on ZIFA’s fumbling in communications and a poor unveiling.
The Athletic ranked Senegal, Tunisia, and Morocco in the top three for the best kits at this year’s AFCON.
