Nike is revolutionizing the collars of football jerseys

The collars. This is where the most notable aesthetic innovations in football can be found, and the credit goes to Nike. The collections branded with the Swoosh have introduced surprising formulas and unconventional aesthetic choices that move beyond traditional standards like crew necks or polo-style collars, which are not always appreciated by players.

In a scene dominated by nostalgia and the inability to resist creating a classic product, collars have become a space for free experimentation. The results have been of outstanding quality, thanks to a series of experiments involving shapes, fabrics, and color usage.

Trapezoids, Squares, and Triangles

The 2025/26 Home jersey of Sporting is a tribute to tradition, bringing back the green and white horizontal stripes without any additional colors, unlike the 2024/25 season which introduced black. Yet this classic jersey features a modern detail: the collar, in this case, is an isosceles trapezoid closed at the front by a small fabric strip positioned at a different level from the rest of the collar.

The trapezoid collar is a softer version of a square-shaped solution adopted by Nike for Nigeria's Home jersey. The Super Eagles have always been a stylistic and aesthetic laboratory for the brands they work with, and this type of collar represents the latest frontier, actually, the second latest, as the women’s national team’s latest away kit features a V-slit collar with two small matching inserts on each side to break up the pattern.

Asymmetrical

Nike has strongly invested on the Women’s European Championship and, as a result, in the Swoosh collections to be worn in Switzerland this summer. It’s no surprise that new collar designs can be found, and the most surprising solution appears on the France away jersey.

The kit showcases a unique split collar design, characterized by an asymmetrical style where a seam runs from the shoulder to the opposite sleeve, effectively creating the illusion of one shirt being placed over another.

Two-Tone

When it comes to innovation, Inter Milan is a club that receives special attentions from Nike. In the 2024/25 season, the Home jersey stood out with its traditional vertical stripes reinterpreted in a modern, dynamic style, seen on both the jersey and shorts. Yet this kit, like the third yellow kit, also features a subtle aesthetic detail: a two-tone collar matching the jersey’s color palette.

The home kit features one black and one blue side of the collar, while the third kit, set to be worn in the Champions League final against PSG, has one yellow and one black side. Another interesting detail concerns the shapes: these triangular collars feature an offset closure, where the two fabric strips don’t meet to form a point but instead one cuts straight across the other, giving the visual impression of differing sizes.

Hexagonal

Back to geometric shapes, this time the hexagon, used on South Korea’s away jersey. A brutalist take on the classic circular crew neck. Unlike the Nigeria design, there’s no gap between the collar and the jersey. The collar fits tightly against the player's skin and, to an untrained eye, appears like a standard round neck.

Nike's designers have been thoroughly enamored with the hexagonal design, leading them to unveil a more refined iteration for Barcelona's 2024/25 Home jersey. In contrast, the original brutalist version, which made its debut in the 2022/23 season, is showcased in the club's fourth kit, a vibrant yellow adorned with red stripes to honor Catalonia.

Polo, Not Polo

Shapes, colors, but also, fabrics. Nike is leaving nothing to chance when it comes to collars. For Brazil and England, for instance, they created a textured fabric collar in polo style, reimagined in a modern key with a second textured strip of the same color applied just below the fold. An elegant yet far from boring solution.

The 2025 collection for the Women’s Euros also introduced a reinterpretation of the polo collar, featuring a captivating optical effect. This collar stands out with a subtle V-neckline, available in one or two colors. Where it widens to attach at the shoulders, there are two squared segments reminiscent of traditional polo collar flaps, adding an innovative touch to the design.