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The new Netherlands home kit for World Cup 2010 was finally revealed late last week. You won’t be hugely surprised to find that it’s orange. Or, rather, Oranje.

Ever wondered why the Dutch jerseys are oranje? It’s not just to facilitate the easy puns of football commentators, although everyone who’s ever described Dutch passing as “clockwork” says a big thank you. Orange is the national colour of the Netherlands, taken from the coat of arms of the House of Orange-Nassau, the Royal Family of the Netherlands. So now you know.

We’re going to take a closer look at the new shirt below, and I’ll give you my best effort at a review. The away shirt was released back in February, so we’ll cast an amateur critical eye over that too.

Netherlands Home Shirt

Want one? Find your Netherlands World Cup jersey in our store.

The reality is that there’s only so much you can do with an orange jersey. You can’t change the main colour, and there’s not a great deal of room for adding extra colour. So it’s all about the trimmings.

The collar is a simple black. So it’s not as inventive as, say, the 2006 jersey, which featured the colour of the Dutch flag in the collar. For the Netherlands 2010 World Cup home shirt, Nike have gone with a thin white line down each side of the jersey, and small black horizontal line near the edge of each sleeve. Can’t say I’m a huge fan of either. The thin white line seems to interrupt the orangeness of the jersey. The small black lines are less obtrusive, but seem a bit pointless. Does anyone know whey they’re there? Other than the fact that all Nike jerseys have similar lines near the sleeve this year?

However, when you see the uniform as a whole (as modelled by Wesley Sneijder, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (who I’ve just noticed looked like a gigantic version of Andrei Arshavin) and Rafael van der Vaart above) you’ll see that it’s a return to tradition. Recent Dutch uniforms have featured either white shorts, or head-to-toe orange. But this new kit with black shorts is a return to the look of he ’70s, a decade when the Netherlands team made it to back to back World Cup Finals. Take a look at the 1974 team to see the similarity:

The big difference between 1974 and 2010 is the manufacturer. I’m sure Nike weren’t keen to just outright copy the earlier adidas design, and so there’s still plenty to differentiate the two. The absence of the three stripes for one thing.

The one feature which possibly saves this uniform, and specifically redeems that white line on the jersey I was a little unhappy about just two paragraphs ago, is the way that said white line joins up with the white line of the shorts. Seems like a clever way of linking the two pieces of clothing, thereby giving the some sort of purpose. Provided the players stand perfectly still of course.

Netherlands Away Shirt

You like? Find your Netherlands away jersey in our store.
It would seem like a bad idea to push all the design elements above the rib cage, but this Netherlands away shirt pulls it off. The white, red and blue obviously represent the Dutch flag, and this seems like a nice balance to me. Orange for home, flag for away.

I particularly like the design of the red and blue vertical lines. They’re like go-faster stripes for footballers, so Arjen Robben will presumably be just a blur when he hits top speed, and Wesley Sneijder’s shots will hit the back of the net before anyone even sees them.

That’s my take. What do you think of these Netherlands jerseys?