FIFA forces Haiti to change kit design

FOXBOR­OUGH, Unit­ed States – Haiti has been forced to change the de­sign of its World Cup kit three days be­fore their open­ing match against Scot­land.

Ac­cord­ing to FI­FA, the il­lus­tra­tion on the shirt, which de­picts a war scene, fails to com­ply with its rules, which pro­hib­it the use of any “po­lit­i­cal, re­li­gious, or per­son­al mes­sages or slo­gans” on kits.

The de­sign pays trib­ute to the Bat­tle of Vertieres in 1803, which se­cured Haiti’s in­de­pen­dence. It had al­so been em­bed­ded on the shirts worn in both of their pre-tour­na­ment friend­lies.

In a state­ment, Colom­bian man­u­fac­tur­er Sae­ta said its orig­i­nal de­sign “was a trib­ute to the men and women who con­tribute every day to Haiti’s fu­ture” and “was not in­tend­ed as a po­lit­i­cal state­ment”.

It added: “FI­FA de­ter­mined that cer­tain vi­su­al el­e­ments could be in­ter­pret­ed dif­fer­ent­ly un­der its equip­ment reg­u­la­tions and ul­ti­mate­ly re­quest­ed mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the de­sign.

“While this in­ter­pre­ta­tion dif­fered from our in­ten­tion, Sae­ta re­spect­ed the process and im­ple­ment­ed the fi­nal re­quire­ments com­mu­ni­cat­ed by FI­FA.”

Haiti be­gin their first World Cup cam­paign in 52 years against Scot­land at Boston Sta­di­um, Foxbor­ough on Sat­ur­day evening.

CMC