With millions at stake in retail sales, this years World Cup in Qatar has soccer fans playing rate the shirt and what to buy. So far, theres no runaway winner that just might earn icon status like the sold-out-in-minutes bright green and chevron jersey of Nigeria during the last tournament in 2018.

Which kits definitely dont dazzle in the eyes of some hardcore fans and a few outspoken players? Nikes effort for the U.S. team, which didnt qualify four years ago. An enlarged, simple country crest sits at the center on white home shirts perceived as bland, as opposed to classic. Nike relocated its swoosh logo to both sleeves.

A blue graphic at the neck has led to mocking comparisons to the Stay Puft marshmallow man of Ghostbusters fame. And the U.S. away kit features ice-dyed black Rorschach blotches against royal blue.

Its ugly, said 33-year-old fan Ryan Bender of the former. The away ones look like training jerseys.

Bender is a lifelong soccer player, youth coach and jersey collector in Los Angeles. He had few niceties in general for many of the kits of the big three outfitters: Nike (13 countries), Adidas (7) and Puma (6). Thats especially so for the array of front boxes, shields and other containers where numbers will go courtesy of Puma on away kits for Senegal, Morocco, Uruguay and more.

Theres particular ire for Puma over the QR code-like symbol of Switzerland. The idea overall, Puma said, was to highlight player numbers. It has also been likened among the grumpy to the iPhone calendar icon.

Theres a lot of lack of creativity there. And to be honest, a lot of them just look like jerseys you would find in a roadside shop, Bender said of Pumas kits.

While Bender has some favorites, and he isnt alone when it comes to derision for the U.S. shirts, not everybody is a hater in the every-four-years World Cup sweepstakes over shirts. The top three companies are joined by six other brands with one country each. Nike, Puma and Adidas have made the use of recycled materials a priority.

The Nike and Puma kits are stunning, said Aron Solomon, 55, in Montreal. Nike did such a great job bringing clean lines and just the right shade of colors. Case in point is the Qatar home Jersey.

He was referring to the hosts maroon kit with a serrated line of white triangles trimming sleeves in a design evoking the countrys flag. Think sharks teeth.

Denmark took a bite out of Qatar when it unveiled a black jersey to go with two other kits. The black shirts, with maker Hummels logo faded out, honor migrant workers who died during construction work for the tournament.

As for his own country, Canada, Solomon is unbothered that the rejuvenated Les Rouges will take the pitch for their first World Cup appearance in 36 years wearing the same template-based kits theyve had since June 2021. The shirts are traditional red and white with a crest featuring a maple leaf.

Like a few U.S. players who speak publicly about their kits, Canada defender Sam Adekugbe is disappointed.

I just feel like every team should get a new kit for the World Cup because its a symbolic event. I dont hate it, but I would have liked to have gotten a new kit, just because its something to cherish, he told The Athletic.

Nike cites a different design cycle for Canada as the reason the country is going without.

Solomon has no love for Adidas-designed shirts, particularly the home jerseys of powerhouse Germany, where he lived for four years. It features a fierce wide black vertical stripe down the center against a white background in homage to the countrys 1908 home shirt.

It looks like theyre wearing a bib, he said.

The Adidas shirts for four-time World Cup champs Germany, along with Argentina, Mexico and the other countries it outfitted, include the companys signature triple-line trim on the shoulders in various colors. Sort of like sporty epaulets.

Perhaps the most polarizing kit of the competition is the away look for Mexico, which some consider too flashy and others think will endure like Nigerias shirts the last time around. The creamy white kit has an all-over red design of Mixtec art outlines in celebration of Mexicos fighting spirit. Theres a nod on the inside back collar to the pre-Columbian deity Quetzalcoatl (so named by the Aztecs), aka the Feathered Serpent.

Theyre my most favorite of the whole tournament, said mega soccer fan Khloe Lewis, 27, in Somerville, Massachusetts. I like the pattern and the contrast, but also that its inspired by historic, traditional Mexican design.

As a hot topic, debate over World Cup kits often churns among fans yearning for a jersey identity of their own.

Kits get to the emotions. Theyre something thats very close to peoples hearts and it makes them very, very vocal about them, said Mateo Kossman, a senior product manager on the Adidas soccer apparel team who worked on Mexicos shirts.

Come Nov. 20, when the World Cup begins, soccer will dominate at the sports bar Das Beer Garden in Jupiter, Florida. Growing up in Caracas, 44-year-old co-owner Alex Marquez began playing the Beautiful Game in first grade. He roots for the U.S., Venezuela and Spain, the latter his parents home country.

Marquez is pleased with Spains classic home jersey in red from Adidas, worn with navy shorts and socks. The away kit the aways being generally more adventurous is another story. It has light blue swirls with faint digital lines on a white background and the countrys bright red and yellow flag colors for the shoulder stripes in a grand show of disharmony.

Its like the thing that goes around a babys crib, Marquez said of the swirls.

The blog Four On Four called the look exquisite, dubbing the wavy design a geometric jellyfish pattern.

Argentina switched it up, color wise, for its away shirts. Adidas rolled out a classic white and blue stripe home kit but veered for the first time in the countrys history to a vibrant purple for the away jersey. It depicts the Sun of May and its long rays from the countrys flag, though the rays and a background design look like flames. The purple is meant to represent gender equality, and overall diversity and inclusion. And the Adidas triple lines on the shoulders match!

How has the purple played among World Cup fans?

Like everything we create, its important that the story is understood and told, said Andrew Dolan, an Adidas senior product manager who worked on the Argentina shirts. I think everyone appreciates what were trying to do.

At 10, Zain Ennaoui is a small fan with big opinions on soccer shirts. Of the new purple for Argentina, which has some soccer buffs rattled, the Brooklyn fifth-grader said politely, Its good in its own way.

Zain supports Morocco, where his dad is from, but he, too, loves Mexicos away extravaganza. He gets that most of the shirts among the 32 countries headed to Qatar have cultural meaning. That said, South Koreas away kit of many colors (black with yellow, blue and red brush strokes) is a tough sell for him, despite its nod to Taegeukgi, the symbol on the countrys flag.

Its like someone thought it was a good idea to get a paint gun and spray it all over the place. It did not work, Zain said.

Its a toss up on which look for the U.S. is more roundly despised by critics. The soccer-obsessed site Footy Headlines rated Canadas tragedy at the bottom among Nikes efforts. The U.S. shirts were second to last.

It looks like youd wear it to a Grateful Dead concert, said Kent Gethmann, 38, in Spencer, Iowa, of the blue and black away shirt.

That, the idea of lending street life to World Cup wear, might just be the point.

Id rock it, Brandon Williams said of the same U.S. kit.

Hes a Los Angeles menswear stylist for celebrities and star athletes, though no soccer players yet.

Id wear it oversized with some hoochie daddy shorts (theyre really short), some clean white Nike Air Force Ones and a backward snapback, Williams said. Id throw a sweater over my shoulders like Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and Im ready for Sunday brunch.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell still says its possible to cool the economy and keep employment stableall without causing a severe downturn, in what would be a soft landing. 

But if history is any indication, a recession and an economic hard landing are all but guaranteed, says Nouriel Roubini, professor emeritus at New York Universitys Stern School of Business and the CEO of Roubini Macro Associates. He earned the nickname Dr. Doom for his prophetic visions of looming economic downturns, including an accurate prediction of the 2008 housing crash and subsequent market crisis.

With the U.S. annual inflation rate as high as it is8.2% in Octoberonly a deep recession and a steep spike in unemployment might be enough to fix it, Roubini warned in a recent interview with Fortune.

In U.S. history, over the last 60 years, there has never been an episode where inflation was above 5% and unemployment was below 5% [when] the Fed started raising rates and avoided a hard landing, Roubini said. History suggests its going to be near mission impossible to avoid a hard landing.

But any continued economic downturn may result in something worse than higher unemployment, Roubini warned. Multiple factors could collide to create a recession that combines the elements of the two worst financial crises in recent U.S. history: the 1970s energy shocks and the 2008 financial crash.

Recession on the way

In September, Powell said that a modest increase in unemployment would signal that the Federal Reserves effort to tame inflation was succeeding, as higher unemployment means less of the competition for workers that has driven up wages and contributed to inflation over the past year as companies pass costs onto consumers through higher prices.

The U.S. unemployment rate in October was 3.7%, up from 3.5% in Septemberthough still relatively low by historical standards. To bring todays levels of inflation in check, unemployment may need to go much higher, and the Fed just doesnt want to talk about it, said David Rubenstein, billionaire investor and cofounder of the Carlyle Group.

He cant quite say this, but if the unemployment rate goes up to 4% or 5% or 6%, inflation will [probably] be tamed a bit, he said of Powell during a September interview with CNN. 

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers gave a similar estimate to the Financial Times last month, predicting that the Fed is unlikely to achieve inflation stability without a recession of a magnitude that would take unemployment toward the 6% range.

Roubini told Fortune that a recession is coming and will likely send unemployment much higher than its current level. 

But unlike the many banks and strategists that have forecast a mild recession, Roubini said that the coming downturn will not be short and shallow and is instead likely to be severe and more protracted. 

Worst of both worlds

Roubini warned that a confluence of factorsincluding rising national debt levels, supply-chain issues, and a global energy crisiscould bring together the worst of two historically bad economic downturns in the U.S.

In some sense, were going to have maybe the worst of the 1970s and the worst of the post-GFC [Global Financial Crisis] period, he said.

Roubini said that the coming recession has some similarities to the 1970s economic crisis that was largely caused by two oil supply shocks in 1973 and 1979, which led to high global oil prices and fuel shortages.

Today the world is in the grip of another global energy shock, this time with natural gas in the spotlight. The war in Ukraine has severely disrupted global energy markets, including severely limiting natural gas flows from Russia to Europe and sparking an energy crisis on the continent. Natural gas is expected to remain in low supply well into next year, while the war has also aggravated an oil crunch that started during the pandemic era.

In the 1970s we had two negative supply shocks. Today we have many more than two, Roubini said.

But a big difference with the 1970sand a worrying parallel with the downturn of the late 2000sis the soaring level of U.S. national debt, according to Roubini.

[In the 1970s] we did not have high debt levels so there was no widespread debt crisis, he said. After the GFC there was a debt crisis to match the debt of households with the banks, mortgages, and the housing bubble gone bust.

In 2022, after years of higher government spending and pandemic-era stimulus, the U.S. national debt has reached new heights. The U.S. government went on a borrowing spree in the earlier days of the pandemic to help shore up the economy as businesses faced closures and unemployment soared, but that borrowing has returned with a vengeance with the national debt topping $31 trillion for the first time last month.

Today, we have negative supply shocks worse than the 70s, Roubini said. And we have the worst of the GFC because the debt ratios are through the roof, referring to todays soaring national debt crisis and its similarities with U.S. debt in the late 2000s.

Roubini said that the resulting combination might push the U.S. economy into something even worse than a recession, as high inflation combined with slower economic growth due to high debt levels could lead to stagflation, a toxic mix of high prices and low-to-zero growth.

Youre gonna get not only inflation, not only a recession, but what they call the Great Stagflationary Debt Crisis, Roubini said. Youre going to essentially have a combination of both, so its much worse than the 70s and its probably as bad as during the GFC.

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The discovery, in the sacred baths of the San Casciano dei Bagni archaeological dig near Siena, is one of the most significant ever in the Mediterranean and certainly the most important since the 1972 underwater discovery of the famed Riace bronze warriors, said Massimo Osanna, the Culture Ministrys director of museums.

Thanks to the mud that protected them, the two-dozen figurines and other bronze objects were found in a perfect state of conservation, bearing delicate facial features, inscriptions and rippled tunics. Alongside the figures were 5,000 coins in gold, silver and bronze, the ministry said.

As evidence of the importance of the find, the ministry announced the construction of a new museum in the area to house the antiquities.

Jacopo Tabolli, who coordinated the dig for the University for Foreigners in Siena, said the discovery was significant because it sheds new light on the end of the Etruscan civilization and the expansion of the Roman Empire in todays central Italy between the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C.

The period was marked by wars and conflicts across what is todays Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio regions, and yet, the bronze statues show evidence that Etruscan and Roman families prayed together to deities in the sacred sanctuary of the thermal springs. The statues, including depictions of Apollo and Igea, the ancient Greek god and goddess of health, bear both Etruscan and Latin inscriptions.

While there were social and civil wars being fought outside the sanctuary inside the sanctuary the great elite Etruscan and Roman families prayed together in a context of peace surrounded by conflict, Tabolli said. This possibility to rewrite the relationship and dialectic between the Etruscan and Romans is an exceptional opportunity.

Some of the two dozen bronzes are entire human-like figures of deities, while others are of individual body parts and organs which would have been offered up as votive offerings to the gods for intervention for medical cures via the thermal waters, the ministry said in a statement.

This is almost an X-ray of the human insides from the lungs to the intestines, said Osanna, gesturing to a lung at the restoration laboratory where the bronzes are being treated. There are ears and other anatomical parts like hands. So, all these things that curative waters and the intervention of the divinities would have been able to save.

The find represents the largest deposit of bronzes from this era in Italy, notable also because most surviving antiquities from the period are primarily in terracotta, the ministry said.

Its a discovery that will rewrite history, Tabolli said in a statement.

The discovery comes 50 years after the Riace bronze warriors were found by a recreational diver in the waters off southern Calabria and went onto become one of Italys most spectacular archaeological finds. The 5th century bronzes, currently on display at the national archaeological museum in Reggio Calabria, feature two naked life-sized and life-like Greek warriors, with rippled muscles and intricate, curly beards.

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