Eagles to wear new color combo in Brazil, a nod to the local soccer team

The Eagles won’t be wearing green when they open their 2024 season next week in São Paulo, Brazil, but not because the color is banned inside Arena Corinthians — a made-for-social-media drama that played out for months after the participants in the NFL’s first jaunt to the South American country was announced.

Instead, the Eagles will debut a new color combination. They’ll wear black helmets, white jerseys, and black pants, a nod to the soccer team, Corinthians, that calls the stadium home. The soccer team wears white and black. It is typical for the “home” or “host” team to get first choice of jersey colors.

Green Bay will wear its green uniforms, perhaps finally putting to rest the idea that green is banned at Arena Corinthians.

The topic of green being barred started as soon as the Eagles were announced as the first of the two teams heading to Brazil for the NFL’s first game there.

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Corinthians’ rival, Palmeiras, wears green, and the Derby Paulista (English translation: Derby of São Paulo) is one of the fiercest rivalries in the sport. There is an informal ban on wearing green for soccer games in the stadium, though sometimes it’s formal. Corinthians striker Jo was once fined for wearing green cleats.

But “discussion of the color green is related to soccer” and will have no impact on the NFL game, NFL spokesperson Michael Signora said in June.

Wearing green inside Corinthians Arena, as Palmeiras does and the Packers will do, isn’t unprecedented. The stadium was built for the 2014 World Cup and hosted the opening ceremony and Brazil’s 3-1 victory over Croatia in the opening match. And while Brazil’s national team wore bright yellow, there were plenty of Brazilian fans in the crowd wearing the green that makes up a majority of the South American country’s flag — the same way there will be Eagles and Packers fans wearing their green next week.

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The Eagles’ trip to Brazil comes as the country and the state of São Paulo specifically is dealing with wildfires that are impacting the air quality, which prompted Eagles safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson to say on social media, “do you really think it’s safe to play there !!”

The Eagles had a team meeting this week to discuss the trip to Brazil, wide receiver A.J. Brown said, which included things to do and not do while they’re in São Paulo. Brown said he’d likely be spending most of his down time in his room and the team, he said and DeVonta Smith repeated, is treating the trip as a normal football game.

”This is not a vacation,” Brown said.

The Eagles aren’t considering it one. They leave for Brazil Wednesday and fly back home after the game Friday.