Well, I've stopped judging other people's skills and "taste" when it comes to producing design work. There's so many moving parts that screw up the process, you can come up with the most adequate and conceptual design that any fan would instantly love and buy but then there are the marketing people, the client, the production department, etc. Too many stakeholders and yes men to uninterested decision makers. Even when you're talking directly to the decision maker sometimes it's truly a lost cause. And I'm not talking about trying to sugarcoat a shit with buzzwords but to actually present your design logically - how it solves a business issue.
People are just dumb most of the time and they don't care all that much for design... Yet they go and buy an Audi and an iPhone
which are packed with numerous design decisions, from the infotainment system to how the fucking door handles work and look...
I had to deal with it my whole life and that's part of the reason that I'm working either freelance or at friends' studios where I have control over what I do. No chance of that happening in a corporation like Nike, endless resources to do whatever you want but also endless hoops you have to jump through to make it happen. It clicks once every other year sadly.
Also, let's be honest here, if Nike came up with the slightest variations of a striped shirt each year all of you fuckers here would call them money whores for trying to milk fans with the same thing, just slightly modified, each year. Similar to what EA does with FIFA. You can never please 100% of the potential customers. Considering most of the people that buy football shirts are probably 20 year olds and younger I see how those designs are being made to please them and not a guy like brehme, or the majority of FIF for that matter.