Football Shirt World

Eritrea – Away – 2015

Good things come to those who wait. However, I’m not a patient person, so I shelled out a lot of money for a matchworn Eritrea shirt from a refugee who quite literally fled the country with nothing but the shirt on his back. These things come and go in waves, so it was only a matter of time until some shirts became available.

From what I gather AMS mocked up a bunch of shirts and sent them off to the Eritrea national team who ended up wearing them in their World Cup Qualifiers against Botswana. I don’t think this was an official agreement, but that didn’t stop AMS flogging them in their own online shop. The reason Eritrea have not sold shirts in the past is due to strict laws banning people from selling items with Eritrean logos on.

Guinea-Bissau – Alternate – 2017

For some reason Guinea-Bissau had four different shirts available for their first appearance at the African Cup of Nations. Similar to Zimbabwe the delivery of the shirts went right down to the wire, arriving in Gabon just days before the opening fixture. Officially this was their fourth shirt, but it was worn in their defeat to Cameroon. Amazingly Guinea-Bissau took the lead in that match against eventual champions Cameroon by scoring one of the greatest international goals ever, Piqueti received the ball on the edge of his own area, chipped the ball over one player, nodded it past another, ran the entire length of the pitch with defenders retreating and fired it into the back of the net. Enjoy it yourself here.

A small number of Guinea-Bissau shirts are available her in the Football Shirt World online shop. You won’t find these in the shops.

British Virgin Islands – Away – 2014

The British Virgin Islands tend to have a great shirt. I’m not usually a fan of Adidas shirts, but these look really smart. I am a bit disappointed that I can’t find photographic evidence of these in use given that someone at the BVIFA contacted me to let me know they were putting an order in, and did I want any.

Hold up, what’s this? I think I can see some BVI player sat on the bench in this shirt: green collar and everything. Photos from a 6-0 defeat to St Vincent & the Grenadines.

Further photos shown the design, including yellow Adidas logo from this match vs French Saint Martin.

Canada – Away – 2013

Canada are one of the few countries to still be supplied by Umbro, other than Malawii I’m struggling to name a single one. It’s a shame because Umbro design excellent shirts. Nothing too fancy, comfortable, and produce something unique for each shirt. This one has the sound wave to the Canadian national anthem stitched into the side of it – a nice touch.

England – Home – 2010

 Given that I own roughly 1000 national football shirts, I don’t actually wear them very often. Mainly because I don’t find them to be particularly comfortable, you can’t really wear them under a jumper, the collars are a bit weird, and they don’t tend to be very smart. However, this shirt is awesome, it doesn’t feel like a football shirt, and avoids all the issues above. I know Canada had a similar design, but as far as I am aware these are the only countries that used this template.

Iceland – Away – 2009

Always had a soft spot for Iceland ever since Helgi Danielsson was at Posh. Helgi made his debut for Iceland agsint India in the Millenium Super Soccer Cup and went on to earn 30 caps for his country – not many Posh players can say that.

Bhutan – Away – 2002

Another Bhutan shirt? Yeah I know, its the 22nd different Bhutan shirt to join the collection. I also think I’ve seen every single photo ever taken at a Bhutan match whilst researching dates etc. Bhutan famously played against Montserrat on the same day as the 2002 World Cup final, prevailing 4-0 winners. This design was used in the 2003 SAFF Championship where Bhutan finished bottom of their group containing Nepal, Bangladesh and the Maldives. 5 years later they wore a very similar design by KIKA.

Kosovo – Home – 2016

An historic shirt for a number of reasons. Kosovo, the 210th FIFA member (pipping Gibraltar by mere minutes) finally joined after years of battling for the right to play football. October 6th 2016 was the day that Kosovo finally played a FIFA affiliated competitive match, a 6-0 home defeat to Croatia. More importantly, I finally completed my epic quest to collect the 211 shirts of FIFA! Now Kosovo didn’t used to be that hard to find, Legea supplied them back in their non-FIFA days, but for whatever reason I decided not to buy one then. When they join Kelme decided to arse about and not bother with replicas.

This shirt was prepared for Alban Meha who stayed on the bench all agme, and I know what you’re thinking, it looks a bit dodgy. But as you can see from these photos from that match, the details are exact: the lack of paw print on the shoulders, the seem line not matching with the blue on the shoulders, the printed details. I have no idea why the quality of the player shirts is so bad, I guess they’re only used for one off matches, the replica ones are far better. I’ve even seen photos of the collar from the changing rooms which show no label.

Guinea-Bissau – Third – 2017

I’ll write more about Guinea-Bissau exploits at the 2017 African Cup of Nations when I do the blog post about the home and away shirts. As far as I can see they have yet to use their 3rd or 4th kit designs, even though they were made available for sale. I guess if they ever play Celtic they’ll need it.

We managed to get our hands on a few Guinea-Bissau shirts the day after they got knocked out of AFCON 2017. The red home shirts soon sold out, but limited numbers of the away, 3rd and 4th shirts are available from the Football Shirt World online shop.

Bhutan – Home – 2016

Very similar to the 2015 shirt, but this time manufactured by FBT who have supplied the Bhutan national team on many occasions. I think I prefer this one, it’s a bit smarter, and made to a higher standard. As far as I am aware these shirts are not commercially available with the FA still selling the Ego Sports version.

Unfortunately we do not have any of this design available, but there are a couple of match worn Bhutan shirts from previous years available through the Football Shirt World online shop.