Collecting national team shirts from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
I’ve had a couple of Afghanistan shirts in my collection for quite a few years, both bought directly from the Hummel facebook page, this home shirt which I can only find being used by the women’s team in a match vs Nato forces, and this away shirt which was widely available, but as far as I am aware, never used.
Match worn Central African Republic home shirt from the recent African Cup of Nations qualifier against Rwanda. This shirt was worn by Le Havre midfielder Amos Youga. Very very similar to the design worn a couple of years ago against DR Congo, but this time black instead of blue.
Jamaica qualified for the FIFA World Cup for the first time at France ’98. They did so wearing this fantastic design , by Kappa – sort of. They actually wore the home shirt throughout their qualification, and the design was actually from Lanzera. I would love to find some photos of this shirt in use and have managed to narrow it down to the Second round qualification match over Barbados on June 23 1996, or the Third round qualification match away to St Vincent & the Grenadines on September 23 1996.
Destined to be the away shirt for France ’98, this shirt design was only used once, in a pre-tournament friendly against Iceland.
It’s been a couple of years since I last ventured onto eBay to pick up football shirts, there’s been far too many fakes on there lately. The market has been flooded with cheap copies of rare Caribbean or Africa national football shirts targeting collectors, or Adidas templates with badges ironed on. i would rather be 100% certain about the source of the shirts I get. However, I noticed a couple of shirts which I was pretty sure about, and made some lowball offers which were accepted. This is the first of them to arrive.
The Haiti national team used this in qualification for the 2002 World Cup, a quick search shows them using this during matches against Honduras in 2000.
Regular followers of my collection will be aware that I consider the St Kitts & Nevis to be my home international team – despite me not have ventured any further west than Cornwall. The shirt of the Sugar Boyz is one of the hardest to obtain in the western hemisphere despite replicas being made available by the SKNFA for many years. I was fortunate that my in-laws were visiting the islands on a cruise, and I managed to give them instructions on how to get to Football House at Warner Park in Basseterre. I was even more detailed that they decided to buy me both the home and away shirts.I am a very lucky man.
