Collecting national team shirts from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
Lets face it, you’ve never even heard of Fernando De Noronha. Its an archipelago of 21 islands off the coast of Brazil in the state of Pernambucho. It’s basically the Brazilian version of the Azores. This design was used for the first time in the match vs Comunidad Armenia Argentina (The Armenian Community in Argentina?), you can see photos and read more about it here.
I’ve had the Fiji home shirt from 2001 in my collection for year, one of my best find in the early days. A very unique design, by an unheard of manufacturer. Oddly I cannot find any photos of the away shirts being in use. I guess the only time one would ever be needed would have been away games against New Zealand. This may explain why the blue shirt seems to be far more common that the white version.
Fiji were drawn along side Australia, Tonga, Samoa and American Samoa. They won 3 of their 4 matches, scoring 27 goals in the process. 13 of those goals came against American Samoa and another 8 against Tonga. They did well to lonly lose 2-0 to Australia who managed to finish with a goal difference of +66.
Another shirt from the 2017 African Cup of Nations, there’s a bit of a story behind this one, although I’ll admit that I’ve forgotten most of the details. Zimbabwe qualified for their third major tournament and decided to ditch Joma just months before the tournament began. They sign a contract with unheard of Thai based Mafro Sports, releasing the design just one day before the tournament began – possibly to avoid the outrage over the trim being red instead of the traditional green. However, the shirts had not arrived in Gabon, so the coaches had to scout around local sportshops trying to find some yellow kit for them to wear for their first match – Joma meanwhile were feeling particularly smug. They drew their opening game with Algeria, before defeats to Senegal and Tunisia in the new Mafro shirts.
Zimbabwe’s first tried to qualify for the 1970 World Cup as Rhodesia and for whatever reason entered in the Asia/Oceania region. 7 teams entered, with South Korea and Japan exiting in the group stage. Australia went through to play Rhodesia in a two team group. Both games were drawn, so a 3rd play off match had to be played. In the other group North Korea refused to play Israel, so the other group was also reduced to two teams with Israel prevailing over New Zealand.
Regular followers of the blog will be aware that I have a sizeable Bhutan shirt collection, in fact I have pretty much every Bhutan shirt that has been produced sign Bhutan joined FIFA in 2000. I have built up several friendship with Bhutanese players over the past 7 years, and help them get hold of football boots etc in exchange for shirts. This Qatar shirt came from a player following Qatar’s 3-0 win over Bhutan in the 2018 World Cup qualifiers. A 3-0 defeat for Bhutan may not sound great, but it is an immense improvement on the 15-0 defeat just 2 months earlier in Doha. It’s worth remembering that this is Bhutan’s first ever attempt to qualify for the World Cup, and they should be commended for entering. No one expected them to make it past Sri Lanka in the first round.
This particular shirt was worn by Mohammed Muntari of Qatar who scored then opening goal in their 3-0 victory over Bhutan.
I’ve already written plenty about Vanuatu’s appearance at the 2017 U20 World Cup in South Korea in my post on the away shirt. This is the shirt worn during the narrow 3-2 defeats to Mexico and Germany.
Whilst I do have a few home shirts in stock, I will not be making them available in the Football Shirt World online shop due to them arriving with a number of stains on. If you are interested then please contact me via e-mail or twitter.
I’ll be honest, I bought this shirt thinking it was made by classic shirt manufacturers Topper who made the Brazil shirt back in 1990. I didn’t really look in any details, but turns out it’s made by Dutch manufacturers Klupp – that makes more sense. Suriname actually have a great selection of shirts, this COPA effort was one of the first in my collection way back when I started in 2010.
Since participating in the 1938 World Cup (as the Dutch East Indies) Indonesia have failed to qualify again, and their four 1st round exits at the Asian Cup are their only other appearances at major tournaments. As the world’s 4th largest country in terms of population, they may be seen as many as underachievers. In recent years Indonesia have twice been suspended by FIFA due to breakaway leagues and government interference. This shirt was worn by the national team in the years sandwiched by the suspensions.
This shirt is clearly matchworn by U23 player Nelson Alom, who must have changed his number at some point. A quick google finds photos of him playing in 27 and 20, but not the 17 that is visible beneath. The shirt features player issue detailing, and a nice touch with the Indoensia FA badge on the lettering – that can’t be easy to come across.
It’s been a while since I added a Cape Verde shirt to the collection. I had initially been attempting to get hold of a bunch of these through notoriously difficult to contact Portuguese manufacturers Lacatoni. My usual contact in Portugal let me down, but the shirts were available through Classic Football Shirts in their sale. Unfortunately I missed out on one of the home shirts.
The 2015 tournament was their second appearance at the African Cup of Nations. Unfortunately they were unable to match their quarter final spot that they achieved in 2013 after drawing all 3 matches at the group stage.
Not much more to say about the Ethiopia shirt that I didn’t cover in my post on the away shirt. Again, this shirt is available from the Football Shirt World online shop.
Another installment from the Football Shirt History series. This time, Botswana!
