Collecting national team shirts from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
Greece shocked the footballing world by winning Euro 2004 despite being placed 150-1 outsiders. However they have struggled since losing all their games in Euro 2008, and failing to qualify for the 2006 World Cup. They did however beat Ukraine in the play offs for the 2010 World Cup.
Togo were one of eight teams for home Germany 2006 was their first Finals, although they are yet to win a point. The Togolese team had threatened to pull out due to their federation not paying them bonuses, in the federation were fined for “behavior unworthy of a participant in the World Cup.” 
Surprisingly Canada have only qualified for the World Cup Finals once in Mexico 1986, recently they have finished behind nations such as Costa Rica, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and Honduras. They did beat the USA and Mexico’s domination of the Gold Cup in 2000 to win their first international honour since 1904 when they won Gold medal at the Olympics, although I’m not sure that should count since only 3 teams entered, and two of them were the USA.
The first World Cup Finals that I properly followed was USA ’94. My brother had just come back from a tour of Europe with the Panini sticker album, and we both chose to follow Ireland (or at least he told me to). After they were knocked out we followed Brazil since they were the best team in the world, and when you are 9 years old winning is everything, which is why everyone at my school in Cambridgeshire supported Blackburn Rovers. Amazingly Bulgaria made it to the Semi-Finals, eventually being knocked out by Italy, they then lost to Sweden in the 3rd place play-offs, Henrik Larsson had the coolest hairstyle in the Panini sticker album, almost as cool as the ginger guy from the USA.
This country didn’t exist when I was growing up, I remember when I was 7 years old having to do a project ona European nation and I was given Czechoslovakia. I wrote to the Czechoslovakian embassy and they gave me a leaflet. True story.
I bought this shirt from Phil who runs oldfootballshirts.com, and amazing website which is attempting to create an online history of every club and country’s football shirts. It’s a fantastic website, well worth a look.
Total cost – £9.39
Total cost of collection – £364.52
