Cuba

Cuba – Home – 2015

Embed from Getty Images

Haiti

Haiti – Home – 2000

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.

St Kitts & Nevis

St Kitts and Nevis – Away – 2016

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.

British Virgin Islands

British Virgin Islands – Home – 2016

I have previously managed to get British Virgin Islands ssirts directly from the BVIFA, and this time they contacted me to let me know that they would be doing a new order for the team, and did I want in. Of course I accepted (their shirts are always lovely). I am slightly disappointed that the badge is no longer the double layered version, and unlike the away shirt, I have yet to see this exact design in use.

Here’s the BVI ladies team wearing the shirts in 2016.

 

Zambia

Zambia – Home – 2017

I was skeptical at first when I saw that Zambia were going with Mafro, the former African Champions with an unheard of Thai brand. Okay, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe and Kenya change suppliers all the time, but Zambia have most recently had official deals with Nike as well as wearing Kappa and Umbro. However, this is a belter of a shirt, and the photos don’t really do it justice. The quality is decent, the cut is brilliant, and Mafro have recognised that a Chipolopolo jersey needs style – not a gimmick.

Get your own Zambia shirts from the Football Shirt World online shop.

Zambia

Zambia – Away – 2017

Zambia are affectionately known as Chipolopolo, or “Copper Bullets”. Like many football nicknames, they are named after one of their biggest exports: Copper. In the past Zambia have played in Orange (or Copper) as their home shirts, their famous 4-0 victory over Italy at the 1988 Seoul Olympics was in their orange home colours. More recently they have increasingly worn Green at home, with orange or white as their away colours. Personally I’m all for tradition, but they’ve had some cracking green shirts.

There are a small number of orange Chipolopolo shirts are available from the Football Shirt World online shop.