Chinese-Taipei

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Chinese-Taipei – Home – 2010

The History of Chinese-Taipei is very complex. As far as I can figure out they started out as the football association for mainland China who then moved to Taiwan, then China created their own association. So the Chinese FA changed their name to Taiwan and left the AFC to join the OFC. The OFC then kicked them out for ‘naming issues’. They eventually rejoined the AFC as Chinese-Taipei in 1989.
They are currently ranked 161st in FIFA, and 31st in the AFC region below the much smaller nations of Hong Kong and Singapore. The womens team have done alot better, and are ranked 36th, 3 places higher than Portugal.

It was surprisingly hard to get hold of the Chinese-Taipei shirt. I originally found it on the Taiwanese version of eBay (linked from the eBay website) but since I can’t read Chinese I have some difficulty working out how to buy the shirts. Fortunately my friend Fabius from Singapore was able to help me out, I was deighted, untill he figured out that you could only bid on items if you are a Taiwan national…I’m not….nor is Fabius.

A bit more searching (which is harder than it sounds when you don’t read/write Chinese) took me to the sports shop that was selling the shirts on the auction site. Fabius was able to get an e-mail contact from them. It was plain sailing from then onward since they spoke perfect English. I couldn’t make my mind up which shirts I wanted, so I just bought them all.

I did find out when they arrived that a ‘Medium’ in Taiwan, is a ‘Small’ in the UK.

Thanks for your help Fabius, and thanks Chiggia Sports.
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Afghanistan

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If I was to collect the shirts in alphabetical order then this would have been my first shirt, but I didn’t, so it’s my 160th.
A couple of years ago Afghanistan were rock bottom of the FIFA world rankings, but a recent 5-0 aggregate win over Bhutan and an AFC Cup win against Sri Lanka has pulled them up the the dizzy heights of 174th.

Afghanistan – Away – 2009

Hummel are possibly my favourite kit manufacturer. Not only do they make fantastic shirts (see Sierra Leone, Zanzibar, Tibet and Uganda), but they also go beyond sponsorship and help develop the game in the countries they sponsor.

A collector from Australia recently got in contact with me and gave me contact details for someone who works at Hummel. The guy a Hummel was brilliant, he gave me a whole load of information about the Afghanistan national team and how they were working with them. When the shirt arrived I also had a Hummel pen drive with promotional videos of the Afghanistan men and womens teams. The new shirt should be out in the summer and you can bet that I’ll be first in line to get it.

In the mean time, if they’ve still got any left, check out the Hummel online store.

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Spotlight on Africa

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There are 53 FIFA members (and 2 non-FIFA members) in CAF. These are split into 5 seperate unions/associations/federations.



Council of East and Central Africa Football Associations (5/10)

West Africa Football Union (13/16)

Union des Fédérations de Football d’Afrique Centrale (1/8)

  • Cameroon
  • Central African Republic
  • Chad
  • Congo, Republic of
  • Congo, Democratic Republic of
  • Equatorial Guinea
  • Gabon
  • Sao Tome and Principe

Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (7/14)

Union of North African Football Federations (4/5)