Football Shirt World

Guinea – Away – 2017

Not the usual Guinea shirt, but this one was worn during the 2017 Jeux de la Francophonie in the Ivorian city of Abijan. The tournamwent features various underage teams from french speaking nations. France sent their U19s, and Haiti their U20s. Guinea defeated hosts Ivory Coast in the opening game, as well as Lebanon before losing the final game to a 85th minute Burkinabe goal. Guinea ended up failing to go through on goal difference to Ivory Coast who they met in the first round, that 90th minute consolation goal turning out to be the decider.
The shirt itself is Belgian manufacturers Sindio, the design is great, but the quality poor.

New Zealand – Third – 2008

Can’t quite figure out why the All Whites need a third shirt, after all, no country plays in black – the colour of their away shirt.

The Gambia – Home – 2017

An enclave of Senegal, The Gambia has never qualified for a major tournament. It has withdrawn from qualification for AFCON on three separate occasions, and from World Cup qualification once. They also been banned twice (for withdrawing in 1996, and later for falsifying players’ ages).
This is a match worn Gambia shirt which was worn in a friendly against Ghana in June 2017. Later in the year they met in the WAFU tournament where Ghana won 1-0 with a penalty in the 10th minute of stoppage time. It’s safe to say the the Gambians weren’t too happy with the referee.

Kazakhstan – Home – 2016

Despite the size of the country (and the fact that it’s in Asia) Kazakhstan is still seen as one of Europe’s footballing minnows. They have never qualified for a major tournament whilst a member of UEFA or AFC, but have recently picked up a few of respectable home draws against Poland, Romania and Armenia.

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Canada – Home – 1998

Canada football shirts are surprisingly difficult to get hold of, particularly ones from the 80s and 90s. I’ve built up a fairly sizeable collection, but this one from 1998 has until now eluded me. With the glorious Maple Leaf on the front it is possible the most Canadian canada shirt out there. I’m guessing it was worn as they failed to qualify for a tournament.

Timor-Leste – Away – 2017

East-Timor have traditionally been one of AFC’s whipping boys, but caused a bit of storm after draws with Malaysia and Palestine. Turns out that they’d been giving passports to Brazilians angering both their opponents and the genuine Timor players. Timor-Leste have since changed their policy and as a result shipped 25 goals in their next 3 fixtures. Timor-Leste shirts have always been tricky to come by, a deal with Mitre brought hope that replicas may become available, but none surfaced. Only suspect templates from eBay made their way into collections.

After some intensive detective work I was able to track down the manufacturers of the shirts that I had seen used in Futsal tournaments, and noticed that they were to be used in the 2017 SEA games (where East timor lost all but 1 match). These shirts are of course available through the Football Shirt World online shop.

Morocco – Away – 1998

Mozambique – Home – 2016

Mozambique has always been an incredibly difficult shirt to get hold of. When Puma supplied the Mozambique shirts they didn’t produce any replicas for the international market (although I did manage to get hold of a sample one), and lacatoni are very difficult to get shirts out of. Mozambique have their own Lacatoni branch and for whatever reason they refuse to respond to e-mails. This particular one came from another shirt collector who got in contact asking if I knew where they could pick up a shirt on their visit to Mozambique, I’d heard previously that a collector was able to find one at Maputo airport. This turned out to be true, and I’ve now got one in my collection. Thanks Brittany.

Malta – GK – 2013

Since first trying to qualify for the 1974 World Cup minnows Malta have managed just 2 wins, both 1-0 away wins over Estonia (1994) and Armenia (2014). Four of their qualification attempts have finished pointless, and twice they have failed to score. Despite this poor record they’ve never quite been the whipping boys that San Marino, Andorra and Gibraltar have conceding an average of about 2.5 goals per game in most qualification tournaments.

The majority of the Maltese players are based in Malta, with a handful playing in the English leagues – including Peterborough United’s Emirati-born Andrea Borg. This shirt belonged to Andrew Hogg who was team mates with Gabriel Zakuani and Lesbian football club AEL Kalloni.

DR Congo – GK – 2017