Football Shirt World

Kosovo – Home – 2016

An historic shirt for a number of reasons. Kosovo, the 210th FIFA member (pipping Gibraltar by mere minutes) finally joined after years of battling for the right to play football. October 6th 2016 was the day that Kosovo finally played a FIFA affiliated competitive match, a 6-0 home defeat to Croatia. More importantly, I finally completed my epic quest to collect the 211 shirts of FIFA! Now Kosovo didn’t used to be that hard to find, Legea supplied them back in their non-FIFA days, but for whatever reason I decided not to buy one then. When they join Kelme decided to arse about and not bother with replicas.

This shirt was prepared for Alban Meha who stayed on the bench all agme, and I know what you’re thinking, it looks a bit dodgy. But as you can see from these photos from that match, the details are exact: the lack of paw print on the shoulders, the seem line not matching with the blue on the shoulders, the printed details. I have no idea why the quality of the player shirts is so bad, I guess they’re only used for one off matches, the replica ones are far better. I’ve even seen photos of the collar from the changing rooms which show no label.

Guinea-Bissau – Alternate – 2017

I’ll write more about Guinea-Bissau exploits at the 2017 African Cup of Nations when I do the blog post about the home and away shirts. As far as I can see they have yet to use their 3rd or 4th kit designs, even though they were made available for sale. I guess if they ever play Celtic they’ll need it. We managed to get our hands on a few Guinea-Bissau shirts the day after they got knocked out of AFCON 2017. The red home shirts soon sold out, but limited numbers of the away, 3rd and 4th shirts are available from the Football Shirt World online shop.

Fernando De Noronha – Home – 2017

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.

Fiji – Away – 2000

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.

England – Away – 2011

Zimbabwe – Home – 2017

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.

Qatar – Away – 2015

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.

Vanuatu – Home – 2017

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.

Suriname – Away – 2015

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.

Indonesia – Away – 2013

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.