Freitag, 27. November 2015

Ukraine 2



Andriy Shevshenko (Dinamo Kiev)
Ukraine vs. Sweden (2:1) | Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine
I did have this shirt already, but it was without a name or number. Now, thanks to the German "secret Santa" game played at the end of each year (and on Eastern to have more fun!) I got it with the number and name of the legendary Andriy Shevshenko. Sheva is surely one of the biggest players of all times and I really thank my secret Santa named Daniel for this amazing shirt!

Slovenia 4



Mladen Rudonja (Portsmouth, England)
Slovenia vs. Spain (1:3) | WC 2002 in Japan and South Korea
2002 Slovenia made its very first experience in a major tournament, when they played in the World Cup in Japan and South Korea. This shirt was actually worn in a friendly before that great tournament and was probably used by Mladen Rudonja, who also wore the #13 during the tournament.
This shirt came to me as a swap for a Romania matchworn shirt from my Slovenian friend Sinisa from the Slovenian city of Izola. I honestly hope to meet him soon in Izola or nearby Ljubljana as Slovenia is the country my fiancé is dreaming of to visit a lot.
I informed myself about the country and am now also very very keen to visit the sunny side of the alps asap!

Slovenia 3



This is an amazing 1995 matchworn Slovenia shirt, which cost me an arm and a leg. However, I felt that this amazing beauty, probably worn by Zlatko Zahovic in his early years, is definitely worth it!
Can you find a picture of this shirt worn ? Let me know!

Scotland 3



John Collins (AS Monaco, France)
Scotland vs. Brazil (1:2) | WC 1998 in France
You remember when Scotland played the World Cup and only very narrowly lost to Brazil ? No ? Me neither! It feels like centuries ago, but actually it was only in 1998 when Scotland was still on the World Football map in a prominent position and definitely the #2 of the Home Nations.
This shirt, which came from my Austrian friend Simon, is a proof of those better times of Scot football and came to me for as little as 15€ including shipment. Thanks Simon!

Rwanda



Quentin Rushenguziminega (FC Lausanne-Sport, Switzerland)
Rwanda vs. Ghana (0:1) | CAF 2017 qualifiers | 2015 in Rwanda
Thanks to Luke and his Australia-based AMS brand Rwanda shirts finally came broadly available. My thanks for that Amavubi shirt also go to Nick Warrick who sorted out this shirt for me!

Romania 3



Marius Lacatus (Steaua Bucarest)
Romania, unknown match of Euros 1996
This amazing old Romania shirt came from my Austrian friend Simon Jelinek, who sold it to me for as little as 15€, including shipping. The number 7 of this design, as shown in the picture below, was worn by the Steaua star of that time Marius Lacatus!
I really like the Romanian colorful designs and this one is surely not different with this one!

Romania 2



Ionel Ganea (Bursaspor, Turkey)
Romania vs. Germany (5:1) | friendly 2004 in Romania
As I already mentioned in the "Italy" blogpost I came accross a former grassroots manager of the Romanian FA and bought a huge bundle of him with various iteams and shirts. One of them was this beauty of a Romania shirt, which is worn by the A national team and signed by the Romanian footballing legend Belodici.
Once again I thank my friend in the Romanian FA for sending me all this amazing stuff over!

Lithuania



Arvydas Novikas (Erzgebirge Aue, Germany)
Lithuania vs. San Marino (2:0) | Euro 2016 qualifiers | 2014 in San Marino
After buying some more tons of shirts I do not need to complete my mission I thought I should focus on new additions again and started googling the shirts I still miss. Doing that I stumbled across the homepage superfanas.lt from Lithuania that sells all different kind of Lithuania shirts.
Thanks superfanas for a perfectly smooth and very quick service and for making this great shirt available for all the Lithuanian fans in the world!

Japan 2



Hidetoshi Nakata (Parma Calcio, Italy)
Japan vs Turkey (0:1) | WC 2002 in Japan and South Korea
This was just an amazing shirt that I could get for as little as 25€ including shipment on the German ebay classified. It is the player issue 2002 shirt of Japan that the team, and especially their superstar Hidetoshi Nakata, wore in their home World Cup!
Actually I do not really like those double layer shirts, but this is pure history, and thus I just had to take it!

Italy



Andrea Pirlo
Italy, year and match unknown
As I already promised in my "Italy" post I got a second youth Italy shirt, also matchworn. Unfortunately I could not find a proper picture of this one in use and I could not even figure out from which year this design is. Can you help `?

Denmark 2



Leon Jessen (1.FC Kaiserslautern, Germany)
Denmark vs. Austria (1:2) | friendly 2010 in Austria
This shirt and its owner were chasing me for ages. My mate Martin Fett had this nice match issued (or worn) Denmark and offered it to me as it fits in my collection and I only had a keeper shirt until then. However, I was short on money and had to decline. He went down with the price a couple of times and even brought it with him when we met in person in a local bar. However, I had to decline again to be able to pay my bill there (which can cost the same sometimes ;) ).
In the end he won and I just gave in and bought it - for a good reason!
The shirt itself is amazing and as Martin mentioned correctly, I was missing a proper field player shirt of Denmark. This one is really quite a nice one, especially at is one of my few longsleeve shirts.
On the negative side it was "only" worn in a friendly and thus has only a "Jabulani" patch, that is used in friendlies only.
Thanks Martin for this great shirt again, always a pleasure with you!

Czech Republic



Pavel Kuka (1.FC Kaiserslautern, Germany)
Czech Republic vs. Belarus (4:2), Euro 1996 qualifiers, 2005 in Czech Republic
I saw that amazingly old beauty on ebay.de and won the race for it for as little as 39,17€+3,90€ for the shipping. I tend to never trust "matchworn" shirts on ebay, as 99.9% of them are not worn and often even just fakes, unfortunately. However, this one caught my attention as you do not see many of those shirts around and the seller came from Kaiserslautern and the description was, badly translated, "it is some Czech shirts, somewhere between 1994 and 1998, which Pavel wore when he was still in Kaiserslautern".
This description was way too "floppy" for a matchworn faker. I dropped him a message and he told me that he is a die-hard Kaiserslautern for ages and worked inside the club for plenty of years and that Pavel Kuka was a personal friend of him when he was in Kaiserslautern. I believe that story and thus believe that this is really a matchworn Czech shirt!
Of course I did my homework and could figure out that this shirt was worn in the qualifiers for their best ever tournament, the 1996 Euros, where only Germany could stop them in the final. This shirt was only worn in 3 or 4 qualifier matches in 1995, but I could not find any proof of the exact match where Pavel Kuka wore it.
However, this shirt can surely be seen as part of the biggest history of the Czech national team! I am very proud to hold this historic piece in my eyes, especially as I really loved the Czech team in 1996, which was one of the first tournaments I closely followed.
Speaking about the shirt it is... well, a template. But an amazing ridicolous one! I love it. This design is just very much 90s!

Sonntag, 22. November 2015

Iraq



Haidar Abdul-Razzaq (Al-Talaba)
Iraq vs. Portugal (4:2) | Olympics 2004 in Greece
Finally! Finally I got an Iraq shirt! And not only that, I got the famous "Jack&Jones" shirt of Iraq!
Iraq is a very strange case for me. i do have plenty of contacts in Iraq, mainly in Kurdistan, and furthermore, I even know quite a few of Iraqi national team players in person! Iraq definitely belonged to one of the top teams in Asia for most of the last 10 years. However, Iraq shirts always have been everything else than "easily available" on the market. They are available from time to time, usually for high prices and in bizarre sizes, but I always found it hard to find a cheap one, a fitting one or this Jack&Jones shirt.
Now, finally, I got it! It only costs me as little as 25€ as well, including all the shipping costs! It was only available on ebay.co.uk and only for internal shipping within the UK, but my friend Nick bought it for me and played the proxy luckily.
The shirt is amazing not for its design, which is quite boring, but because it is made by Jack&Jones. The casual brand never sponsored any football team or even any sports team and suddenly felt the need to once get involved in football as it seems. The obvious choice for an US company seemed to be Iraq. I never understood this partnership, but exactly that made this shirt amazingly interesting to me!
Thanks Nick for being the proxy here.