© Copyright khedmeh Wall
during the explosion of the vintage football shirt scene over the
last decade, certain shirts have emerged as holy grails: the Arsenal
“bruised banana shirt” of 1991-93, the away shirt USA wore at their
World Cup in 1994, the home shirt in which the Netherlands won Euro 88,
West Germany’s home entry for Italia 90, and pretty much any Napoli
shirt from the Diego Maradona era.Get more news about Kids Mini jersey sale,you can vist futbolucl!
And then there is the Fiorentina 1997-98 away shirt with Super Mario on
the front. In recent years, this shirt has attained almost mythical
status among collectors. Pictures of the shirt, complete with the face
of that iconic Italian plumber just below the Nintendo logo, have been
circulating around the nether regions of the internet for years.
It became the textile version of the Yeti. The legend went that 300
of them were produced at the time, but it seemed as if no one had
actually seen or owned one. Nevertheless, people were adamant the shirts
existed. The fable simply continued to grow. The shirt was also
legitimised by FourFourTwo magazine, who placed it 23rd in their 50
Greatest Shirts of All Time list last year. One day, this mythical shirt
would surely turn up for sale. And then, it did.
The website Cult Kits announced they had tracked down one of the rarest
football shirts ever produced and would be selling it at 8pm on Saturday
5 September. Cue mass hysteria among the football shirt community. I
had no intention of buying the shirt but intrigue won the day and I
logged on to their website to see what price the shirt would command. Or
rather, I tried to. The site crashed under the sheer volume of people
waiting to get a glimpse.
It later emerged that someone had nabbed the shirt for £500 milliseconds after it went online. That person turned out to be Ellis Platten, a YouTuber from Norwich. Platten recorded the process of buying the shirt for his channel AwayDays and can be seen ecstatically high-fiving his girlfriend as the order is completed in real time. However, was it really authentic?
If 300 of these shirts exist, why did so few of them go on sale over the years? Was it part of a Nintendo promotion in Italy for the Gameboy, as many believed? If it were a promotional tie-in with Nintendo – who were at the peak of their gaming popularity at the time – surely there would have been a glitzy press conference? There is no photographic evidence of Gabriel Batistuta, Manuel Rui Costa or any other Fiorentina player wearing it. Doubts about the origins of the shirt were raised on Twitter. If it was an official product, why would Fiorentina choose their away shirt when they have one of the most iconic home shirts in the game? And why does Mario have a yellow face on the shirt?
The Wall