Wearing a cheap transfer of your heart on your sleeve
With only a few days before the World Cup kick off, and less than a week before Australia plays Japan, last night we went shirt hunting. We have a slim chance of getting tickets for the Australia Croatia game, but chances are we’re going to be sitting in central Stuttgart with thousands of other not-so-lucky Australian and Croatian fans watching the game on a giant screen, drinking a few Löwenbräus and eating some wurst.
After calling around London trying to find any remaining shirts, we finally found some at Niketown. Our initial jubilation at finally finding them soon gave way to apprehension about whether it was really worth all the effort.
If you’re paying £50 for a football top (or $130 back home — for some bizarre reason Socceroo shirts are actually cheaper to buy in London than they are back home), surely the least you could ask for is an embroided coat of arms? Buying and wearing such a shirt is a very patriotic act; but a lot of World Cup shirts (and many Premier League shirts) now have transfer-style print outs of various club symbolism.
Are they that expensive to produce? Were they dumped to give the player less wind-resistance or some similarly baffling motive? Luckily England and Brazil fans can still enjoy nice chunky, embroided national symbols on their tops. It gives a real sense of pride and (some) craftsmanship, which for £50, is what you’d expect. Of course, England tops are going for around £25-£30, so you England fans really are getting a good deal.
But I guess many of us Australian, Korean and Portuguese fans (to name a few other countries with similar printing-styles) will just have to make do with our flat, dull shirts with our little transfers. Luckily there’s a place like Toffs around, who make great old-style football tops, the type that were around when Johnny Warren played. No speccie stealth mesh trademarked rubbish, just pure cotton, and a coat of arms bigger than a steak with no damn corporate sponsor in sight.
Just how it should be.