Today we’re looking at shirt from top-flight Brazilian club Fluminense, with their 2001-03 home shirt – a kit for which the word “striped” does not seem sufficient.
Looking like stick of seaside rock in a variety of fruity flavours, it’s a bold design from Adidas that combines Fluminense’s traditional burgundy, green and white stripes with a thick red stripe across the shoulders, presumably included to give the famous three stripes of Adidas a clear space to work with. Despite the visual busyness of the kit I think it all comes together in a rather pleasing way, possibly because the relatively muted colours keep things calm even when you look more closely and realise that each white stripe has a very narrow red and green stripe down each side. There are herds of zebra with fewer stripes than this shirt.
What I do like about it is that it has an exotic flavour to it. Personally, as a British football fan this is the kind of shirt that really does look as though it comes from somewhere as far away as Brazil. It has an indescribable feeling of belonging to a place that’s familiar yet different, which is kind of how I feel about Brazilian club football. Everyone knows about Brazil’s national team and that the country is possibly the most football-mad nation in the world, but their league teams generally remain mysterious thanks to (presumably) a lack of televised South American league football. So, this is a visually interesting shirt and a glimpse into a part of the football world I don’t often see – so it’s a shame it’s a fake.
My suspicions were first raised by the badge, which looks okay at first glance until you notice that the stars aren’t embroidered very well and they’ve still got threads travelling between then. From there, more flaws became apparent. The sponsor is printed directly onto the shirt rather than being the raised, flocked logo of an official shirt. The stripes on the collar don’t match the real thing, the inner stripes aren’t aligned properly and, most damning of all, the stitching on the shoulders means that the Adidas stripes are twisted out of shape. There’s no way Adidas would have let that fly on a legit product. Not that the official shirt didn’t have problems, mind you – it had a tag on the side that read “Authentic Lincensed Product.” Whoops.
To finish, let’s have a look at a clip of the most famous player to wear this particular shirt – Brazilian goal machine and current Federal Senator Romário.
I know it’s hardly the most spectacular goal Romário ever scored, but I enjoy the baffling sight of the defender dithering on the ball when he knows Romário, of all people, is right behind him. That's like sauntering through the lion enclosure wearing a suit made from steak.
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