Never was the phrase “championes, championes, olé olé olé” more appropriate than between 2008 and 2012, when Spain won the 2008 and 2012 European Championships and even managed to claim their first ever World Cup victory in 2010 despite Nigel de Jong trying to kick Xabi Alonso’s lungs out through his back during the final. An astonishing period of international dominance, then, and here’s the shirt that they wore while winning Euro 2012. Okay, so it’s an away shirt that they wore once in the group stages, but here it is.
Sky blue and black isn’t a colour combination you see all that often on football shirts, which is a shame because it’s a good pairing. Perhaps black and blue are so inescapably associated with Inter that other teams tend to avoid it, but Spain went with it for this away shirt.
The black trim feels rather disjointed on this shirt, with the Adidas stripes not going all the way down the sleeves and the cuffs not being black all the way around. It’s all a bit fussy, but it’s redeemed by the sash. Everybody loves a good sash kit, don’t they? I know I’m happy to see their renaissance in recent years, and the sash does a good job of stopping a shirt from being plain without being as over-familiar as stripes or hoops.
This particular sash has a modern twist, what with the semi-gradient effect provided by the differing thickness of the black stripes. I love a sash, and I love a good gradient on a football shirt too - by which I mean I like a bad gradient, because shirts with colours that fade into each other often come out looking appealing garish. That’s not the case with this shirt, though. It’s sharp up close and works nicely from a distance, although as is so often the case these days it’s a shame that the sash doesn’t go all the way around the shirt. Blame that on FIFA’s regulations requiring an unpatterned “Number Zone” on the back of shirts. If you’re ever struggling with insomnia, I can recommend reading through FIFA’s 100-page Equipment Regulations tome. That’ll send you right off.
This is a child-sized shirt, by the way. I generally don’t pick up child-sized shirts because things like the badge being the same size as on an adult’s kit make them look a bit strange, but I will make exceptions, such as when the shirt’s particularly unusual or, as in this case, dirt cheap. Plus it’s not such an issue here, because the badge was bloody massive on the adult kit, too.
Tucked inside the collar is a reference to Spain’s other European triumphs; their win in the previous tournament and the second-ever tournament held back in 1964, when it was called the European Nation’s Cup and only four teams participated in the finals themselves. It must have been nice for this message to have been rendered obsolete almost immediately when they won the 2012 tournament. As someone who’s been watching England for over thirty years, I’m definitely not bitter about it.
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