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"BRAZIL" HOME

If you were putting together a list of history’s most iconic football kits, the gold and green of Brazil would surely be right at the top. I mean, number one with a bullet. What else could possibly compete? It’s practically the uniform of the World Cup itself, the outfit of some truly legendary players, the merest hint of it summoning forth memories of incredible goals, incredible teams and, incredibly, a good television commercial. Yes, it would be wonderful if I had an official Brazil shirt. I don’t. I have this thing instead,


I’m sure a lot of kids who were into football ended up with unofficial versions of shirts, cheap knock-offs and loosely club-affiliated “street wear” tops bought by relatives who didn’t know better or who (understandably) baulked at paying ridiculous prices for real-deal shirts. I definitely had some of these shirts growing up in varying degrees of quality, from a retro-style t-shirt based on Brazil’s seventies shirts that I loved so much I wore it until it fell apart, to a paper-thin Juventus bootleg brought back from a European holiday with badge and sponsor so fuzzily printed on it could have been a watercolour. I wore that one until it fell apart too, which didn’t take long.
As these things go, this shirt lands on the upper end of the quality spectrum. Made by a company called Praga and clearly patterned after Brazil’s 2004-06 home shirt, it’s relatively-well made and could be taken for the real thing at a very quick glance – or at least it could if it didn’t have the word BRASIL written across the front.


There are a few options I considered when trying to figure out where this shirt came from. It’s either a straight-up rip-off designed to fool the unsuspecting, part of a “hey, this is as close as we can get without getting sued” street wear brand or it belongs to some other Brazilian sport and just happens to look like the men’s national football team kit. I discounted that last one fairly quickly, because the badge on the shirt is specifically the badge of the Brazilian Football Confederation. An embroidered badge, no less, a touch of class I wouldn’t expect from a market-stall bootleg. I thought it might have been from the Olympics or something for a moment because those shirts do sometimes say BRASIL on the front, but no – those kits are made by Nike, of course and they don’t use the CBF badge.
So, I’m going with the street wear angle, designed by Praga to look cheekily close to the real thing. I couldn’t find much info about the Praga sportswear brand either, although I did notice that Italian sportswear company Errea have a line of footballs shirts called Praga – and Praga’s logo on this shirt looks quite similar to Errea’s double-diamond logo.


In conclusion, I have no idea where this shirt came from, but it’s not bad for what it is. If you wore it as a kid you might be a little worried about the other children mocking your lack of an authentic Brazil shirt, but kids are cruel and we’re all grown-ups here. Given that Nike are charging £65 for a current Brazil home shirt, I’m liking this one more and more.
By coincidence it's Ronaldo's birthday - proper Ronaldo, that is - on the day I'm posting this, so let’s end with a look at the genuine shirt that inspired this one, being worn in a World Cup qualifier against Argentina.



Argentina decided the only way to stop Ronaldo was to keep fouling him. An understandable strategy, but one with downsides. Downsides like Ronaldo scoring a hat-trick of penalties. The strategy could have done with some refinement.
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