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 ...

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...

Last time I looked at a shirt from non-league English team Dronfield Town , so today I thought I’d get as far away as possible from that with a shirt from an African national team. Not physically as far away as possible, then (I suppose that’d mean a kit from New Zealand) but far away in terms of culture, climate and skill level. A treat for animal lovers, this one – it’s Algeria’s 2010-11 home shirt. Of all the colours for a football shirt to be, I’d say white is probably my least favourite. I’m not entirely sure why this is. Perhaps it’s because white is the definition of “plain” and I prefer the uglier, gaudier end of the football kit spectrum. Or maybe it’s because of the clubs I associate with white shirts: the arrogance of Real Madrid, the years of disappointment watching England teams wearing white, the fact that, as the saying goes, everyone hate Leeds. There are still plenty of predominantly white shirts that I do like, though, and this is one of them. The colou...