The Good The Bad The WTF
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Gah! I’m so late with this. I’ll have to make up for it with a shirt I can almost guarantee you have not seen before, and that I am quite sure you are not willing to pay for. Madness, dually from Japan and the ebays, awaits you.
I’m not attempting to call any of you out on your bank accounts or your willingness to spend it on questionable shirts, but there is no way any one of you are spending over $900 on this
is there? If you do, take a picture and we will use it as our only post for that day.
As you can probably guess, I have an issue or two with this shirt. The big one I have is with the map used. Look at it. Besides not using the Buster Bluth-confusing green and blue color scheme, the map highlights something very odd. Instead of focusing on Japan, the map seems to have its focus on China and many of the islands off the coast of southeast Asia. This isn’t a soccer shirt as much as it is a remembrance of areas conquered in World War II.
I can’t really fault the manufacturer (who it is, I don’t know) for the shirt coloration, because that’s just the way it was in Japan in the ’90s. Imagine the first generation of MLS shirts, but with more variety of color and less-inhibited design. That’s where this shirt comes from.
What I can fault is the seller. Why can’t you crop your slippered feet out of the photo? Are you attempting to sell your overpriced shirt to a small population of people who are soccer fans, map hounds and foot fetishists? If so, good luck with that. Because that person would also have to have more money than he knows what to do with. (Yes, it’s a he. Women have entirely different perversions.)
I invite every one of you to bookmark this auction. It ends in two weeks, which just might be enough time to attract a bid. I sure hope so.
Written by Darkvader on December 26th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Ebay and I like old maps and Shimizu S-Pulse and The Good The Bad The WTF and ü75.
To date, I have stayed away from goalkeeper’s shirts for a couple of reasons. One, they are too easy of a mark. Two, there’s just so many bad ones out there. Look, I could spend a couple of months eye-raping you with Jorge Campos specials. Then I would move on to the Petr Cech special Chelsea shirt before I went back and revisited the early-90s adidas line. You wouldn’t be happy, and I would be sick of it.
So why break it this week? Simply put, this isn’t like the rest of them I’ve come across. Sure, it’s busy, but it’s not bright, so that’s a start. Plus it’s a short sleeve keeper shirt (which I traditionally hate), so you could wear it out if you like. Plus it has Cyrillic writing. Game over.
We could play a game with this. Kind of life those web ads which ask how many triangles do you see (the answer will surprise you!). How many stars do you see? The answer will hurt you. Look, we get it about the stars, alright? Red Star is the club name, and then you have a whole bunch of stars on your shirt. Yay for literalism. Boo for my eyes.
To me, and maybe it’s just the season, this looks like a poinsettia. Yeah, it’s probably just the season. I don’t remember having seen a red, white and black poinsettia before.
One other thing struck me about this shirt. To see it, you will probably have to click on the shirt to enlarge it, or just follow this link. Looking at the badge, I was struck by the Cyrillic letters ФК. My base knowledge of the sounds of the language, confirmed through the internets, tell me that these letters correspond to F and (duh) K. Was that a tiny message to other clubs? Or am I just reading into things and placing vowels in the middle based on my dirty mind habits? That missing vowel could make it FaK, FeK, FiK, FoK, FyK, or one other one.
Turns out that those crazy Cyrils (I don’t think that’s right) transliterate Club as Klub. They don’t need a stupid hard C to do K’s job. They do, however, use a soft K to do a soft C’s job. So, yeah, FK is Football Klub, and then you read the red star, and that’s the club name. Stupid Cyrils.
My answer is 12, by the way, though I’m not sure how many stars are on the back. Remind me to never do keeper shirts again.
Written by Darkvader on December 17th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Red Star Belgrade and The Good The Bad The WTF and dodgy keeper shirts and ü75.
As tough as it may be to believe now, just over 20 years ago, Olympique Lyonnais, otherwise known as Lyon, was floundering in Ligue 2. It took the efforts of two men to get them out of there and on their way to the seven consecutive Ligue 1 championships the team currently enjoys. The first of these men is Jean-Michel Aulas, who invested in the club and took over as president. Upon taking over in 1987, he stated his intention of reforming the club into a French power within 15 years.
The second man who had much to do with Lyon’s ascent from Ligue 2 to Ligue 1 is, I kid you not, Raymond Domenech. That’s right, the man who manages by the stars and thought a post-match news conference after being eliminated from the Euros was the best time to propose, used to be a pretty fine coach. Under Domenech, Lyon won Ligue 2 at the first try. The team solidified their Ligue 1 place next season and, in 1992, finished fifth in league, guarenteeing a European berth.
The upshot is that in 2002, or 15 years after Aulas took control, Lyon won their first of seven straight Ligue 1 titles. Mission accomplished, I’d say. Go buy yourself a banner.
Okay, now that all of that has been explained, I guess I should tell you why I went through all of that. You see, these are the shirts the Lyon wore in their first seasons back in Ligue 1, and I think they are kind of swell.
The one thing I’m not so sure of is the dual chevrons on the front. I am a fan of Bordeaux’s look, when it’s simple. One solid colored field with a contrasting chevron in the center. This seems to be a ripoff of that look. Future incarnations of OL shirts would not have the chevron on there, and I can’t find compelling evidence of it being a traditional look. Odd that the team would copy something so uniquely defined by one team in the same country.
As for that shirt sponsor, it would appear that is has something to do with the Departement that Lyon is the capital of. I’ll let The NY Kid fill in the blanks on that one. One thing I can fill in the blanks on is that whenever I look at the pictures here, I instantly hear Bill & Ted with a French accent. “Le 69, dude! (insert guitar solo)”
All in all, I really do like these shirts. I’m not a big fan of the contrasting reflective material of the shirts. I’m not a damn crossing guard, why do flash photos of the shirt make me look like one? I would choose the red one over the home white, but that’s just me. Consider this one of the rare Goods that we just don’t see enough from this era.
Written by Darkvader on December 10th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on 69 Dude and Lyon and The Good The Bad The WTF.
Sorry. I zoned out there. I was looking at something, and then twenty minutes passed. I don’t know what happened. Let’s see if I can recreate the circumstances.
I remember opening up my email account. Therein was an email from LB passing along horrible shirts for inclusion in this recurring feature. So far, so good. I opened the link and scrolled through the usual horrors. Arsenal V-shirt? Check. Jorge Campos? Check. Caribous? Check. But then, I go blank.
Well, not so much blank as swirly. I see demonic horseheads and Satan’s face and claw marks and the NBA’s championship trophy, but nothing is in color. It’s all in black and white and muted grey. Except. Except now I see some orange. It’s not much, but it’s something to focus on. Yes, this will free me from the trap.
And, poof. I was back.
The horror. The horror.
Dundee United’s alternate strip from 1993-94. It’s awesome. It would appear to be another one of those “confuse your opponents with what you are wearing” shirts, mixed with a little “scare them with what their inner demons make them see” type deal. Of course, that last part only works in movies, and event then you either need Tubular Bells or a cat jumping out screeching at you for it to work.
I’ve already blown my wad telling you what I see in this shirt, which you may feel free to interpret in the comments. What I’d like to know is what I missed. What do you, the fair reader, see in this? Let’s all psychoanalyze each other, shall we?
Written by Darkvader on December 3rd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Dundee United and The Good The Bad The WTF and abstract art and ü75.
In honor of FIFA’s decision to kick Peru out of its membership, I thought I’d try to get a shirt from the exiled country for this week’s entry. Unfortunately, Peru’s National Team shirts tend to be a bit boring and too normal for me. So instead I went for a defunct club which wore a shirt style that we have seen before. But hold on, there are a couple of surprises ahead.
So, there it is. It looks awfully familiar, doesn’t it? You know what the weird part is? Check this picture
It would seem that a company named Polmer decided that Umbro’s design was one worth stealing. Now that is just odd business sense.
However, it is not company-shutting-down business sense. Polmer has since moved on to other teams as well, including one rather well-known in England. It seems that Polmer has since hit the jackpot by putting out Deportivo Wanka shirts. Why is that a jackpot? As someone on Wikipedia wrote,”The British slang word wanker “one who masturbates”, sounds like Wanka when said with a (non-rhotic) British accent.”
There is one final twist in this post. At the top I said that Deportivo Pesquero is a defunct club. That’s not entirely true. The truth is they merged with another club back in 2000, allowing the second club to be promoted to the top division in Peru. That club–Deportivo Wanka.
Written by Darkvader on November 26th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Deporitvo Pesquero and The Good The Bad The WTF and Wankers and ü75.
In honor of FIFA’s decision to kick Peru out of its membership, I thought I’d try to get a shirt from the exiled country for this week’s entry. Unfortunately, Peru’s National Team shirts tend to be a bit boring and too normal for me. So instead I went for a defunct club which wore a shirt style that we have seen before. But hold on, there are a couple of surprises ahead.
So, there it is. It looks awfully familiar, doesn’t it? You know what the weird part is? Check this picture
It would seem that a company named Polmer decided that Umbro’s design was one worth stealing. Now that is just odd business sense.
However, it is not company-shutting-down business sense. Polmer has since moved on to other teams as well, including one rather well-known in England. It seems that Polmer has since hit the jackpot by putting out Deportivo Wanka shirts. Why is that a jackpot? As someone on Wikipedia wrote,”The British slang word wanker “one who masturbates”, sounds like Wanka when said with a (non-rhotic) British accent.”
There is one final twist in this post. At the top I said that Deportivo Pesquero is a defunct club. That’s not entirely true. The truth is they merged with another club back in 2000, allowing the second club to be promoted to the top division in Peru. That club–Deportivo Wanka.
Written by Darkvader on November 26th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Deporitvo Pesquero and The Good The Bad The WTF and Wankers and ü75.
It’s not often that I stay in-country to make fun of a shirt. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel–it’s just too easy. All you have to do is go back to the ’80s and ’90s when everyone involved was trying so hard to be edgy and hip while attempting to make the average American care. It was a colossal miscalculation and a giant waste of time.
One of the ways that was supposed to lure the average American sports fan was to increase scoring. “But the field is so big, how can someone ever score quickly?” someone (probably) whined. America’s solution? Cut the field size by three-quarters and put it inside. With walls. Boom, indoor soccer was born.
Major Indoor Soccer League (the first one) started up in 1978, just as the Cosmos reached their heights. It was moderately successful, just enough for a competing league to form in 1984–the National Professional Soccer League (initially known as American Indoor Soccer Association). In that secondary, USFL-like league, Buffalo Blizzard plied their trade.
Buffalo started up their team in 1992 and made a run of it until 2001, when the league shut down. Needless to say, that was the apex of the stupid soccer jersey era in the US. Thankfully, the Blizzard followed the rest of America in this trend. Just as thankfully, someone bought a replica, got tired of it and put it up for sale on eBay.
I have no background info on when exactly this shirt was from. If I had to hazard a guess, based on the Adidas design, I’d say about 1993-94, give or take.
Boy Howdy, is that a looker. Adidas sure did (and do) love their three stripes, didn’t they. I would bet that, if one had to count how many stripes actually are on this shirt, the count would end up in the–wait for it–triple digits. Sublimated print for company logos makes my heart hurt.
What’s that on the sleeve anyway? In early, edgy ESPN2 graphic font, it says “It’s you turf”.
Awesome. It’s a progenitor of Under Armor’s “We must protect this house” campaign, all started on this team’s shirt. Boo yah, indeed.
What’s that I said above? Oh yeah, this is an eBay special. Unsurprisingly, it’s from in country, so no need to pay those inflated UK postage rates this time. As a plus, within the item description, there is a line that will appeal to two sets of online purchasers. The first half of the line states that the item is “gently worn”. Hey, that’s great for collectors. The second half reads “(by a girl)”. Perv Heaven!
Anyway, right now, the shirt will set you back about $10 with postage. There are just under three days left, so you had better get your money together as soon as possible. You don’t want to miss out on this one.
Written by Darkvader on November 19th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Buffalo Blizzard and Ebay and Indoor Soccer and The Good The Bad The WTF and ü75.
I have Germany on the brain right now. Like many other hopeful Americans, I can only pray that Landon Donovan does not destroy the Bundesliga with his awesome talents. With the once-great league about to fold under His Hairline’s greatness, I am taking a break from the recent run of German shirts in order to go back to that wonderful bastion of crazy: South America. Argentina is our destination for this week’s shirt. Happy traveling.
The full name if this week’s club is Club Atlético San Lorenzo de Almagro. As you can see from their badge, it’s a handful just to compress the initials onto a crest.
So you can imagine how difficult it would be to try to fit the name of the club onto the shirt, even if it is just once. Well, in this case, just once would have been a blessing.
Mere words cannot describe my reaction upon seeing this. Maybe this video can.
My ROFLCopter does all kinds of things.
Alright, I know I’ve said it before, but it bears a repeat asking here. What the hell were they thinking? Who in their right mind thought it would be good to try to fit the name of the club all over the shirt, place it vertical, interchange the colors, and then never ensure that the club’s name can be read bottom to top on any of the columns? The column that came closest to achieving this is interrupted by the badge. Real smart thinking there, fellas.
Beyond that, what else is there to say? The words dominate the shirt in such a way that you can’t nitpick anything else. Maybe you can be bothered by the manufacturer’s name on both sides of the collar, as well as the sleeves, but that’s just small potatoes compared to the body of the shirt. The only other thing that tick me off is that I don’t have a picture of the back of the shirt. Would be nice to know if there is anything the least bit redemptive back there.
Written by Darkvader on November 12th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on San Lorenzo de Almagro and The Good The Bad The WTF and ü75.
Who knew Germany was such fertile ground for these things? Hot on the heels of 1860 Munich and Eintracht Braunschweig comes this gem of a shirt from the club ESV Greifswald. Don’t go searching for the team, it no longer exists, having merged with another club. The new club plays in the fifth level of German soccer.
With good reason, too. When you start pulling out shirts like this week’s, then you may as well fold.
If it were not right there in front of me, I would have a hard time believing this shirt existed. But then, if it were not right here in front of me, who would try to explain it?
“Well, you see, it’s got the red and black stripes, kind of like AC Milan, but running at an angle. But they’re not all over. No, they just run from one shoulder to the opposite hip. But the stripes are not solid, either. They are interrupted by a white space for the sponsor, which is bordered above by red, then black, then white again. Oh, and there are polka dots–kind of, they’re not really round–on the rib cage opposite the side where the AC Milan stripes end up. Can you picture it now?”
Uh, no.
Then there is the back of the shirt
I’m sure I have many rules for shirts stored away in my head. Every once in a while, one of them pops up. The one that does do here is: whenever you have to put the number at an angle, you have done something greatly wrong. Also, what’s up with German clubs and the club names on the backs of shirts? Does that happen anywhere else?
So, if you want to remember the time you took that trip to the Northeast corner of Germany hard up against the Baltic sea, you could buy this shirt. Or you could just drink yourself into a stupor. Your call.
Written by Darkvader on November 5th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on ESV Greifswald and Ebay and Rorschach Test and The Good The Bad The WTF.
While searching out this week’s shirt (a process that takes minutes a week to complete), I was struck by the badge for TSV 1860 Munich, especially for its similarity to the logo of a certain beer. Löwenbräu, to be exact. Not that I’ve ever tasted the stuff, though I do seem to remember certain members of my extended family drinking the stuff back when I was but a young’un.
Anyway, you can imagine my delight when I then discovered that Löwenbräu was a long-term shirt sponsor for the not-as-decorated-as-Bayern squad from Munich. I literally lifted an eyebrow in joy.
This shirt comes from the 1992-93 season when 1860 Munich promoted from the third division to the Second Bundesliga. Considering the club was a charter member of the Bundesliga in 1963, such a jump can hardly be considered a triumph. Still, promotions make people happy, as long as they forget what happened to get them so far down in the first place.
As to the shirt itself, it’s a failure, but not by much. One tiny difference (well, maybe two), and this shirt would have been a winner.
The lesser of the two tiny changes mentined above would be to script the shirt sponsor a little better. That font, in black, fades into the stripes of the shirt. I realize that it’s probably a corporate copyright, but maybe something different should have been tried. Oh well.
The greater change would have been to fire whoever went to some trendy friend’s house, looked at the recently redecorated bathroom and thought to himself “That’s it! I’ll use a sponge effect on my shirt designs for Lotto.” Asshole. Strong stripes make this shirt a winner. Sponge-painted stripes make baby ü75 cry.
Yes, I like the big round team logo on there. In truth, I would make one more change and center it to enhance those Löwenbräu beer bellies that it would cover, but as a design, I think it works. It’s different enough from the badge that the club can get away with it.
It really is just too bad about the sponging effect. Otherwise, this shirt could have joined the slim “WANT” pile. Instead it goes with the “WTF were they thinking?” group.
Written by Darkvader on October 29th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Löwenbräu and TSV 1860 Munich and The Good The Bad The WTF and so close and ü75.
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