For this article, since it is talking about a personal topic, this writer will refer to himself in the first person.
If you’ve read my articles, you’ll know that I am very passionate about football shirts. Football shirts have become quite the popular fashion item nowadays, but I was wearing and collecting them long before they did.
Over the past decade, my shirt collection has grown exponentially, and now, I am pleased to welcome shirt No. 150 to my collection. It is quite a milestone, and I wanted
it to be a special shirt. As it turned out, it is. To tell you the whole story, we need to go back to the first weekend of August.
I went to Jeju to greet the team at the time. I was on 149 shirts, so I made a plan. I would get the shirt of the first player who signed my shirt. That player was none other than Sven Ulreich.
Because I had not been able to get a good spot in line, it did not take long for me to realize that getting many autographs would not be possible. Sven turned out to be the only player to sign my shirt, and I believe that was mostly because I was holding his jersey. I was also holding Manuel Neuer’s shirt, but because of the sheer amount of avid fans clamoring for his attention (which is worth a rather indignant story of its own), I had to give up. It is quite possible that Manu did not even notice my shirt.
Anyway, having received Sven’s autograph, my 150th shirt was go for launch. I took advantage of the clearance sale on the Bayern store, where they were offering free flocking and patches on last season’s third goalkeeper shirt. Barely a week passed between checkout and arrival, and I opened the shirt in all its glory.
The shirt is a classic red and white shirt with faint vertical stripes, not too different from the sextuple winning 2020/21 home shirt. It was famously more popular than the actual home shirt from last season, which was much maligned (although honestly, I liked it). Sadly, the shirt was not worn in that many games, with Bayern’s goalkeepers mostly wearing pink when the team wore the third kit. The shirt was only worn in one Bundesliga game (against Borussia Mönchengladbach), one Champions League game (against Pafos), and one friendly (Telekom Cup against Tottenham Hotspur). The Frauen only wore it in one game, the DFB-Supercup against VfL Wolfsburg.
Regardless, it is a shirt that has a special place in my heart, not least because of the player on the back. I now own two shirts with Sven’s name and number. I will cautiously assume not too many people can say that.
To add on, the very first shirt of the collection was Germany’s 2016 away shirt with Manu’s name and number, the 50th was Bayern’s 21/22 home shirt with Thomas Müller, and the 100th was Bayern’s 24/25 third shirt.
When I hit No. 200, whenever that may be, I will write another post about it.
How many shirts do you own? Let me know in the comments, and thank you for reading!
