World Football Quest

Saudi Arabia is world famous because of their oil deposits and refineries, since it is the biggest oil producer in the world (but it "only" has the second biggest reserves, being Venezuela the first one on the list), moving around about the 45% of all the money in the oil market, so they have more importance than maybe you can think if you don't put politics and economics at a similar level. Apart from that, in Arabia you can find other interesting things, like the islamic holy places of Medina and Mecca (and as far as I know, this last one really deserves to be visited, maybe someday I can watch it by myself) and the capital Riyadh (where it's being builded what is going to be the tallest tower in the world, the Kingdom Tower).

Well, first of anything I have to say that I never thought I would get a shirt from this country, the newest one in the world, so it's absolutely amazing for me what this shirt means in my collection. To make things even better, the history of how I was able to know who was the supplier, to contact him and to get the shirt is, right now, the most difficult I ever had until now. So let me start with it:

What would you do if one day you mark yourself the goal of getting a shirt from one of the most remote federations in the world? Well, in my case I started with what I thought it was the best way of meeting someone who can help me: Facebook. I checked in the Wikipedia and other pages, who are the current players of the team, to search for them in Facebook and ask them for help, while I was sending some mails to every email direction I found. One of the players reply me some time after I started my search, and I have to say that he has been the great help I needed to get this shirt. He offered me to put me in contact directly to the supplier, and helped me to fill the hole of my knowledge about this country, in a little interview that has been amazing for me. The rest is more usual, I put in contact with the supplier, he agreed to sell me a shirt, and here with the help of 2 of the biggest collectors that I know: Sascha from Germany (http://mynationalteamcollection.blogspot.de/) and Nick from the UK (http://www.footballshirtworld.co.uk/blog/) I was able to finally getting that beauty on my own hands.

It's time for that interview I said, since I don't know absolutely anything about South Sudan, their people and their football, I asked him to help me with this, and here you have the results, I hope you like this text as much as I like it:

The Motherland, Mother Russia or how you want to call it, it's the biggest country in the world (geographically talking) and one of the members of the very very little club of countries in 2 different continents. Russia is mostly known by their occidental region, where you can find almost all the important cities and places, like the capital, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Volgograd, etc. Russia can be proud of their historical culture, from the first empires, across the Tsars, even to the Communist era. If you love history, you'll love Russia of course. I'm not going to talk about their actual situation, politically talking, because I'm not here for this. Russia has gave many different important persons to the world, like the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, the great musician Tchaikovsky, the novelist Leo Tolstoy and many many other remarkable names.

In sports, Russia have a similar importance as in other activities, since you can find here many exceptional athletes like Maria Sharapova, Yelena Isinbayeva, Andrei Kirilenko and many others. In football they have some important names like those I said, like Lev Yashin (the only goalkeeper who has won a Ballon D'Or), Valeri Karpin, Andrei Arshavin and others. The National Team is historically one of the strongest in the international panorama, but this is referred to the USSR when they got players from other countries like Ukraine. The present Russian team is not as strong as it was before, but it has some good players in the team, some of them with important experience in some of the greatest clubs in the world.

The shirt I have is the away design from, possibly, their best performance since they are not the USSR. It's from the Euro 2008, when they ended in the third place after got shaked 0-3 by Spain in the semifinals. I love how Nike put the flag in the design, I think is very classy and fits pretty well with the red colour.

I think I'm not going to be the only one who thinks this, but maybe Albania is (unfortunately) one of the most unknown regions of Europe, possibly because they have not been an important force in the historical European political movements (Albania was part of the ancient Ottoman Empire until the first World War). This unknown land is not very different from other countries of the balkans, since you can find here many geographical, economical and political similarities, but of course, they have their own culture, which I would like to know someday and see what this country has to offer.

Albanian football is not very powerful in the internacional stage, but their federation had some importance in the past, since they were one of the founders of the UEFA. Their national team but, is somehow a good reflex of what I said before of an unknown land, since this is one of the weakest teams in Europe and has never take part in any international tournament, except for their Under-21 team, who achieved the quarterfinals of the 1984 Under-21 European Championship.

The shirt I have is the design from 2004, made from Umbro. In my opinion is a beautiful shirt, with no special details but I love the colours, as black is my favourite one and red fits very good with it. As you can see in the picture below, the numbers were different from the one my shirt has, since they were white and the guy who sold it to me put those black letters. I don't know who is this Xhino, as I haven't found any player with that name.

One of the most famous countries from the "arabian world" (but they are not arabian, of course), Morocco is famous worldwide for many different things, especially their culture and cuisine, which is very famous and well known. Morocco has many similarities with other arabian countries, and with us, Spain, since they are very close to us and our culture has been influenced by them in the past. I have to say, I would love to visit this country some day, since I really like some of the particularities of the arabian culture (and if you like to eat good, this place is EPIC).

Morocco's national team is, historically, one of the most important ones of the CAF, winning the African Cup of Nations in 1976. That doesn't mean they are a strong team, considering that their best result in a World Cup was the second round in 1986 and the African Cup I've already said. That seems to me pretty strange, since the passion for this sport is absolute in the country, so maybe one day that passion evolves in results for Les Lions de l'Atlas.

The shirt here is a plain design from Adidas, it was the first one they recived in 2012 after they left Puma and the Green colour for their home shirts, getting back to red. Even is a teamwear design, it's not ugly, and the size is correct for me, so I'm very happy to wear it.

It's very possible that, what you know the most about Romania are not things like their medieval history, their communist era after the World War II or other kind of things, like their culture. As I said, the most possible thing you will know about Romania, or at least one of the first things you'll see in your mind when you hear this name, is the history of Vlad Tepes, mostly known by the character of the Count Dracula. Of course he was not really a vampire, but if you hear or read his legend, you can easily understand why it was an inspiration to create the most famous vampire ever (and yes, he's not the fairy of the woods that you can see on Twilight)

About sports in general, and football in particular, Romania has been an important face of many different sports in the recent history. You can easily remember the name of Nadia Comăneci, the first gymnast to earn a perfect score in the history of that sport, Ilie Năstase, a famous tennis player of the 70s, and many other athletes. But here we are to talk about football of course, and this land has gave many different players with great quality, like Georgescu, who won 2 times the European Golden Shoe, Dan Petrescu, Adrian Mutu, and possibly the greatest of all them, Gheorghe Hagi. Unfortunately for them, Romania has never got an international result that were a reflect of those great players, maybe in the future this changes.

The shirt I have comes from 2004, when they failed to classify for the European Championship. That doesn't matter to me, as I like the shirt design, especially the detail of the tiny flag in the left arm. Unfortunately for me, this shirt is an XL, which is too many big for me and, if it wasn't enough, it's so big that it feels like if it really was an XXXL.

BTW I want to salute my friend Dana, who's from Romania and is one of my closest friends. Unfortunately she's having a lot of work right now in London, so probably she's not going to read this. If you do it, hi!

The most ancient country in Africa and one of the most in the whole world, Ethiopia is a unique case in all African history. They have never been colonized, and have been an important piece in the development of the United Nations, especially in the African territory. Unfortunately, the country in the present days has not a great economical situation, since it is one of the poorest regions in the continent, what is really a shame and hopefully it doesn't take too much for the situation to change.

About sports, Ethiopia is mostly known because one of the greatest runners ever, non other than Haile Gebrselassie, but in the last years, Ethiopian football has gain more recognition in the international stage, especially after the last World Cup classification stage, when they faced Nigeria on the last stage after defeating Central African Republic, Botswana and one of the best teams in the continent, South Africa, in the group stage. I really hope they continue with this level shown recently on this stage, and we see the Waliya Boyz in a World Cup

This shirt is, possibly, one of my favourites in my collection, as I love the colours and the design. I don't really know if it can be considered a home, an away, a third or some other kind of shirt, as Ethiopia has used many different shirts lately, but it is for sure the most personalized and (in my opinion) spectacular design they have wore.

Mostly known about the tourism industry that you can find in those tiny islands, Malta have seen many kind of cultures ruling their territory along the history, mainly because of their strategic situation. Considering that I don't know too much about this country, and I don't really want to be a copy of the wikipedia, I'm just going to say, as a detail I think is not very known, that the country name comes probably from the greek word "meli", what means honey in english. That's definitely a sweet name for a country.

Talking about football, Malta is not one of the giants of Europe, that's pretty clear, as its National Team is, unfortunately for them, one of the weakest teams in the UEFA confederation, and they have never participated in any of the major tournaments like the European Championship. As I'm from Spain, I have to say that one of their most remembered moments in their recent football history is linked with us, since their worst defeat in their whole history (12-1 in the Benito Villamarín stadium, in Sevilla) came from our national team, when we needed to score 11 goals in the last game of the Euro 84 classification stage to become the first classified in our group and get a ticket for that competition.

The shirt I have was another bargain in ebay, a bit small for me but it didn't matter since I had only paid for it 14€, so it's another country less in the list and a step closer to the remarked goal.