Football rituals – I want to hold your shirt: Exchanging jerseys through the ages

Mon dieu, what an outrage: The fans of the French national football team at the 2024 European Championship semi-finals watched in outrage as their superstar Kylian Mbappé, upper body free, marched into the half-time break in the Munich Olympic Stadium, holding the jersey of a Spanish opponent. Only 45 minutes had been played, the Équipe Tricolore were 1:2 behind against Furia Roja, there was still a lot to improve – especially with Mbappé – and then he started making swaps? Scandaleux! A shitstorm descended on Mbappé on the Internet – “What the hell is that?” they tweeted – and when the French were finally eliminated 1-2 a half later, the superstitious felt confirmed: whoever gives up their own shirt so early , can’t win in the end! Or?

Few rituals around the football field are as firmly established as the giving and taking of jerseys after the end of the game. For many, it is much more than just an exchange of clothing: in football, the jersey stands for identification, for belonging, for love: for the club, for the club, for the nation even. Anyone who gives it away reveals a piece of themselves; they share a piece of their identity with their opponent.

Respect, recognition, fair play are associated with the exchange of jerseys – and also equality: when the referee blows the whistle, everyone is equal, winners and losers, English professionals and amateur footballers from San Marino. Even if the scoreboard reads 10-0 and every single member of the Three Lions team earns more per month than all of the Sammarinesi footballers put together in a year: in the end the jerseys will be changed.

Also collect kickers

The ritual is omnipresent in professional football: When superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi play against lesser-known teams, a suspicious number of players gather around them shortly before and at the final whistle. Maybe you can get hold of the world star’s jersey after the game is over? You can still show that to your grandchildren: the jersey as a relic.

Seasoned professionals arrange to meet in the players’ tunnel for an exchange after the end of the game; they know each other from different club or national teams. Some professionals collect things themselves. They have huge collections of jerseys, including Lionel Messi, perhaps the best player of all time. He posted a photo of his on Instagram in 2022 domestic collection. You can see him and his son Thiago sitting in front of a wall full of jerseys, and there are illuminated sports shirts behind thick glass on the ceiling and even in the floor.

Spain’s defender Gerard Piqué has also shown his impressive haul on social media, although it doesn’t come close to the spectacular jersey collection of incumbent Italian national coach Luciano Spalletti. Spalletti presents the jerseys in his house folded effectively: You just read the names of football legends of the past two decades, there are hundreds of them. Spalletti worked for a number of top Italian clubs and was obviously not only concerned with the formation and tactics of his team in European cup competitions, but also with increasing the number of domestic jerseys.

In 1931 for the first time

It is not entirely clear when the jersey swap began as a fair play gesture. The world football association Fifa dates the start of the “Jersey swapping” to May 14, 1931. On that day, France’s footballers defeated the supposedly overpowering English for the first time in Paris, 68 years after the Football Association was founded in London. A small miracle. The French were so inspired by their 5-2 victory that they asked their opponents from the motherland of football for the jerseys – as souvenirs of an unforgettable day. The defeated gentlemen maintained their composure and said yes: a ritual was born.

Already at the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland, a large number of jerseys are said to have changed hands; Particularly popular at the time was the Brazilian one, which had been redesigned after the unfortunately botched home World Cup in 1950 (Maracanaço): Instead of white, Didi, Nílton Santos and Co. wore blue trousers and yellow jerseys with green cuffs the Seleção would later become world champions five times. It is perhaps the most famous football kit of all.

Jersey swapping officially became a reality in club football in 1962. Portugal’s wonder footballer Eusébio was 20 when he asked the legendary Alfredo di Stéfano for his cotton top after the European Cup final. Previously he had defeated the Royals from Madrid 5:3 with Benfica Lisbon, the Benfica youngster had achieved the 4:3 and 5:3 himself. Eusébio was so moved that he suffered a nervous breakdown after the final whistle. But then he ventured to see di Stéfano. After the exchange was completed, Eusébio simply hid the Italian real idol’s shirt in his pants: “I was afraid that someone would take it away from me,” is how he later described it.

Pelé had 25 shirts with him

The first megastar of football, to whom colleagues paid homage en masse even after the game, was the three-time world champion Pelé (1958, 1962, 1970). His exchange of jerseys with the Englishman Bobby Moore after the victorious preliminary round game at the 1970s World Cup in Mexico is iconic: after a hard-fought match, the defeated defending champion from Europe and the top scorer from South America embrace – a picture of fairness, respect, humanity.

At Cosmos New York, where the Brazilian ended his career after 1975, opposing players, coaches and supervisors fought over the white polyester jersey with the number 10. The football franchise of the North American Soccer League knew how to help: Cosmos always had 25 to 30 Pelé jerseys with him at the games.

Such things are common today, but in different dimensions: Argentina’s goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez recently revealed that the equipment manager of the Argentine national team had an astonishing number of 650 Messi jerseys packed for a tour of two international matches: for opposing players, employees, sponsors, managers – or trainers like Luciano Spalletti.

Other teams, however, are in short supply, making the ritual of swapping impossible. The Iranian footballers at the 2014 World Cup were required not to give away their shirts: the association did not have enough of them in stock.

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Or politics gets in the way. During their only World Cup participation in 1974 in the Federal Republic of Germany, the GDR footballers had clear orders from the German Gymnastics and Sports Association of the GDR: exchanging jerseys with players from capitalist countries was not to be done, as national coach Georg Buschner told “Sport-Bild” in 1999 interview revealed. Because this couldn’t be prevented, the coaches asked the players to at least change their clothes in the dressing rooms without being observed. But every jersey given away was “charged harshly” to the players, Buschner said.

Magdeburg striker Jürgen Sparwasser didn’t care about the DTSB officials’ directive: on the lawn of the Lower Saxony Stadium in Hanover, he held out his blue shirt to the Brazilian Rivelino in front of the West photographers after the narrow 0-1 defeat – and received the coveted yellow one in return the green cuffs.

1986: The most expensive jersey of all time

England midfielder Steve Hodge made the most rewarding jersey swap of all time in 1986: in the catacombs of Mexico City’s Aztec Stadium, he swapped his white Three Lions shirt for the blue away jersey with the gold Asociación del Fútbol Argentino coat of arms and the number 10 on it Back.

In front of 115,000 spectators, England had previously lost the World Cup quarter-final against Argentina, and Diego Maradona, as a ten-man, not only scored the opening goal with the “Hand of God” but also completed the most beautiful solo run in football history, a dribble over 68 meters for the second goal :0, which would later be referred to as the “goal of the century”.

In 2022, Hodge had the jersey auctioned off, contrary to previous assurances, and the auction raised the equivalent of 8.5 million euros. No other sports jersey has ever fetched such an astronomical price. Steve Hodge was pleased, but his former teammate Terry Fenwick was a little annoyed. Because after that famous game in 1986, Maradona actually gave him that Jersey swap offered, but Fenwick had bitterly turned his back on Maradona after the final score was 1-2: “I was devastated, so angry and demoralized. We were out because of a handball!” he revealed to the tabloid “The Sun”.

In retrospect, of course, he would have liked the shirt, Fenwick later explained. But in the end, his country and football were more important to him than the trophy.

How not to do it

The rivalry between Argentina and England has a tradition: At the 1966 World Cup in England, England coach Alf Ramsey angrily intervened when his player George Cohen wanted to swap jerseys with an opponent after the 1-0 win over Argentina: The South Americans had previously In Ramsey’s opinion, they acted so “viciously” in the quarter-final match that he was supposed to insult them as “animals” at the later press conference. In fact, the Gauchos were not innocent lambs: among other things, Argentina’s captain Antonio Rattín refused to leave the pitch for seven minutes after a red card. Police officers finally escorted him off the lawn.

But the image of Ramsey tugging at George Cohen’s jersey is still famous in England and just as unforgettable as the sight of Dutchman Ronald Koeman in Germany after winning the European Championship semi-final in 1988. When celebrating victory in Hamburg’s Volksparkstadion, the Oranje used defender took the top he had just received from his West German opponent Olaf Thon in order to symbolically wipe his butt with it in a gesture of arrogance. The rivalry between the two teams was immense – and Koeman’s unsportsmanlike behavior was of course a scandal.

Since then, Koeman has had to repeatedly justify his slip-up, including this summer when he returned to Hamburg as a bond coach with the Dutch at the 2024 European Championship. The scene from 1988 is the topic whenever he appears in Germany. Koeman regrets his jersey swap faux pas: “I regret what I did after the game,” he explained in an interview. “It was an impulsive reaction, a stupid action that will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

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