Away 1996/99
Matchprepared Panagiotis Egomitis 30.04.1997 ISR 🇮🇱 : CYP 🇨🇾 2-0
Manufacturer: Erreà
Source: Collector
THE COUNTRY
The Republic of Cyprus is a weird hodgepodge of borders, claims, territories, zones, and agreements, with the Greek part of Cyprus, the Turkish, Brits and also the UN all contributing to this political mess. I go into detail about the country’s history in my article about Northern Cyprus, but with a spectacular shirt like this, I don’t want to bore you with political facts.
Sitting right in the middle of the FIFA table, the Cyprus national team certainly had its ups and downs, especially from 2010 to 2014, when the team dropped a whopping 100 places, from their highest position (43rd) to the 142nd place.
During the 2016 EURO qualifiers, Cyprus had a realistic chance to qualify for the play-offs, but due to a narrow loss against Bosnia, they finished their group in fifth place.
THE SHIRT
Picking the best Cyprus shirt is a straightforward decision: among loads of simple blue or white shirts, there’s one stand out design: Erreà’s 1996 effort ticks all the boxes of a great 90’s football shirt! It features a huge print of the federation badge across the whole shirt, a neat collar and it comes in the size of a tent.
The pattern on the shirt looks like a giant QR-code and was most certainly the inspiration for said technology (or maybe not). Scanning it with my smartphone revealed that I’ve won a lifetime supply of halloumi cheese (or maybe not).
While the blue home version was used various times over the years, the white version is much rarer and was only used in a single match: a 2-0 loss to Israel in 1997. According to squad sheets from said match, the number 13 was prepared for Panagiotis Egomitis who didn’t play the game. Interestingly, the front numbers are not in the style of the Erreà numbers of that period (like the back numbers) but rather a different style of 3D numbers.
Despite its lack of color, I may prefer the white version of the shirt to the blue home shirt, as the design is better visible. Nevertheless, Cyprus’ 1996 to 1999 design is certainly one of my favorite national team designs ever!
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