Armenia

 

Armenia, one of the UEFA members that aren’t the easiest to tick off the list. Well, that has all changed with Macron taking over almost all of the small European nations, and made all the shirts available. I’ve rambled much more about this on the Dominica post. It’s the constant dilemma between manufacturers that won’t make shirts available and then making countries very easy to tick off the list. On one side, I’m glad that Macron makes such a nice shirt available, on the other hand it’s a shame that Armenia becomes so easy to tick off the list. Armenia is by no means one of the extremely hard countries, but still. And this dilemma is more problematic with other countries.

But enough of that! To try making the UEFA region more fun, I decided I wouldn’t want to get any of the Macron shirts unless they were special – match issued, matchworn etc – so that they would pose more of a challenge. (Let me once again mention that this “counts” just as much as a replica from Macron. This approach is just a personal preference). We all know that isn’t easy, but I finally managed to get my hands on one of the European Macron shirts as a matchworn. I generally try to stay away from second-hand websites like eBay, so instead I try as hard as I can with the FAs and the players. How to effectively get help from FAs and players is a mystery, there is really no textbook way to do it. So I try different approaches here and there. Sometimes there’s no response at all, sometimes there’s friendly responses and promises of helping with a shirt (they typically never keep this promise) – and then, very rarely it actually works out. This matchworn Armenia shirt comes straight from an Armenia FA employee who works with the national team. It didn’t come cheap, and it took a while to get it out of Armenia with the current pandemic, but I was very relieved when I finally got it! It has been worn by Karlen Mkrtchyan – has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? – I couldn’t be told which match it was from specifically, but it is probably from the match against Greece in the qualification for the EUROs. 

The shirt has so many details all over. When I saw it posted online, I only really saw the faint detail behind the FA crest. Which, actually isn’t an FA crest. It’s literally just Armenia’s coat of arms. Fortunately, it looks epic! I’m sure it isn’t the first time that a country has simply used the country’s coat of arms as the logo on the shirt, but you don’t see it often so that’s very cool. It’s more common to have a FA logo looking like the coat of arms, but with a football-styled twist. On the front there’s also a huge Armenia FA logo detail that’s very hard to see on first glance. I tried to get a photo of it as well as I could. Other than that, the Armenian flag is used both at the tip of the sleeves and at the sides on the bottom of the shirt, which is very nice. There’s also an Armenian flag at the neck, and the collar consists of all the colours in the Armenian flag too. You’d think that’s it, right? But no. On the back of the shirt towards the bottom, there’s another big detail, showing the middle part of the coat of arms (the yellow shield-shaped part). This apparently represents Mount Ararat that is a symbol of Armenia, and the waves and ark (that wee rectangle thing on top of Mount Ararat, obviously) is due to that it is believed that Noah’s Ark finally rested on top of Mount Ararat following the great flood. 

To conclude – wow! So many details all over, all of them representing Armenia very well with flags, coat of arms and just generally by throwing the details all over the shirt. They’re very subtle which is probably my only complaint, as the shirt is fantastic, yet it’s hard to see just how fantastic it is. Oh, and I think the kitman messed up a bit. There’s an “empty” Nations League flag patch underneath the EUROs 2020 badge, and some print of the Nations League logo is above the EUROs 2020 badge. I suppose he forgot he was preparing shirts for a EUROs 2020 qualifier rather than a Nations League match and had to fix it somehow! This made me question if it wasn’t matchworn and instead “thrown in the bin”, but I was assured it is indeed matchworn. Reason that I think it was against Greece, is that I found a photo of Karlen Mkrtchyan during that match, where it slighty looked like I could see that “empty” Nations League logo underneath the EUROs 2020 badge.