Vatican City

Now, Vatican City shirts are normally associated with incredible excitement due to their extreme rarity. Something that I’ve already talked about on the post with my other Vatican City shirt. On that post, the Vatican City representative team is also explained a bit more – because Vatican City kind of doesn’t really have a national team and kind of does. In the collector network, the team that’s fielded is generally considered the Vatican City national team, which has made the shirts incredibly rare and hard to get. This one, however, is the first one that they have decided to make available. It has a pretty cool design, although it’s not very aesthetically pleasing. Logo is awesome as always and in a decent quality, while the shirt also says “Vaticano Calcio” (Vatican Football) down the side. The team has yet to play in this shirt, which is of course worrying, but I have been in contact with my contact with the team who said this is indeed the “official” shirt for matches. Why they haven’t used it yet, I don’t know. It’s easier to “count” this shirt when they’ve used it, but typically I count shirts when they are either officially the shirt, or in other ways expressed as the shirt intended for use, even if they for some reason were never used.

The fact that this shirt has been made available is a bit sad. The Vatican City shirts were extremely rare, and have essentially become an add-to-basket purchase now, which should make it much more common to see in collections. It’s also a bit puzzling that they have been made available. I was in talk with Sportika, the supplier of their previous shirts, and they were willing to produce a number of those shirts for me. However, they had to ask the team for permission first. The team declined, with the reason that “The Holy Father would rather not that any kind of profiting was associated with the team”. I kid you not. I know that the Pope knows of the team, so it’s possible that the Pope did indeed briefly address that matter with someone with the team. Seeing this shirt available a few years later is thus weird, but maybe (most likely) any profiting involved with the sale of these shirts probably go to the children’s hospital that some of the players on the team work at, or something similar.