I don’t think I need to explain to you how hard awesome it is to add Somalia to the collection. Somalia used to be the very hardest shirt to get, perhaps tied or surpassed by only Djibouti. This is the away shirt, and this design has been used quite a few times. The pattern on the shirt doesn’t really look very nice, and it doesn’t have anything to do with Somalia, unfortunately. It also features a narrow version of the flag on the back, as well as Somalia writing. There’s also a small detail on the front, a writing that says “Ocian Stars”. The team’s nickname is Ocean Stars alright, but that typo is awesome! I love how that made it on to all the shirts. The FA logo itself is somewhat boring I guess, but the amount of times I’ve come across it and just drooled while daydreaming of a Somalia shirt, it has become one of the FA logos that I really like. It’s even embroidered on this shirt, and the shorts. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, I got the matching shorts too!
I got the shirt and shorts via one of the staff members that manages the national team. He also helped me with the home set. I was incredible happy and surprised to get help from him. Not only was it an extremely nice gesture, but I also assumed that I was number 3025024 to have contacted him. Apparently not! He got the shirt and shorts while with the team during the matches against Eswatini. This shirt and the shorts are match-prepared for these games, and I’m relieved that this makes it not just a replica of this shirt.
Because…… Yup. Even for Somalia, it’s no longer about just having a Somalia shirt. This current home and away design has made it in big numbers to collections. A fellow collector got his hands on a few A2Z shirts months ago, another collector managed to get a whole BOX of A2Z Somalia shirts recently, and to top it off, a UK-based Somalian got more than 100 A2Z Somalia shirts that he sells. And there’s now even a website that provides a direct add-to-basket way of getting an A2Z Somalia shirt. In a short span of time, the A2Z Somalia shirts were suddenly in a rather big handful of collections. This is one of the complaints that I have a hard time being quiet about. I’ve already discussed it a bit on the Dominica post, but it has just gotten so much worse. My motivation for collecting national team shirts is based on a few things. I like shirts that have a great design, I like shirts that have a lot of country-specific details, and I like shirts that are very hard to obtain. In my opinion, certain countries and territories deserve a special challenge. These are the smaller countries, poor countries, etc. Countries where you’d imagine, if you knew nothing about national football team shirts, that they would be hard to find. So when the shirt of a country loses its status as hard to find, it gets less motivating to collect, because the fun and thrill of sourcing is when you finally succeed with that one shirt that no one else or very few other collectors have managed to get their hands on.
All countries can’t be hard to get, and that’s okay, but there have always been a number of countries that were literally almost impossible to cross off the list. Which also made sure that the 211 challenge required some serious sourcing skills. But also made sure that there were a specific number of countries that were extra satisfying to cross of the list. In the past few years, shirts like Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Comoros, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Montserrat, and Madagascar are just examples of shirts that were notoriously hard to get, whereas they are now all easy. Many more countries could be added to that list as they share the same story. Some countries were harder than others, but now these countries just require going onto a website and clicking “add-to-basket” or emailing specific email-addresses that have been shared to a lot of collectors. I came across a photo on Twitter the other day, where a collector posted his recent arrivals which included Eswatini, Somalia, Chad, Sudan, and more. Couldn’t help but thinking that this photo was a very representative of what I am trying to say.
As of today, I think only Djibouti and perhaps Libya remain as being extremely rare / hard to get, although even Djibouti shirts are now in a good handful of collections. Other countries’ shirts haven’t necessarily been add-to-basket, but aren’t too rare for other reasons. Examples of these are Mauritania and Macau. Most other countries / territories either are or have been easy at one point. It’s very demotivating, as this wasn’t the case when I started collecting – and I have only been collecting since 2015. I came across a conversation on Twitter where some collectors applaud countries getting easier, as “it’s not fun to try and try and try for years without succeeding for certain shirts”. I mean, is it fun to click add-to-basket? If ALL countries are add-to-basket, collecting the 211 FIFA shirts becomes literally just about spending money. I can’t help but think that some countries and territories “shouldn’t” be easy, and that you shouldn’t necessarily expect to be able to get shirts from certain countries. Simultaneously, I don’t think everybody should be able to get certain countries’ shirt. There are collections out there that consist entirely of add-to-basket shirts, and it kind of sucks seeing how they are just a few shirts from having all 211 FIFA shirts. Once again because of how the 211 challenge just becomes more and more about just spending money and nothing else. I do although understand that it can of course be frustrating to not succeed. But that only makes it that much sweeter when you then DO succeed. I just think it’s wrong to just expect to be able to get a certain country’s shirt no matter what. Another person said that it’s wrong to collect based on what other people get, which I also simply cannot agree with. If getting 211 FIFA shirts had always been incredibly easy, would it be as popular as it is? I don’t think so. It matters what other collectors have, as shirts become more or less special depending on how obtainable it is.
I do myself also have some add-to-basket shirts for countries that deserve a better challenge, so that might seem hypocritical. For some of these countries, I just loved the design of the add-to-basket shirt and I would thus like to eventually get another shirt from that country that requires a bigger challenge. For other countries, like Central African Republic, I think I was the first to get African shirts from the contact at Macron, so they were, at the time, special. Same thing happened with the Seychelles and Bahamas shirts, just to name some. Something that was at one point a special shirt may become an add-to-basket later on, which is extremely demotivating.
I won’t blame you if you think I sound like a selfish douchebag, but to me, countries becoming easy to tick off the list is ruining the fun and appeal of collecting the 211 FIFA shirts, and it is just becoming way too demotivating. We could always rely on countries like Somalia and Sudan to never become easy, but even those days are over. There’s nothing to do about it, but it’s disheartening to see how my favourite hobby becomes less and less fun, and more and more about just spending money.
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