How do I recognize a Matchworn football shirt?

• Posted on 7 January 2025
• By M. van Mourik
• Posted in Matchworn
• 0

As vintage football shirt experts, we would like to explain in a number of steps how you can distinguish a worn match shirt from the fan shop football shirts that are for sale in the store. At WeLoveFootballShirts we process up to 50 different football shirts every day. From 80s and 90s classic vintage items to match-worn football shirts from Wayne Rooney and Ronald Koeman themselves. With seven years of accumulated knowledge and processing of thousands of football shirts, we have developed a step-by-step plan that will make it a lot easier for a starting collector to make a good distinction and actually add a pearl to his or her collection.


Step 1 – Origin shirt

The easiest step of the entire process is finding out the origin of the shirt. How did you get the shirt? If it comes from the player himself is the easiest, but if the shirt comes from a via-via or a marketplace, it is a lot more difficult to find out the background.

Step 2 – Odor & Stains

A worn competition shirt always has competition elements such as grass stains or other visible signs of wear. If you don't find it on the shirt, it is an option to examine the neck collar carefully or just run your nose along the armpit. An (old) sweat smell usually lingers.

Step 3 – Type shirt

Matchworn football shirts have a better development than a fan shop shirt. The fabric is often thinner, there are air holes around the hips or even on the back or the shirt has advertisements or patches that are normally not available in the fan shop at the stadium. Always look for the coding on the labels or stamps in the shirt. This varies per brand.

Step 4 – Consult Google

You can compare certain shirt elements by looking up the club or country, the season of the shirt worn or the player yourself on the internet. This could be things like the size of the sponsor area or the font the player uses.

Step 5 – Player Research

By looking up the player's details on Wikipedia you often come across strange things. If the shirt is size medium and the player is a tall centre-forward of 1.98 meters, this could be a sign of the future.


Have you gone through all these steps and do you feel better after each step? Then there is a good chance that it is a shirt worn by your idol and you can add the shirt to your collection.©WeLoveFootballShirts>>7/1/25