Put your shirt on Argentina’s fans still being fooled over replica kits
ERIC WEIL in BUENOS AIRES: Argentinian fans continue to be milked as most clubs change the design of their team shirts almost every year.
The winners are the kit manufacturers that increase their sales, but sometimes, hungry for a few more pesos, they make silly mistakes. More clever are the many firms who copy them to sell at a few more pesos than the high price put on the official shirts and, in some cases, see no point in copying them.
Boca Juniors came up with pink shirts recently which were hated by the fans who would not even accept them as a gift. The shirts were used in only one match and sales must have been low, if any at all. Boca Juniors are now back to using their traditional blue and yellow.
River Plate dupe their many fans every year into buying their latest shirt always in their traditional colours of red and white but with the red stripes or sash in a slightly different place then, the following year, they move them back to the same place and so on. They know fans will always buy the latest shirt.
Indenpendiente’s shirt producers had the silly idea of coming out with a new shirt with light and dark blue stripes.
The club’s committee strangely accepted it — perhaps only because there was money involved — and it went on sale. It was never used in a game and I do not know if any Independiente fans bought it.
Yet perhaps fans of derby rivals Racing Club bought it because it had their (not exact) colours.
San Lorenzo never changed their red and blue colours although their shirts had different designs through the years. Now they are back to their original red and blue stripes.
** A German scientist has apparently tested the vanishing spray and decided it contains a gas which is illegal in the European Union.
In Argentina, where the spray was manufactured, it has been used for years and also elsewhere in South America. Of course there are no laws here to control crops being sprayed with material which would not be permitted elsewhere.
At least there are no instances of the vanishing spray damaged grass pitches.
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