My favourite shirt. Ever!

This shirt barely registered in the UK until right before Euro 2000. My brother collected Italy shirts, and he grabbed one the day before Italy's first game. Then the tournament started and everyone saw it: a lighter blue than Italy usually wore, a high round neck, and a fit that had nothing to do with the baggy shirts of the 90s.

Emanuele Ostini designed it for Kappa and called it the Kombat. The thinking was practical. A stretch shirt lets a player keep moving while a defender has hold of him, and it makes the pull obvious to the referee. The Italian players took some convincing. Totti, Del Piero and Cannavaro all hesitated over how tight it was, and when Cannavaro finally put one on, Ostini told him he looked like Superman. Most of the squad are said to have asked for theirs two sizes up.

I went the other way. My thing for a tight Kappa fit started with this shirt.

The fabric is a polyester and spandex blend, and one kit writer described it as "very unforgiving for any player with an un-athletic physique." That applies to collectors too. I do wear mine, and it keeps me in shape.

Mine has Totti's 20 on it. Totti was my guy. Back in 98 or 99 you could still find a player before everybody else had, and I had found him. At Euro 2000 he was 23 and wore the 20, because Del Piero had the 10. In the semi-final shoot-out against the Netherlands he chipped his penalty past Van der Sar. I was so happy watching him shine that summer.

Del Piero's number 10 from 2000, in the Museo del Calcio in Florence. Photo: Sailko, CC BY 3.0.

I liked the shirt enough to buy it twice. The second was Roma's 2000–01 shirt, the same template and the same fit, with Totti 10 on the back.

Mine has held up, the fabric, the print and the stretch. Follow the washing instructions and don't over-wear it.

Within a few seasons almost every big club had gone tighter and lighter, and the baggy shirt was finished.

Then, twenty-one years on, Kappa did it again in a different way. Venezia moved from Nike to Kappa in 2021 and put out a black home shirt with gold stars and VENEZIA across the chest. It sold out on the first day, and the club said 95% of its online sales came from outside Italy. Most of those buyers were not Venezia supporters. They wanted the shirt. I was one of them, and I bought it as soon as it came out, first run.

The cut was different by then, but the idea was the one from 2000: a football shirt people wanted for how it looked on them. Monaco, Fiorentina, Genoa and others were part of that same Kappa run. Venezia's lasted three seasons and ten kits before the club moved on to NOCTA.

Twenty years after he designed the Kombat, Ostini called it "a really perfect soccer jersey." He's right.