One of the greatest shirts to never (officially) exist. You are looking at the incredibly coveted Brazil 2013/2014 away shirt, or at least it should have been. A blackout shirt that was ahead of its time, but was forced by the Brazilian FA to remain in the darkness.
To this day, only a few official images of the shirt actually exist, these have been attached. Neymar, having just signed for Spanish giants FC Barcelona from Brazilian boyhood club Santos, was football’s premier wonderkid at the time, and had been selected by Nike to be the face of the new “Hypervenom” boots.
Shortly after these images released, the Brazilian FA would announce that the blackout shirt would never be used by the Brazilian national team in any fixture, be that competitive or friendly, so the only national team player to have been documented as having worn this shirt is Neymar in the Nike Hypervenom promotional material. This is due to the all-black shirt going directly against Brazil’s over half century-long tradition of exclusively wearing a yellow home shirt and a blue away shirt, this shirt doesn’t feature even a speck of yellow or blue.
This is such a rare shirt, that many collectors don’t even realise it exists, or believe it’s little more than those Chinese mockups with crazy designs that would never be approved by FIFA on an international shirt. This, while approved by FIFA, was shunned from the pitch by an FA who chose the tradition of the national team over something bold. We respect that.
This shirt is widely believed to be the first ever “blackout” football shirt, a concept that would explode in popularity in the late 2010’s and early 2020’s, in particular through beautiful efforts by Nike x AIK and Puma x Borussia Dortmund, both of which have released multiple blackout shirts now, all of which have been commercial and cultural hits in the football fashion space.
It is unknown the exact quantity of this shirt that exist, but they are unquestionably one of the rarest football shirts of all time, not just the modern era. Was this shirt a bold move that was just a few years too early, or Nike spitting in the face of Brazil’s footballing traditions? We will leave that question up to you, we’re more than happy to marvel at this shirt while you figure it out.
A brilliant way to open the Off The Line Vault, thank you for reading.
