The Football Shirt Collective

We spoke to journalist, digital producer and scorer of diving headers Benji Lanyado about wee, Gazza shirts and Di Canio scissor kicks.  

What was your first ever football shirt?

A 1989 Hibernian home shirt. I lived in Edinburgh until I was 8, and was forced into supporting Hibs by my neighbour, who then forced me to wear his hand-me-downs. I went to Easter Road every now and then, but my strongest memory of partisanship was when, one lunchtime at school, the playground split into opposing camps, Hearts vs Hibs, and we chanted at each other across the concrete until one kid wet himself with exhilaration. It was wonderful.

What is your favourite ever football shirt?

A tough one. Probably the Gazza-era Lazio home shirt. I was addicted to Football Italia and the strange, fat, brilliant English bloke who went over there, scored a last-minute equaliser in a Rome derby (from a Beppe Signori cross), and then cried, obviously. Early 90s Italian shirts are superb, but that one stands out.

Lazio, Umbro, 1994 

What is your favourite ever goal?

An obvious one I’m afraid. The Di Canio scissor kick for West Ham. Two things I remember:

1) The delayed reaction of the crowd - for at least half a second nobody celebrated, we were in shock

2) When re-watching it ad infinitum, Martin Tyler’s commentary. He has a mini footballgasm.  And one for luck …

3) It was Freddie Kanoute’s debut for West Ham, but you didn’t need to know that.

Is your favourite football shirt better than Benji’s? Let us know on twitter @thefootballsc

You can share your classic football shirts by; tagging them to our facebook page, sending us a link to them on twitter, or pinning them on our Pinterest board - and we will publish the best on our blog.

When Zdenek Zeman was in charge of Lazio, he liked two things; cigarettes and goals.

With Lazio he created a free-scoring, free-smoking team that claimed second place, finishing the season on a five game winning streak.

That run was started by a 3-0 hammering of eventual champions Juventus - perhaps Zdenek and his boys were lifted by being in Turin and getting to wear their nifty away kit.

Lazio, Umbro, 1994/5, away

This was a shirt, after all, which took the home colour of celeste, and created a completely
different shirt by keeping half of it exactly the same but adding a sort of lightening bolt and a slightly darker shade of blue.

Lazio 1994-95 was a team of big names, powered by the goals of Signori, Casiraghi and Boksic.  At the back, Alessandro Nesta was playing his first full season for the senior squad. Nesta was young, but evidently not too young to be able to break Paul Gascoigne’s leg in training. That effectively ended Gazza’s season. The worst part about this is that Gazza spent a lot of time during the 90s smoking, so surely Zdenek would have had huge plans for him in Rome, and Gazza could have been the final piece in Zdenek’s nicotine stained jigsaw
puzzle.

Hoggy