This week, I tried my hardest, but I just couldn’t find a suitable Bulgarian shirt. I mean, I already did this one, and the pickings out there (at my usual haunts) are slim. So I looked elsewhere in Europe, or rather UEFA, because, try as they might to forget it, Israel are in Asia.
Boy was that a good idea. Because I came across a shirt with the rare trifecta. It’s ugly. It has a sponsor interfering with the shirt’s graphic. And the shirt’s manufacturer decided the just one logo wasn’t close to being enough. Here it is–Maccabi Tel Aviv’s third shirt from 1996-97.
Behold, a blue horse
I know what you’re thinking. Visa. That’s not too hard to figure out. What is hard to figure out is why the shirt sponsor logo has to be so large. Tighten it up a bit, and it fits right on top of the horse’s back. How is that not acceptable? Plus, if you’re willing to use the same exact logo on the back
(back)
why not compromise and switch the small logo up front and use the big one in that vast expanse of space above the number? I don’t know about anyone else, but there are a lot of players out there whom I only know the names of because their back was to me at some point in the match.
Such a mistake does not excuse the design of the shirt in the first place. Now, I know just a little bit more than nothing about Maccabi Tel Aviv (and I’m hoping that Ibracadabra will be along at some point to fill me in), but what is up with the horse? And it’s a soccer playing horse as well? I’m confused. And why the hell is it so big on the shirt? If you make it approximately the same size as the team’s badge, it would be much better, but this dang horse being so big just throws me off. You know–like off a bucking, soccer playing horse, or something.
Finally, what is it with certain (read: all) manufacturers trying to put as many logos on their shirts as possible? You’ll likely have to embiggen the front view to full size to see this, but that collar is chock full of little Diadora darts(?). But that’s not all. That soccer playing horse is playing soccer with a Diadora brand ball as well. And that’s f**king ridiculous. Because, even if (as I suspect) the horse has something to do with the ancient history of Tel Aviv, there is no way that long-dead horse ever played footy with a Diadora brand ball. Give me a break.
Jesus, that’s ugly.
Or is that the wrong blaspheme of a deity for Maccabi Tel Aviv?
This is the shirt from when Maccabi Tel Aviv were trying to sign Ruud van Nistelroy