Macedonia

Macedonia vs. Albania (1:0) | friendly 2007 in Albania

As many of my regular readers and fellow collectors know I am not only a shirt collector, but also the general secretary of ConIFA, the nowadays biggest umbrella organization for football outside FIFA (www.conifa.org).
Just lately we started a blog to share interesting stories with our fans and followers. Curiously the editor of the blog had the silly idea to start his blog with a story about me and my shirt collection, which you can find here: http://conifa.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/theshirtsofoursecretary/
As always in journalism the story was adapted by other journalists. This lead to the fact that the story about my collection was published in the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, more preciselise in the magazine "off.net.mk": http://off.net.mk/offside/fudbal/kolekcionerot-na-koj-mu-fali-dres-od-makedonija
A main part of the story in Macedonia was that I still miss a Macedonian shirt and the article called his readers to help me on this step of the mission.
Well, things went crazy and the FA directly called the editor of the article and told him that the FA will donate a shirt for me. There is an article about that donation and the editor is pictured with "my" shirt here:
http://off.net.mk/offside/fudbal/ffm-kje-mu-podari-dres-na-kolekcionerot
This shirt was then, of course as a gift, send to me. A really brilliant shirt and surely match issued, as there are still no Macedonian shirts for sale. Nevertheless I was told that they start a webshop soon!

Nearly simultaneously a reader of the article, Darko Najdovski, wrote me on Twitter. He had an old matchworn shirt from a friend, who plays for the national team. He also wanted to donate it to me, but I send him a St.Pauli shirt as a litle thank you.
So, the happy end: I do have now 2 Macedonian shirts and I am very thankful for the amazing donations! Thanks to the friendly helpfullness of the Macedonian people I do have new favorite team in Europe now ;)

UPDATE: I gave the shirt given to me by the journalist to my friend Chris and thus deleted the pictures here.

Saaremaa

 

Saaremaa vs. Hiiumaa 2013

 Never heard of Saaremaa ? Shame on you! Saaremaa is an Estonian island with the main city and capital Kuressaare, which team FC Kuressaare plays in the first Estonian League, the Meistri Liga.
Besides that Saaremaa has a national team which regularly plays in the Island Games. More precisely they played in all 6 Island Games between 1999 and 2009, finishing 6th in 2005.
Besides they regularly play friendly matches against the team of Hiiumaa, another Estonian island. Just recently they even played on a ferry between those islands!
Saaremaa traditionally is the better of the islands, but unfortunately both do not have "real" national team shirts. Instead Saaremaa wears the shirts of FC Kuressaare as you can see in the picture above.
My shirt was sent to me from Martti Pukk, who played for Hiiumaa and Saaremaa national teams before and was signed by the FC Kuressaare player and Saaremaa captain Märt Kluge.
I am pretty happy to have another very unknown non-FIFA shirt, which makes my collection in non-FIFA even bigger.

Benin

Razak Omotoyossi (FC Metz / France)
Benin vs Nigeria (0:1) | AFCON 2010 in Angola

What a shirt! I really love the pretty different designs of Airness, an African brand founded by a former boxer, and this one is particularly beatiful in my eyes. The shirt, again, came from Gregorio from Belgium. Thanks a lot for sorting that one out! He bought it directly from Airness, which made the shirt not cheap, but it was the first ever chance for me to get it, so I took it!
In fact there are only 2 players from Benin I have ever heard of: Razak Omotoyossi and Mickael Poté. The latter one is probably the best striker of the German second division side Dynamo Dresden, which is good enough for such a small country like Benin.
The other fact I early learned about the Benin national team is there martial nickname: "Les Ecureuils", which means "The squirrels". I am sure this nickname gives them the maximal respect inside Africa and the world. I can imagine that the indomptable lions of Cameroon must be in fear of the little cute squirrels...