Belarus 12

vs. Ukraine (1:1) |  friendly 1992, 1-1 in Belarus

I always wonder if there any regular readers or followers of my blog. But if there is anyone out there following me closely he (let's face it, no women would follow footy shirts) will think "Dafuq? Doesn't he have like 421798570923 Belarus shirts, most of them matchworn, already?"
The answer is "yes, of course, 11 of them!". Furthermore, I do not have any special relation to Belarus and it is usually one of the hardest to get from all the UEFA countries (seriously!). But somehow those shirts get thrown at me regularly for some obscure reason. I promise, it is not like I am chasing Belarus, but Belarus is chasing me and I am not able to escape! You don't believe? Well, let me tell you the story of this stunning piece of polyester:
A German ebay seller was selling off his whole collection and was mainly concerned about finding a buyer who would credit his shirts. I wrote him for totally different shirts (like Romania 4 and Albania 3) and he wrote me that he has "more matchworn national shirts from players that used to play in Cologne or Aachen and you can have them all for 50 bucks each". I found myself googling national team players of Cologne and Aachen for hours and of course had to agree to buy all of his 6 matchworn national team shirts. This is one of them and he got it from Andrey Yusipets, a former Aachen player, who happened to be Belorussian suddenly, when the USSR broke apart. Being a reserve player in Aachen, in the Second Division, he would have never played for the USSR or GUS, but suddenly he got recently called up to play international footy!
This shirt, however, is not worn by himself, as this design was only used in a single match as it seems: A 1:1 friendly of Belarus vs. Ukraine in 1992. If you understand anything about the USSR or global politics you might recognize that 1992 wasn't exactly ages after the USSR collapsed.
Doing further research things turned out to be even better: This shirt was in fact worn in the first ever official (FIFA-recognised) football match of the nation Belarus. WOW! This shirt was worn in the second a football nation was born and I am absolutely delighted to own this historic piece!
The match picture is from a Belorussian football page, who simply scanned an old Belorussian newspaper, thus the poor quality. And yes, it is a Black-White-Russian picture (I know it hurts).
I hope you understand now, why it was impossible to NOT buy this piece for 50€ and I do not regret it at all, but it will be my last Belarus shirt for a while, maybe...