Montenegro 2

vs. Japan (0:2) | Kirin Cup 2007 in Japan

Montenegro is surely one of the most amazing countries in Europe. Wedged between the mountains and the sea it features everything a seasoned traveller like me is looking for. I would always return to this amazing country and especially to Kotor!
The shirt looks basically like any other Montenegro shirt ever looked, but it has 3 thrilling features, except for being matchworn:
1. It is the first shirt the young nation ever wore. So, just like my Belarus 12 shirt, this might be a shirt worn in a "first ever" match, but I do not know that for sure here. Still, the fact that this is the first ever design any Montenegro team ever used is very special indeed. Try to get the first ever England shirt! Matchworn!
2. The shirt is not one of your usual Adidas/Puma/Nike templates that rising national teams usually have to wear. Instead Montenegro just stormed to the very next sport shop, in Serbia, and grabbed a few shirts of the Serbian brand Da Capo in their prefered colours. As far as I know this is the only time that this small brand made it to the international stage.
3. This design was used, amongst other matches, in the Kirin Cup, an amazing tournament most people probably never heard of. The Kirin Cup is a Japanese invitational tournament, sponsored by the Japanese brewery Kirin. Even more extraordinary is that the current holder of the tournament was Scotland (yes, seriously) when Montenegro landed in Japan in 2007. It must have been the last tournament ever won and the first Montenegro finished last.