The 1990 World Cup was my first proper exposure to football, igniting an interest that only grew from there.
Last Thursday, excitement in Ireland was at levels not seen in quite a while as World Cup fever took hold – and that for what was a play-off semi-final. Two wins would have been needed to reach the most bloated Mundial in history, but for those not old enough to remember 1990, 1994 or 2002, this was big.
An early 2-0 away to Czechia gave hope and, though the home side equalised and the game went to a penalty shootout, Ireland had a huge opportunity when they had a chance to go 4-2 ahead.
Alas, things turned out differently and, thanks to the decision that play-off losers should face each other in friendlies on Tuesday night, North Macedonia will visit Aviva Stadium for the most meaningless of fixtures.
At the same as that, Czechia welcome Denmark with a place in the finals up for grabs. In August 1998, those countries met in a friendly in Prague and it threw up a real kit oddity.
Nowadays, such a clash would see one team in an all-dark outfit (the Czechs’ wore navy shorts at home to Ireland) with the other in all-white but, back then, countries’ first-choice colourways were still given primacy. Presumably, Denmark’s change kit of white shirts, red shorts and red socks was not considered suitable against the hosts’ red-white-blue – incidentally, their 1996 outfit was still in use.
Instead, the visitors wore blue – in and of itself, not hugely surprising as they had appeared in an Ipswich-like (or Sheffield Wednesday-like) version of their previous kit against Croatia in 1997.
However, while the overall cut of the shirt was the same as the home and away jerseys used at the World Cup in France that summer, the torso used the same design as that on the goalkeeper shirt worn by Peter Schmeichel.
Plain blue shorts and white socks (not the away set) to avoid a clash with the hosts rounded off the kit for a Chelsea-like effect from a distance.
The Czech Republic won 1-0 before a small crowd and, thereafter, the design remained restricted to the Danish custodians.
