QUOTE(G-Hammer @ Jul 2 2008, 07:24 PM)

I remember during qualifying for a previous tournament Italy, then made by Kappa, wore a black shirt against Iceland, and the top was later used as a GK shirt, but I've never seen nor heard of a black Puma one, they wouldn't have needed it during the qualifying campaign, and they certainly never wore it in Germany.
On a side note, while looking through my collection a strange anomaly caught my attention:


The former is a shirt I bought from a respectable sports shop in Italy around the time of the 2002 World Cup. The other I got from a less reputable source in the UK a year or so later. Now, the fact that they have identical templates, and the only different is silver/blue colour of the second, I would have assumed it was fake. The thing is, I've looked around the Internet and found a lot of pictures, including ones that claim to be player shirts, that have the silver/blue section in the middle as opposed to the solid blue. Does anyone know the story behind these 2 alternate versions of the same top?
It wasn't actually Kappa, it was Puma from the WC2006 qualifying from the 2004-05 template. The shirt was actually a one-off shirt made up for one match. Although there was a black keepers shirt used for 2004-05 the shirt used by Italy against Iceland was a slightly different template. The keepers shirt also had a centrally placed Italian badge and the shirt for the Iceland game was on the right chest
[attachment=26247:51188424.jpg]
For the Japan shirt there is 2 versions of the shirt and both are authentic. The one with the royal blue centre is the standard replica and the one with the silver thread woven through the front was a later produced version which was to make it appear more like the players shirt. This was the WC2002 shirts and the players were dual layered versions with the inner layer being white and this was done to try and replicate this. To be honest it has kinda made it look cheap looking and the original royal blue shirt is still the best.
Subside still have both versions available and from theri photos you can see the diffference
[attachment=26248:untitled.bmp][attachment=26249:37.bmp]