My Journey to the New York Jersey Unveiling

March 3rd, 2010 | by: Julian | View Comments

I didn’t get to see most of the Italy-Cameroon game live yesterday. I was on my way to New York City instead (I’m a New Jersey native, home from college on spring break). PUMA was having their official unveiling of the Azzurri’s new World cup jerseys, and when Daryl passed along the invite, I couldn’t resist. Me and my friend Steve made our way over last evening, and had a blast. The event was held in a little Italian trattoria, with awesome food, great people, and just a chill atmosphere. The best way to illustrate what it was like is picture by picture, so without further ado:

(I do apologize, all I had was my iPhone do the pictures are only 2 megapixel quality).

This is a picture of the inside of the place. It was pretty small- it was basically the above plus a room in the back where the food was. We got there really early, about a half hour before we were supposed to, so it was pretty dead at first. By the end, there was 150 people crammed into that room. You can see all the Italy stuff hanging on the ceiling.

This was the first of several free swag I nabbed on the night- a free 1 gig flash drive (really, really nice quality). It’s loaded with a ton of PUMA pics and info, like this Italy fact sheet:  http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7GDELRZZ

This is a shot of all of the jerseys closer. The goalie kits and gloves were hanging from the ceiling. I didn’t really like it on Marchetti in the game, but in person I thought they looked really cool. You can see the outfield kits on the bottom right, which I’ll get to in a minute.

This was really cool. It’s the new jacket, which is the thing I really really wanted the most. It’s incredibly soft and pliable, though it is on the thin side so it’s much more of a spring jacket than a winter one. Sadly, none of this stuff was on sale, so I couldn’t buy one from the event.

The Buffon poster I’m sure most of you have seen. It was huge in person, maybe 8 feet tall and 3 wide.

This really caught my eye: it’s probably the nicest soccer ball I’ve ever seen.

And the jerseys. The away one was pretty cool, although I’m not digging the collars on them. The pants were supposedly inspired by boxing which is why the belt part of it is so big, but the pants were really high on the mannequins which made it hard to tell how the shirts fit when they were loose. But again, they were really nice in person.

The home one was really cool. The Spiderman/gladiator effects aren’t as noticeable as I thought they would be. Unlike the away one, I like how this one looks around the neck, with the outline in red, green, and white.

They had some ridiculously sexy cleats. The ones on the right were drool worthy. Definitely wish I could afford them.

Finally, the best part of it all might’ve been the free food. There was an open bar as well, which made everything even better. All the food was superb, from the proscuitto (which is hard to screw up, admittedly) and the beans to the tiramisu at the end.

All in all, we had a great time. The event lasted three hours, and we got a lot of free stuff (including a free tshirt) and talked with some really chill people. If there’s one thing to take away from this, it’s to not judge the jerseys until you see them in person. They aren’t the best jerseys we’ve ever had but they do look really nice.

And I did get to see the Cameroon game in almost it’s entirety, so I’ll have a write up for you next post. One word before then: mi piace Bonucci nel azzurro.

Buy these Italy World Cup kits at the World Cup Blog store.