This is actually a manly post.

November 17th, 2011 | by: gadsby | Comments Off

Feast your eyes on this.

During the friendly against Uruguay, it was not only the style of play expectorated out by our boys in blue that caught the eye, nor simply Riccardo Montolivo’s pale, cold, and bewitching face, and more than just Cesare Prandelli’s jacket, it was the dazzling new blue shirts worn by the Azzurri that truly slapped the mind of this restless footballing warrior (apologies to Elton John for that metaphor) with the cold hand of seduction, perfumed on the wrist with a heady glamour tinged with the unearthly fumes of nostalgia, all the while softly intoning in a luscious Pisan accent a call for it’s soft, azure fabric to be worn in sickness and in health, an irresistible siren’s call from an antique realm. To put it bluntly – I quite like the new Italy shirt.

As a prominent expert in the field of football shirts, and an owner of several delectable specimens myself, I think I am more than qualified to post a definitive review of this rare and exquisite beauty, veritably, an Ana Maria Crnogorcevic of football shirts. In terms of fashion, this shirt is a beautiful Ming vase in an age of plastic containers, a magnificent pair of wrought oaken valves in a world of screen doors, a Seventeen Moments of Spring (I do love referencing that at every opportunity. I should watch past the 4^th episode someday.) in an age of Fox TV programs (with the exception of Arrested Development.). It is a reassurance, as if from God (and this is coming from an entirely nonreligious man) that everything will be alright, a bastion of refuge in a storm of uncertainty and madness. And I haven’t even mentioned the goalkeeper shirt yet.

The goalkeeper shirt. There are but a few words to describe the true magnificence of this unequivocal gem, sprouting it’s coruscations of beauty across the frozen mind, like a blazing sun spreading it’s warmth across the vast, frigid planes of outer dimensions. It is of a grey that could instantly evoke Happy Childhood memories in anyone who was around in 1982 (which I wasn’t, alas), similar to the style worn by the legendary Dino Zoff, and with a bold horizontal stripe of savoy across the chest. A humble man such as me is not fit to describe, deserve, let alone wear such a specimen of earthly perfection.

And this is all without mentioning the collar; what a collar! A divine neckpiece, white as the snow that even now covers the sky, blocking out the power and delaying the posting of this article, with two azurine pinstripes stretching their way around in a circle, a shape that they share in common with the mandala. A collar such as this is a triumph of human engineering, a pyramid or Florentine Dome of it’s day, an astounding proof of humanity’s ingenuity in the face of hardship.

So what are your thoughts? Feel free to bellow your vast wells of appreciation into the comment section. I’m sure that you will all love it just as much as I did.

Gadsby has not been on twitter recently due to a lack of electricity and consequently internet where he lives. Follow him anyway @FJGadsby, he’s usually not this descriptive.