Welcome to Balls' Classic Football Kits, a weekly look at some of the most beautiful retro football shirts ever to grace the game.
Football hipsters rejoice.
This week, the focus of our attention is on the Fiorentina home shirt from the 1998/99 season, as modelled by club icons such as Gabriel Batistuta and Rui Costa, typically seen on Channel 4 on Sunday mornings during Football Italia.
One of those jerseys where the sponsor doesn't ruin it, in fact, this is an example of when a sponsor can make a jersey great, as the iconic Nintendo logo of the '90s is splashed on the front and looks majestic with Fiorentina's traditional purple.
Designed by Fila, this classy number sports the Florentine fleur-de-lis on each shoulder, and really set the tone for late '90s Serie A fashion, here is a closer look:
This was the era of Batigol, as this shirt become synonymous with overly-enthusiastic celebrations and "finger-guns" following the countless thunderbastards and perfectly timed headers that Gabriel Batistuta scored at the time. Here is one of said headers from a drab affair against perennial Serie A minnows Juventus:
For the football hipsters out there who wish to buy this jersey and wear it to 5-a-side, you're out of luck. We couldn't find any on eBay, nor on the classic football shirt sites that are available from a quick google search. However, you can buy a fake one from Asian wholesaler Aliexpress.com, but it's not the real deal. Actually, does that make it even more hipster? Perhaps.
