Peru

Away; 2004/06

This is the second Peru shirt of my collection, and is actually the away version of the 2004/06 shirt that I previously posted. It is more or less a straight swap of the colours, but interestingly the crest and Walon logos are embroidered on this shirt compared to the felt-type material on the home. The inner neck label is heat pressed here compared to the material tag of the home, and also of note is the inclusion of the FPF crest on the shadow weave along with the ‘WALON’ wordmark. As I mentioned in that post, Walon’s quality control left a lot to be desired so it is not really surprising to see these variations.

Given I have already written about Peru, I will keep this post brief. Instead of a history of the team, I will just mention how Peru did in this shirt. It was worn during the team’s unsuccessful qualifying campaign for the 2006 World Cup, finishing second from bottom of the group with just four wins out of eighteen games. The away shirt doesn’t appear to have been given many run outs, but it was worn away to Colombia, who were wearing yellow shirts and blue shorts. Interestingly, Peru wore their regular all white strip when playing away to Ecuador, who also were wearing yellow shirts and blue shirts. I can only assume that as the Colombia game was being played in the blazing sun, the yellow shirt would have been more of a potential clash with Peru’s white. Indeed, Brazil wore their traditional yellow shirt/blue shorts combination in both their games against Peru.

On a personal level, buying this shirt was a bit different than the usual methods. Most shirts come through online stores, emails, Twitter and general internet based activity. This one though, was bought for $2 in a charity shop in deepest rural British Columbia, Canada. So whenever I see this shirt, it always brings me back to that lovely little lakeside town. With a population of less than 500 people, and being in the middle of a mountain range, I can only assume one of the residents visits Peru at some point, rather than there being a thriving Peruvian community in the town. But whatever the shirt’s history to that point, it is now firmly a valued part of my collection.