Football Shirt Culture.com

I stumbled across this site and wondered if anyone has any idea on an unusual shirt I have brought.

It is an 09/10 Inter Milan away shirt that I brought a few weeks back from an official Nike store. The strange thing is, it went through the till as a 09/10 away shirt, it has the exact same stripes, logos and badges as an 09/10 away shirt, yet the shirt itself is different as it does not have the collars or blue stripes at the bottom of the sleeves.

It is the nike Nikefit logo and 'team' tag stitched on the bottom as per other recent Nike shirts I own, but the shirt itself is a v-neck as opposed to the collared design that the team actually wore.

They had a rack of them all the same and I decided to buy it as I think it looks pretty smart. Just wondered if it is a printing mistake and if anyone else knows of this kind of thing happening.

I think it could be one of two things, either early prototypes that Nike are just trying to get rid of, but I can't imagine that being the case from the official store and them not being labelled as such.

The other thing it could be is a 'code-7' shirt, these are usually shirts that contain small differences from the final product and are almost the same except for a few finer details like maybe a different collar.

Check out this code7 Inter shirt and compare it to the real thing so get what I am on about www.subsidesports.com/uk/03-04-inter-milan-home-shirt-code-7.html

Another explanation may be that the shirt may be what they call a "de-spec" or "kick-off" replica. I holiday each year in Spain, and have bought a Barcelona away shirt each year for the past 3 years..each shirt is the same colour and style yet with some differences. The material is a different to "proper" replicas, different collars, and a plasticised printed Barca badge as opposed to stitched. Other details include no sleeve trim and a stitched nike/size label as opposed to printed. Also, have stitched nike swoosh and nike team label on bottom right hand side of the shirt (as you mentioned). They are on sale at the Nou Camp, usually 30-35 euro, whilst the replicas there are e70. Im thinking that other clubs on the continent may do this, saw similar Inter shirts when in Milan a few years back.

May be different case with your shirt, but it may answer a few questions otherwise.

Thanks for your help, pmparke and curswine. I'm not sure that it is a kick off or de-spec as the club badge is stitched and the original price tag said £48 (reduced to £20 for end of season). Maybe it is one of those code 7 variations. I have seen a prototype online with vertical instead of horizontal stripes, but not one without the collars. It was on a rack with last years Inter home shirts, but as far as I could tell, the home shirts were normal.