Italy

Calcio did not invent football, but it invented almost everything else: tactics as religion, the defender as artist, the shirt as cult object. The Italian federation was born in 1898, Serie A was for decades the strongest and richest league on the planet, and the Azzurri count four World Cups, 1934, 1938, 1982 and 2006, plus the European titles of 1968 and 2021, behind only Brazil in the world tally. It is also the homeland of the most beautiful shirts ever made, of the brands that made them, Kappa included, and of the curvas that celebrate them. In green and white hoops, Italy is rare terrain: green there belongs mostly to the Neroverdi, and it takes an away kit with a Celtic soul, like the Sassuolo shirt representing the country in this collection, for the house pattern to speak Italian. Benvenuta, Italia: the collection needed the country where shirts are taken as seriously as points.