1980/90 · Home

Vintage Al-Ahli Sanaa shirt with everything classic Arab kits did best: a knitted green polo collar, chest hoops opening into fine pinstripes down the body, the eagle crest as an embroidered patch and, spread across the chest in huge letters, النادي الأهلي, the club’s name in Arabic serving as identity and sponsor at once. With no manufacturer’s mark, a Taiwanese label and a polyester-cotton blend, it is imported teamwear from the 1980s or early 90s, from the days when the Emperor ruled the Yemeni league and packed the Ali Muhesen. A relic of a football that today survives against everything.

Here at Hoopster, this may be the shirt that best explains why this archive exists: a piece that crossed four decades, a war and half the world to prove that some stripes never surrender.