Borussia Mönchengladbach 2017/18 Away Shirt

Some transfers are homecomings, and Christoph Kramer's was among the loveliest. The midfielder Gladbach had held on loan between 2013 and 2015, and who in that interval became a world champion at the Maracanã with his memory wiped blank, returned for good in 2016, the clause paid to Leverkusen, and took the number 6 this shirt carries. The 2017/18 green away is Kappa in graphic mode, hoops turned into bands of diagonal hatching, as if someone had ruled the shirt with a set square, and the Foals' identity scattered through the details, from Fohlenelf on the nape to the collar tape. Dieter Hecking's season ended in ninth place, mid table with no European stories, but Kramer played it the way he played everything at Gladbach: with the intelligence of the man who was already becoming German football's sharpest television analyst. A world champion in a mid table club's shirt, by his own choice. At the old Bökelberg they called that being a Foal; at Borussia-Park it is called exactly the same.

Here at Hoopster this shirt holds a homecoming: Kramer's 6, the world champion who cannot remember the final, back to wear the Foals for good. Some memories the body keeps better than the head.