TSV Wietze 2011/12 Home Shirt

A working Nike, long sleeved for the winters of the heath, with the TSV Wietze box logo on the chest and mobilcom-debitel, the German telecom retailer, at the centre. Match worn with the 4 on the back beneath the club's name, in the German fashion of printing the collective instead of the individual: the shirt belongs to the squad, not to a name.

It served around 2011/12 in the Celle district leagues, the lifelong habitat of a century old club, in a village that was once the centre of the world: Wietze had one of the planet's first oil wells and Germany's first oil field. The black gold ran out a century ago; Sunday football never did.

Here at Hoopster this shirt converses with the one from the mining club of Piberstein: two villages that powered a country and kept the hoops for themselves. Europe's industrial history is also told in match cloth.