What were they thinking? Some shirt numbers are iconic, especially at certain clubs. But these are some of the stupidest football shirt numbers in football.
Others however, aren’t. And some players have worn some pretty stupid shirt numbers down the years, random and just strange.
Here are 10 of the stupidiest, weirdest and worst shirt numbers in football history. Watch & Bet on Football =>
Famous playmaker for Spurs and Argentina, but chose to wear the no.2 shirt at the 1978 World Cup.
Star Arsenal centre-back William Gallas wore no.10 for his Arsenal career…for some reason…surely one of the stupidest football shirt numbers in history.
He changed his shirt number from 23 to 52 during his time at the Emirates, quoting:
Having embarked on his second spell at Bayern Munich in 2005, full-back Lizarazu opted to take the No.69.
After much hand-wringing among fans, Frenchman Lizarazu later claimed 69 had been a number with lucky connotations. Why? Well, he weighed 69kg, had been born in1969, and was 169cm tall, so his decision was purely due to that and the possibility of having a laugh about it with his teammates. It’s one of the stupidest football shirt numbers in history.
The story behind this one is cool, when Chilean striker Zamorano signed for Inter from Real Madrid in 1996 he wore the No.9, until 1998 when the Divine Ponytail himself, Roberto Baggio, arrived and demanded the No.10. The problem with that was Ronaldo already had it.
The Brazilian was then given the No.9, leaving Zamorano to come up with a creative twist on the numbering system.
He took the 18 shirt and addd a ‘+’ sign in the middle, thus creating a simple maths equation that equalled nine.
Buffon is known as one of the best goalkeepers ever. But his shirt number at his old club may not be the greatest ever. For some strange reason he chose the number 88. It caused some controversy at the time as the Jewish community considered the number to be a neo-Nazi symbol. The letter H is the eighth number in the alphabet so two H’s represent “Heil Hitler”.
Buffon said of his choice:”I have chosen 88 because it reminds me of four balls and in Italy we all know what it means to have balls: strength and determination,” he said. “And this season I will have to have balls to get back my place in the Italy team.”
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