Pros: Very practical, what the pros wear, nice colours
Cons: can get lost putting it on, pro version has horrible printed logos
The Bottom Line: I would recommend the shirt to any France fans/sporty types, it is practical and looks cool, just don't machine wash it too much(pro version)
flash-hammer's Full Review: adidas France Home Jersey 298742
Now, before I start, I would like to point out that there are two drastically different versions of this shirt.
1. The Fan, or ‘Replica’ jersey. This features a stitched on badge, Adidas logo and the stripes down the sleeves are also stitched on, separate pieces of material. It is also one layer thick.
2. The ‘Player’ jersey. These were sold for a much higher RRP and came in World Cup collector’s tins. This shirt had two layers and the Adidas logo; FFF badge and sleeve stripes were printed on.
I have the player jersey, so take note that there will be differences to the version found in most stores (the player jerseys aren’t distributed in as high quantities).
This was the first ‘player’ jersey I ever owned (I own a total of 3), and it is one of my favourites. This was the shirt worn by France in the 2002 Japan/South Korea World Cup. While I can see why a Frenchman would want to forget the tournament (France, holders from the last competition, crashed out at the first stage, without scoring a goal), but not being French, I can look at the shirt on its own qualities.
As I mentioned the shirt is made up of two layers, the lower layer is like a vest made of the ventilated sweat-absorbent material usually found under the arms of most football shirts, it is mostly blue, apart from a red fillet that curves down from the under-arm to the side.
The upper layer is a solid blue t-shirt shape, with the front torso piece being made of blue mesh and the sleeves/back solid material. On the upper left chest area of the shirt is the French Football Federation’s badge, with one gold star to represent their single World Cup triumph (1998). Across in the right-chest area is the Adidas three-stripes logo. In the bottom left hand corner sits the small oval shaped Adidas Clima-Cool logo, down the sleeves are three white stripes, but in-between one set of the stripes is a red one. So the sleeves have a France flag with two white lines flanking it. I liked this, as it is a break from the norm of Adidas sleeve stripes.
All of these are printed on in a plasticky material, which I find slightly amusing as it has a higher RRP than the ‘fan’ jersey, yet it features meticulously stitched badges and logos, while the more expensive shirt features the cheap print-on logos usually found on fake shirts.
The two shirt layers are stitched together at the neck, which can lead to some problems if you try to put the shirt on in a hurry and you end up only wearing the upper layer. I recall a Croatian player having a problem with his nation’s dual-layered shirt when he took it off to celebrate scoring, only to find he couldn’t get it back on properly.
The shirt label reads 100% Polyester, although the two layers and the sleeves all have different feels to them, with the mesh being slightly rough, but the sleeves/back being really smooth.
The shirt is designed to reduce the sweat created by a player and absorb what is put out. It does a fair to good job in both of these aspects. The fact that the inner vest layer does not cover your armpits allows them more room to breath, and the fact that you have a whole vest of the sweat absorbent material, instead of a few, small, selected areas helps a lot in making playing a little more enjoyable.
And to be honest, if Zinedine Zidane, a man who could sweat for his country, wears the shirt then it must work, those who sweat regularly can wear it without fear.
One complaint I have is about the Logos printed on the mesh part of the shirt. After a year or so of washing, the clima-cool logo is starting to deteriorate a bit (where the holes in the mesh are), the F’s on the France badge are starting to suffer a similar fat, however the solid areas of the actual badge and the Adidas logos are still in very good shape.
The shirt is sized like the majority of shirts, so ordering your usual size will not be a problem.
To be honest, there really isn’t anything else to say about the shirt. If you actively play football, or are planning on wearing it in any sort of active sport, I would recommend the Player jersey, but if you just want it for wearing, then I don’t see why the fan version, which costs less, wouldn’t be adequate.
Personally, I love my shirt, it is practical to play in, it came in a funky tin and makes me feel like Thierry Henry. Even if I have got the wrong skin-colour, and none of the class.
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