Temu is a paradise for fake football jerseys

For as long as there has been football, or rather football jerseys, or rather jerseys made by the team with the appropriate certifications, there have always been fakes. It is a parallel market that affects the revenue of clubs and technical sponsors, but also makes merchandising affordable and increases the creativity of the teams immeasurably. And while such counterfeits used to be found mainly at stalls outside the stadium, today it is obviously easiest to find a fake jersey on the internet. But while specialised sites like DHL Gate now offer products that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing, it's still possible to find that bit of craftsmanship and shamelessness on other marketplaces that makes jerseys as intriguing as a PES badge without rights.

If you scroll through the pages of Temu, Shein's new competitor, you'll find some jerseys that are so obviously fake they've almost reached cult status. In a paradise where there is no copyright or intellectual property, kits copied or inspired by some of the most popular kits of the season are popping up on the Chinese market. From Juventus to Real Madrid, from the Portuguese national team to the Mexican national team, the beauty of the counterfeit jerseys on Temu is above all the absurdity of the stolen models. Here is the pre-match jersey of Venezia, which many preferred to the match jerseys, or the third Roma jersey from last season, when New Balance was still the technical sponsor of the Giallorossi. Or here's a replica of the kit Patta made for Barcelona, complete with a Blaugrana heart on the chest, or Liverpool's away kit with the green and white pixelation, not to mention the countless Manchester United kits, from last season's third to this season's second.

Of course, there are also plenty of NFL, NBA and NHL jerseys on Temu, but they look almost too polished, with names and numbers of real champions that make them instantly tacky, forced and cheap. Instead, football jerseys have a special charm with their naive and impressionistic flavour, tracing textures and stencils like a child would do with carbon paper. Of course, this is also because we don't see them live, in their highly flammable plastic material, but in some renderings that make us hope that these jerseys don't really exist in the end and are just there to fill the shelves of an endless digital shop. And at the same time, they show how football shirts are a must-have in a range. Even those of a Chinese marketplace selling fake products from the other side of the globe.