Football fever is wafting in the air as the World Cup is still in progress. This sport is the craze right now all over the world. And, there’s something in football that makes it endearing. It’s not the electrifying rocketing of the ball towards the goal or the glorious chanting of the fans. It’s the unique tradition of the football shirt swap.

For players in other sports, a handshake or a tap in the shoulder is enough to acknowledge the performance of their opponents at the end of the game. But in football, they have a distinct way of ending the game. They take their shirts or jerseys off and exchange them with their combatants. This is a grand display of sportsmanship that we have not seen in other sports.

This tradition has started more than 50 years ago. The first ever recorded incident was in 1931 when the French team asked to keep their English opponent’s jerseys to commemorate their victory. Since then the swapping of football uniforms by players has caught on.

It was even magnified during the 1970s in the North American Soccer League when Pele signed in for the New York Cosmos. Pele was a huge attraction that it even required 25 -30 shirts to be provided for him to accommodate the requests of the swaps. This was often the case as even the less well-known players are fighting their way to get hold and swap shirts with the more popular players of football superstars.

This posed no problems for the player as the teams issue a fresh kit of jerseys for every match.