From the suede-fringe of the Colorado Caribous to the yellow-and-green-stripes of the Tampa Bay Rowdies, the North American Soccer League was responsible for some of the most iconic kit designs in American soccer history.
The once-forgotten league, which operated from 1967-1984, has experienced a bit of a resurgence in recent years. Lionel Messi’s presence in MLS has driven some to poke around in the archives of American soccer, exploring a league that had its own litany of superstars: Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, Johan Cruyff and many more. While Messi features for Inter Miami in something approaching a pink T-shirt, those other legends plied their trade in the technicolor palette of the ’70s and ’80s, kits that make today’s “clean” aesthetic look downright boring.
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The renewed interest in the NASL as a whole has pushed both collectors and casual fans to seek out memorabilia related to the league, with a particular focus on game-worn or team-issued shirts. Values for game-worn kits have skyrocketed over the past few years, with verifiable, authentic shirts from no-name players that previously went for hundreds of dollars now sometimes selling for thousands. Jerseys worn by the league’s legends are now reaching five figures.
Maybe for the first time, there is money to be made in collecting NASL memorabilia. And that demand has created a sizable bootleg market for NASL shirts, something that felt unthinkable a decade ago. eBay, for example, is full of fake NASL kits, with many purporting to be “game-worn” or “team-issued.” Some of them are fairly convincing, to the casual observer, at least. Others are more obviously fraudulent, but all of them seem to be selling.
It’s a phenomenon Mark Stein is intimately familiar with. The 58-year-old has been collecting NASL shirts for as long as he can remember, an obsession that began in the late ’70s when he was a locker room assistant for the NASL’s Chicago Sting. Forty years later, Stein has amassed what’s likely the largest collection of authentic NASL shirts in the world, with some 450 jerseys and 30 warmups. Photos of his collection are like something approaching pornography to anybody in the American soccer collectibles space. Nearly every desirable name and shirt is present, and they are all real.
Stein’s role in the Sting locker room often involved laundering uniforms and interacting with the equipment staff of visiting teams, something that gave him a relatively easy line to add to his collection. It also gave him an intimate, deep knowledge of a very particular subject matter.
“In the early ’80s, when I started collecting, I knew exactly what the fabrics were, what the printing was, what the embroidery was, what the tackle twill materials were,” Stein told The Athletic. “I also know from washing them, I know what the detergents were that were used. I know how a jersey that’s 40 years old should smell or feel. What has been happening, because these things have become so valuable, is there are individuals and companies that are producing things and passing them off as ‘game-used,’ and not even just game-used but even ‘team-issued’ items, saying they were handed out by a trainer, equipment manager or whatever.”
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A recent sale on eBay makes for a good example. The seller, whose username is “viva-cana,” has long sold shirts on eBay, often claiming them to be “authentic.” The shirt is a one-off jersey used by the New York Cosmos in an exhibition match in 1984, a “homecoming game” that featured the club’s legends, including Pelé, lining up against the 1984 Cosmos themselves. The back of the jersey is emblazoned with the No. 8, which was worn by attacking midfielder Rivelino, a key player for Brazil’s 1970 World Cup squad and a member of the Cosmos in the late ’70s.
This particular eBay user has adjusted the language in his listings recently, from “authentic” to “vintage” and “pre-worn.” In the listing for this particular Cosmos shirt, he includes a grainy photo of Rivelino wearing the shirt and a roster for the match that day, inclusions that seem to suggest the shirt may be match worn.
Things start out strong for the shirt. It has the correct weight and construction. The layout of the collar is correct and it is clearly an actual, vintage Adidas shirt of the period. The tag on the collar is also correct in terms of what should be on a shirt of the period and matches other known examples of that ’84 exhibition kit. The iconic Adidas “Trefoil” logo, that too seems correct and shows wear that would be consistent with a 40-year-old shirt.
Things go off the rails quickly, though, when you look at the Cosmos logo on the front of the shirt and the name and number on the back of it. While the Adidas logo shows wear, the name, numbers and Cosmos crest are all very clearly recently applied, bright white in color with no wear shown. The ink used in the transfer also feels and looks modern when compared to an actual match-worn shirt from the time. The shirt is a fake — a vintage Adidas shirt modified to look like the homecoming game jersey.
For Stein, it brings back memories of a time when he was duped. He had spotted a jersey that an eBay seller claimed to have been worn by colorful Minnesota Kicks and Canadian men’s national team goalkeeper Tino “Birdman” Lettieri, a player who is maybe most known for tying a stuffed parrot to his goal before every match.
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“The jersey looked good to me,” said Stein. “Through photo matching it looked like the same colors, the same style of logo-ing and numbering. I bought this thing, I got it and it showed up at my house. The minute I took it out of the package I could tell it was fake. The material was different than the materials used by Adidas back in the day. The inks used were new ‘plastisol’ inks that didn’t exist 40 years ago.”
The story of the Cosmos homecoming shirt gets even more complicated when you look at a similar sale. A few years back, a Beckenbauer shirt from the match came to market. The neck tag on that shirt is a bit different than the one present on the Rivelino shirt purchased on eBay. It does not say “made in USA,” for example. The placement of the Adidas logo in relation to the crest on the opposite side of the shirt is also different, with the two being almost even (as opposed to being staggered, as they are in the Rivelino and Pele shirts.)
“This item was part of the match supply for the squad,” says the listing for the Beckenbauer shirt, which sold for around $1,000 in 2023. “And was made available to the players on matchday and has particular characteristics that make it different from products found on general sale. No guarantee can be given that this item was worn by a player for the match, although there is a possibility that it was used and then washed after the game.”
Even that description only makes things more complicated. Was it given out as a promotional material? Was the Beckenbauer shirt maybe one of many cheaper copies given to the player to provide to fans, opposing players or anybody else who wanted to get their hands on a shirt? More than any other team, the Cosmos frequently made copies of their jerseys, both authentic and replica.
Former Cosmos equipment manager Charlie Martinelli knows this better than anyone. He and his wife Terry handled all of the Cosmos’ kits from when the team began play in 1971 through his departure in 1978. He was there for the halcyon days of Pelé, when the Cosmos became a global powerhouse. He remembers making dozens of Pelé shirts for practically every game the team played. He’d hand them out to opposing players, celebrities, team administrators. Everybody wanted a piece.
Generally speaking, though, this was not the case at most other NASL teams. Players would often navigate entire seasons with only a handful of kits and they were fined for giving their jerseys away. Shirts that were torn during games were often mended, not disposed of. The number of shirts that have come to market that are truly “match-worn” is small. Think of the Caribou shirts, the ones with the suede fringe that so frequently end up on lists of the “ugliest soccer kits of all-time.” Each player on that team was given one home and one away shirt to last them the entire year. What that means is that there are really only 40 or so “match-worn” Caribou kits in existence. When they’ve come to market, they’ve inevitably fetched thousands.
Some fakes are easier to spot than others, though. At the time of writing, there are a half-dozen NASL shirts on eBay alone claiming to be “authentic,” like this George Best San Jose Quakes jersey, which the seller says is “officially licensed” and “rare.” The jersey is also missing the neck tag and the lettering on the back of it doesn’t have a drop shadow, as the club’s official shirts did that year. Fake.
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Another listing from the same seller makes similar claims, despite the fact that the Quakes jersey they list is made by Nike, which never made shirts for the Earthquakes, who used Adidas for all of their equipment from 1976 onwards (with the exception of a single year when the entire NASL used Admiral for its uniforms.)
“There is a ton of deadstock Adidas stuff out there,” said Stein. “ And people will just buy these old, blank shirts and make these jerseys. It used to be complicated but anybody can do it now. There are at-home devices to create transfers and decals and digital printing. If you have a decent artist they can recreate almost anything. I know people that are producing stuff in their garages. As long as you have decent artwork, you can make it look real.“
It’s worth noting that there are many shirts on eBay that don’t claim to be authentic at all, and that’s fine, obviously. If a seller wants to make a “tribute” shirt, they’re welcome to. Here’s a great example, a 1979 Tampa Bay Rowdies shirt clearly advertised as a replica or throwback. It’s fairly well done, too. It won’t fool the discerning eye, but if a fan just wants to sport the colors of their childhood team, it’s a nice fit — and far less expensive than risking it on a real shirt, too.
(Top photo: George Tiedemann /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
