The search for the shirt
Denied my opportunity to see whether Nicolas Anelka could cut it on a balmy Wednesday night in Bombay (it was closed season during my stay), I at least wanted a replica shirt.
Having collected a local shirt in every city I’ve visited over the last few years (as part of a growingly expensive but satisfying habit), I felt I must be able to find one during my six weeks. The crest of the newly founded (2014) Mumbai City FC was modern and crisp, featuring the castled top of the Gateway of India, and beneath it a train carriage representing the city’s railways.
The team’s badge
Football shirts are an incredible souvenir of a place regardless, but the novelty and resonance of Anelka’s name and number 39 would have made it priceless.
And priceless, in fact, it was. Not because a Nicolas Anelka shirt is eminently collectible, but because it was simply not available to buy, for any price, anywhere, during my time in Mumbai. No online store stocked the official shirt, and despite dedicated trips to around 5 monstrous Mumbai city malls (one of which was formerly the largest mall in Asia before a recent UAE effort), the beautiful blue and white Puma strip was nowhere to be found.
In despair, I took to Twitter. Despite not being a fan of the platform over the years, I even dusted off my account (with 0 previous tweets and single figure followers), to ask Mumbai City FC themselves where I could get a shirt. My lonely (and still to this day, only) tweet got no reply – it seemed the quest was futile.
All the while, I was bemused. The global brands of the European teams were present in every shop and online store, yet the shirts of the home city team were clearly not in demand. The thought of a red United shirt not being found in Marrakech would be unlikely, let alone in Manchester.
A young Goan boy playing in a Manchester United shirt (bearing the name of Memphis Depay)
Rather than deter me, these setbacks only pushed me on further as the search continued. Nothing worth having comes easy, after all.