The mystery behind Nolito's 9+1 shirt

It is safe to say that we at MatchWornShirt know a lot about football shirts and we have seen quite a few along the way. The number of details that can go into a football shirt are genuinely astonishing and we often believe that we have seen it all: unique crests (RKC), foundations that take the space of shirt sponsors (Middlesbrough, Heart of Midlothian), special hidden messages (Heerenveen), the player names in a different language (Barcelona) as well as special one-off shirts (Mainz 05, Levante). However, sometimes even we are caught off-guard and hit by surprise. This was definitely the case during one of our most recent auctions. RC Celta Vigo to be more specific.

At first glance, there seemed to be nothing wrong with the sky-blue shirts of ‘Os Celestes’, that were worn in their home game against Real Madrid on the 20th of March. However, upon further inspection of the shirts of some of their star players, we noticed that there was something off about the shirt of Nolito. Whilst all Celta players have a club crest on the bottom of their number, Nolito’s shirt, that eventually sold for €350, bears a small ‘+1’ on the bottom of his number 9.

Intuition would suggest that the Celta striker would have preferred the number 10, which is currently occupied by his co-star Iago Aspas. This is also the number the Spaniard wore during his first stint at RC Celta, that lasted from 2013 to 2016, during which he scored 48 goals. This gained him a move to Premier League giants Manchester City, where he actually took the number 9. During his presentation he stated that it was one of his favourite numbers and that he was looking forward to wearing it. After a year in England, Nolito moved back to Spain, where he played three seasons for Sevilla, before returning to Celta. During that time, he actually wore the number 24 as well as the number 8.

Consequently, we are getting the impression that Nolito might actually not have a ‘favourite’ number, seen that in his career he has already had 7 different numbers: 3, 8, 9, 10, 24, 27 and 36.

This is why the number 9 ‘+1’ shirt might just be perfect for him!