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Media Kit: Archived Press Releases
New Orleans Team Receive the World's Most Unusual Soccer Jerseys
April 27, 2006A Louisiana pub team is to play in the world's most unusual soccer uniforms - a gift from a legendary professional European club.
The unique camouflage kit was sent by German side St Pauli to Finn McCool’s FC in New Orleans who will wear it for the first time this week. The brown-and-white jerseys are manufactured to resemble army fatigues and are highly desired by fans worldwide because of their exclusive design.
Finn McCool’s are named after the Mid City Irish bar where they were formed and star Shell Shockers Head Coach Kenny Farrell, President Michael Balluff and physio Dave Ashton.
Staff from Hamburg-based St Pauli read a story about the Sunday morning side in the popular English soccer magazine Fourfourtwo. It told how the friends, mainly English and Irish ex-pats, lost their gear when Katrina flooded the Lakeview house of Captain Paul Medhurst. But players resumed evening training just six weeks after the hurricane despite difficulties like a city-wide curfew, patrolling National Guards troops, and their Uptown practice field being turned into a temporary military camp.
St Pauli have a huge cult following of soccer fans around the world because they are so unusual in the top-level world of sanitized commercial sport. Their President is an actor who owns gay bars, their logo is a skull and crossbones, their official team picture featured the players in handcuffs and their stadium is next to the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s red light district.
Susanne Lyss, Club Secretary for the third division side, was moved by the article and asked her merchandising department to send 20 shirts to the storm victims. She thought they would find it fitting and ironic to wear army outfits in a city controlled by the military.
Kenny Farrell said today: "It was a fabulous gesture by St Pauli and we are very grateful to them for their kindness. Now we don’t need a change strip as this is the only one of its kind in the States and there is no danger it will clash with that of any of our opponents.”
Finn McCool’s Club Secretary Benjamin Haswell, whose team are top of the Southeastern Louisiana Adult Soccer Association Division Two after two games, added: “The lads are joking that when we wear these camouflage jerseys we could hide in the bushes and just nip out to score a goal!"
St Pauli meanwhile recently played the biggest game in their 96-year history and were narrowly defeated by European giants Bayern Munich in the semi final of the DFB-Pokal Cup. In was a real David and Goliath affair as St Pauli’s total annual budget of around $4 million is less than the yearly salary of an average Bayern player.