Football fans pay tens of thousands of pounds for shirts worn by footballers during iconic moments, and Scotland star Scott McTominay’s name is one of them to be proud of.
If someone asked you to name the jerseys of current footballers that have sold for tens of thousands of pounds, you’d probably name obvious stars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
Scott McTominay may not be high on the list, but football is full of surprises.
This was not McTominay’s shirt during Scotland’s dramatic World Cup qualifier win over Denmark, but it is expected to fetch a significant amount of money for fans who can afford it. Rather, it was back in May this year, when the midfielder scored Napoli’s opening goal in a 2-0 win over Cagliari that clinched the Serie A title.
After the match, McTominay’s shirt was signed by the player and auctioned off by Matchworn Shirts, a company that works with clubs and national teams to give fans the chance to buy a piece of history. The value of a football shirt corresponds to the amount paid by the fan, and in this case the amount in question was over €24,000 (£21,164).
“There are two reasons to collect, right?” James Flude, MatchWorn Shirt’s head of business development, told Mirror Football from the company’s offices in Amsterdam. “Big names always sell. So Ronaldo, even if he barely touches the ball, scores a hat-trick and wins the World Cup, he’s always going to sell. He’s always going to sell for dizzying amounts of money. The rest is kind of moment-based, where people invest because something special happens in that match.”
read more: Danish star rants about Scott McTominay in live X-rated interviewread more: Andy Robertson tearfully pays tribute to Diogo Jota after Scotland qualify for the World Cup
He also brought up Christoph Baumgartner’s shirt in the match between Austria and Slovakia, where the midfielder’s goal after just six seconds was the fastest in international football history. “While the game was still going on, his shirts were going up to a whopping 4,000 euros, because people could experience that moment,” he says.
“It sounds like a marketing cliché, but that’s what we’re selling, right? We’re not just selling the shirt, but the moment as an accompanying item.” Baumgartner’s shirt ultimately sold for 18,000 euros.
Froude himself is a collector of football shirts and, as a Chelsea fan, most of his collection is related to the London club, which began when the Ivorian player received a signed Salomon Kalou shirt while he was at Stamford Bridge. As a teenager, he would regularly head to the stands as full-time approached, hoping a player would throw him his shirt, but the pain of one near miss made him even more determined.
“We found that no matter where you sit on the away side, if the result is good, nine times out of 10 the players will come to the fans at the end,” he says. “So wherever I was in the 87th or 88th minute, I was in the habit of stepping back, so at least once the shirt arrived, I was going to put it on there or so and forget about it.
“Then what I remember is I grabbed my hand on Michael Ballack’s shirt. I got my hand right on Michael Ballack’s shirt. I’m sure he was throwing it at me, but who knows? We’ll never know. But I just couldn’t figure it out. So a huge bastard on the away side ripped my shirt off and I was completely boned.”
Froude still has a significant collection but has yet to pay the five-figure sums that other shirts have fetched. At the time of writing, the highest price has reached £54,369, which is what a South Korean bidder paid for the shirt worn by Cristiano Ronaldo in the Portugal-Hungary draw in October.
Three of Ronaldo’s kits are currently in the top 10, including four kits worn by Lionel Messi. The rest belong to Paris Saint-Germain star Marquinhos, whose 2025 Champions League final shirt sold for £48,119, former Tottenham captain Son Heung-min and Marquinhos’ PSG teammate Hviča Kvaratschelia.
At MatchWorn Shirt, we only cover first-half shirts so as not to deny players the opportunity to emotionally exchange shirts when the final whistle blows. A warehouse in Zaandam, a short drive from our office, is filled with these shirts. And it smells exactly like you’d imagine.
In the center of the building is a pair of lockers, reportedly used to remove players’ DNA from shirts without washing them, said to have been requested by one club, who I won’t name here, that sweat, mud and grass stains are all real evidence and essentially non-negotiable. If you thought soccer shirts were meant to get dirty and sweaty during matches, rugby or cycling gear will have nothing to do with it.
Some of you may be wondering, who buys these shirts? Who is prepared to drop tens of thousands of pounds on jerseys worn by players, sometimes from matches they themselves did not take part in?
Froude said there was a mix of fans and financial speculators, with some buying mementos for themselves or their closest loved ones, while others were preparing to sell for a profit. “People recognize the value that these shirts, these moments, these items convey, and people want a piece of it,” he says.
“So in addition to the so-called emotional investors, there’s also a growing number of financial investors of sorts, people like me who just collect because they want memories of shirts and moods and occasions. And both of those are really interesting to me personally and professionally.”
“Obviously we want to sell the biggest products, the best items, the real buzz, but if someone might be going to a Fulham match and it might be their child’s 18th birthday, they might want to get a Harry Wilson shirt. Because that’s what we basically sell. And yeah, there’s an economic aspect to it, too. But I’m just as interested in people’s emotional investment as the financial investment. ”
With the top 10 kits selling for between £35,000 and £55,000 each, the record could soon be broken again, especially with the World Cup just around the corner. Matchworn Shirts has contracts with more than half of the teams participating in Euro 2024, and more than half of North America’s 48 national teams will be participating next summer.
“We would love to have every team that will be in the World Cup in our portfolio, but realistically that won’t happen…the percentage will be between 50 percent and 100 percent. The closer we get to 100 percent, the more likely we are to have a really big moment of opportunity,” Froude added.
“And that’s what we want. We want to have the World Cup final kit on our platform next summer. Unfortunately, it’s going to be England’s, but it’s not that and we don’t have to get hung up on the details.”
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