East Timor

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The country

As the country’s name would suggest, East Timor can be found on the eastern side of the island of Timor, located in Southeast Asia.                        The nation is also amongst the world’s newest sovereign states, having declared independence from Indonesia in 2002 following decades of brutal, often murderous oppression, best exemplified by the infamous 1991 Santa Cruz Cemetery massacre when 250 unarmed demonstrators – having gathered for  a fellow activist’s funeral – were mown down by Indonesian soldiers who were clearly of the opinion that such a nice, deep hole would be a terrible thing to waste on a single corpse. Sadly, since wriggling free of their former occupiers’ bloody grasp, the Timorese have struggled to make  a go of the whole self-sufficiency thing. The country even has an official “hungry season” between November and February, when unpredictable rainfall and frequent crop failures often forces poorer families to survive on an emergency food substitute known as “akar”, a dry, starchy pancake which is forged from the bark of palm trees and is said to taste every bit as good as it looks. See below.

Yummy!!!

Linguistically, the East Timorese have more than 15 national languages, though most folk are also proficient in Portuguese thanks to Portugal’s 300 year colonial rule over the area. This influence is also apparent in peoples’ religious affiliations, with the vast majority identifying as Roman Catholic and the capital Dili housing a massive, looming statue of Jesus, a monument known to locals simply as “Christ”, which also serves as an apt description for the state of the city as a whole.

On a more positive note, the country’s economy could be in for an almighty boost in the near future thanks to a recent maritime boundary agreement with neighbours Australia, giving East Timor greater control over oil and gas reserves in the Timor sea. For the time being however, more than a fifth of the workforce remain employed in the coffee farming industry, slaving away in the fields for an absolute pittance until they can cobble together enough to buy a cup for themselves, thus giving them the energy to get up in the morning and go to work. Sunrise, sunset.

Lastly, as if the Timorese didn’t have enough to worry about, their island is also home to sizeable populations of saltwater crocodiles and reticulated pythons, respectively the world’s largest reptile and longest snake species. Both are more than capable of making a meal out of a full grown human adult, although perversely both are also protected by law, meaning it’s considered a offence even to feed them and anyone caught being eaten alive by the voracious beasts can expect to land themselves a hefty fine for carrying out such a wanton assault on their digestive systems.

An unfortunate Timorese chap struggles to explain exactly what he thinks he’s doing inside such an endangered creature.

Bearing in mind the country’s daily struggles, it should come as no surprise that East Timor’s brief run as an independent football entity hasn’t exactly been stellar. Debuting in the 2010 World Cup qualifiers, the national side duly had their clocks thoroughly cleaned by Hong Kong in an 11-3 aggregate thrashing and suffered more misery four years later as Nepal ran up a 7-1 win over two legs during the Brazil 2014 preliminaries. By this point the Timorese had doubtless begun to realise that the path to international success would be long and arduous, involving careful planning, prudent investment in equipment and facilities and the long term nurturing of young talent, with still no guarantee of any tangible progress.

That, or they could just cheat. For the Russia 2018 qualification campaign East Timor handed debuts to several South American players, who had been hastily – and, as it turns out illegally – granted Timorese passports in an effort to improve fortunes. And so, boasting more dodgy Brazilians than a closing down sale at a shady backstreet waxing salon, the new look “Timorese” team quickly achieved a personal best, dispatching Mongolia 5-1 on aggregate to land a spot in the second round group stage, and with it fixtures against some of Asian football’s most established nations such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Fortunately (or unfortunately if you’re Timorese, or a Brazilian pretending to be Timorese) the ruse was exposed a few games later amidst opposition protests, resulting in the ineligible players being banned, all previous results forfeited and the team’s form collapsing into a series of whopping defeats, including 8-0 vs the UAE, 10-0 vs the Saudis and 7-0 against Palestine. That’ll learn em.

The shirt

Love this design. All credit (yet again) goes to my friend Nick for sourcing these absolute crackers. Incidentally, anybody out there who wants an East Timor shirt for themselves – and let’s face it, why wouldn’t you? – I believe he still has a few available in his online shop, which can be found here.

http://www.footballshirtworld.co.uk/shop/afc/timor-leste.html

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Timorese shirts of a less kosher persuasion were never especially difficult to come by, largely thanks to the dozens of (mostly Thai) eBay sellers flogging badged up Nike templates that they probably threw together in their spare bedrooms, one of which held a place in my own collection until recently on the assumption that an authentic version might not necessarily ever be on the horizon.    Thankfully, I have been proven quite wrong in this instance.                          This agreeably offbeat design comes from an obscure manufacturer called Narrow – about whom I could find not a jot of info online – and, on top its authenticity, has almost everything one could reasonably want in a national shirt, i.e. a striking blend of colour and an intricate diamond style shadow pattern that lends it a distinctive quality often lacking in the efforts of Nike, Adidas et al, which is precisely why their products are so easy to fake. Only points off would be for the printed badge (always a slight annoyance) and the lack of a border on the flag which, being mostly red, blends in a little too well with the body of the shirt.