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Governments have been toppled, walls have fallen and David Hasslehoff has sung at the Berlin Wall in a jacket covered in flashing lights, yet none of it has stopped Europe's football nations meeting every four years. This classic football shirts quiz is built from that stubbornness: 33 international jerseys, home and away, each worn by a side that made it to the European Championship finals. The task is simple to describe and harder to finish. Name the country behind the cloth.
Some are giveaways. Others are away kits that were worn for a single summer and then quietly forgotten by everyone except the people who bought them.
Euro history in 33 shirts
The first European Nations' Cup finals were held in France in 1960, with just four teams taking part. The Soviet Union beat Yugoslavia 2–1 after extra time in Paris to lift the trophy, and neither of those states exists today. That is half the appeal of a retro football shirts quiz built around the Euros. Countries split, merge and rename themselves, but somehow there is always a squad and a kit ready by kick-off.
West Germany became Germany after reunification in 1990. Czechoslovakia won the tournament in 1976, beating West Germany on penalties in Belgrade, and twenty years later the Czech Republic reached the final at Wembley, losing 2–1 to Germany to a golden goal. At Euro 92 the old Soviet squad turned out as the CIS, a team that existed for a few months and played in a shirt designed for a country that had just ceased to be. A jersey can easily outlive the flag it was made for, which is why a retro football shirts quiz on the Euros needs a decent memory for maps as well as kits.
Up to 2012 the competition had produced nine different winners: the Soviet Union, Spain, Italy, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece. All nine are represented below, alongside 24 other nations that came through qualifying at one time or another, some of them only once.
The roll of honour has grown since. Spain kept their title at Euro 2012, beating Italy 4–0 in Kyiv. Portugal became the tenth different champion in 2016 with a 1–0 win over hosts France after extra time in Paris, Italy won the delayed Euro 2020 on penalties against England at Wembley in the summer of 2021, and Spain collected a record fourth title in Berlin in 2024, beating England 2–1.
Retro kits that defined a Euro summer
Ask anyone over forty to picture a European Championship and the first thing many will see is a shirt rather than a goal. The Netherlands won in 1988 in a bright orange adidas jersey woven with a pale geometric pattern, and Marco van Basten's volley in the 2–0 final against the Soviet Union in Munich fixed that kit in the memory of a generation.
Denmark were the great kit adventurers of the 1980s. Their Hummel shirts carried the maker's chevrons down the sleeves, and the half-and-half design worn at the 1986 World Cup is still one of the most copied retro football shirts ever made. In 1992 the Danes were called up late to replace Yugoslavia, who had been excluded because of the war in the Balkans, and they went on to beat Germany 2–0 in the Gothenburg final.
England's grey away shirt from Euro 96 has its own corner of kit folklore. It was worn for the semi-final against Germany at Wembley, which ended in a penalty shoot-out defeat, and the colour never shook off the association. Greece's win in 2004, a 1–0 victory over hosts Portugal in Lisbon, came in plain white and blue. It remains the biggest shock the Euro finals have produced, and the shirts have never been the reason anyone remembers it.
Guess the team: why shirts are harder than they look
A shirt quiz sounds easy until the national colours start to overlap. Spain, Denmark, Switzerland, Portugal, Belgium and Wales all wear red. England and Germany both favour white. Italy wear blue because of the old royal House of Savoy, and the Dutch wear orange in honour of the House of Orange, which is about as close as football gets to a free answer.
To guess the team correctly you often have to read the small things: the shade, the collar, the trim on the cuffs, the cut of an era. A baggy cotton shirt with a wide collar points to the 1970s or 1980s. A shiny, oversized polyester number with a busy pattern says early 1990s.
Away kits are where it really bites. Plenty of nations have worn yellow, sky blue or black for a single tournament, and some of the 33 shirts below belong firmly in that category, so expect to guess the team from the trim more than once.
How the classic football shirts quiz works
The classic football shirts quiz needs no instructions beyond this. Each shirt sits above an answer box. Type the name of the country in the box under the shirt; there is nothing to submit and no sign-up. When the answer is right, the box turns green and the score counter at the top goes up by one.
Write names out in full rather than abbreviating them, in the same way the club quizzes expect "Queens Park Rangers" and not "QPR". Spelling counts, so if a box stays white, check the letters before blaming the shirt.
Every jersey in the quiz was picked from one specialist dealer's vast online wardrobe. The shop trades as classicfootballshirts.co.uk. It is a reminder of how many international kits have been made, sold and forgotten since 1960.
More shirt quizzes from the European game
Anyone who finishes this classic football shirts quiz can move from countries to clubs. The Champions League shirt quiz works the same way, the European giants quiz sticks to the continent's biggest clubs, and the UEFA Cup and Europa League finalists include a few kits that rarely left their own country. For the tournament itself, there is a strong argument against expanding the Euros to 24 teams, written before France 2016 put the bigger format into practice.
One detail worth knowing before starting: not every shirt below was a success on the pitch. A few were worn by teams that went home after three group games, which is exactly why nobody remembers them.