Afghanistan 2021 Home (#8-NOOR) Jersey/Shirt

This is a Jako Afghanistan national team 2021 home jersey featuring the number of star midfielder and captain Farshad Noor.

Afghanistan were one of the first countries in Asia to officially establish a football federation, with the AFF formed in 1922 and later affiliated to FIFA in 1948. They were one of the founding members of the Asian Football Confederation in 1954 and it was in this era when Afghanistan made their only appearance at a major international football competition, when they were defeated 6-0 by Luxembourg in the 1948 Olympics tournament. Since then, football in Afghanistan has largely struggled due to the political situation in the country and the national team played no matches from 1984-2002, with the Taliban regime banning almost all football during their five-year reign from 1996-2001. Since then, the national team has slowly started to develop and has shown strong progress over the past decade. Their recent improvement has been demonstrated by their performances in the SAFF Championship, where they competed again South-Asian national teams, with Afghanistan winning the title in 2013 and finishing runners-up in 2011 & 2015 before joining the newly-formed Central Asian Football Association in 2018. Afghanistan is still yet to qualify for their first Asian Cup, however with a squad comprising of many players from the vast Afghan diaspora throughout the world, the future looks bright for the national team.

Farshad Noor is one of the highest-profile members of the current Afghanistan national team squad and has played the majority of his club football in Europe. Noor was born in Afghanistan but moved with his family to the Netherlands at a young age and is a product of the famous PSV Eindhoven youth system. He began his senior career with Jong PSV in the Eerste Divisie in 2013 and later joined Eredivisie Roda JC in 2015. After a brief spell in Sweden with Allsvenskan club AFC Eskilstuna, Noor joined Cypriot club Nea Salamis in 2018, where he had a successful three seasons before moving to Indonesian giants Persib Bandung in 2020. Noor made his international debut for Afghanistan in 2017 and has since won 22 caps for the national team, becoming a key member of their squad in recent World Cup qualifiers.