Chinese Football Team Zhejiang Greentown Takes On Nigeria with New “Landmark” Shirt

China’s football season got underway last week with the first round of games in the 2019 Chinese Super League. This weekend, teams from the country’s lower tier leagues — including Manchester City’s new sister club in Sichuan — will start their seasons.

And one of them, Hangzhou-based Zhejiang Greentown, has unveiled an… eye-catching new strip for the 2019 season.

CL1 will kick off this weekend. Zhejiang Greentown, the 3rd of CL1 last season, have released their shirts sponsored by Anta. The kits feature the tourist attractions 10 scenes of the West Lake of Hangzhou where the team is based. The kit design of the year?Like travel T-shirts? pic.twitter.com/dFW8Dehyry

— Titan Sports Plus (@titan_plus) March 6, 2019

Woah. Yes, the Chinese League One (second tier) side have been given a strip by Anta that uses images of their home city’s famous West Lake, a tourist site that is partly responsible for one of the most worn-out China cliches going, that Marco Polo once described Hangzhou and nearby Suzhou as “Heaven on Earth”.

Seems like they decided to really go for it this year after their tourist board-friendly 2018 away shirt:

#ZhejiangGreentown Zhejiang Greentown 2018 Anta Away Kit https://t.co/ZpsAYyuQZc pic.twitter.com/m5pZu7owb0

— FootballShirtCulture.com (@footballshirt) March 8, 2018

Maybe it’s the green of this new one, but it kind of puts us in mind of this (much more aesthetically pleasing) shirt from last summer’s World Cup:

1 year ago today that #Nike unveiled this incredible Nigeria 🇳🇬 Shirt! pic.twitter.com/UXA5MTCjCZ

— Vintage Football Shirts (@VFshirts) February 7, 2019

We’re not sure Anta will be receiving over 3 million pre-orders for this one (as Nike did with that Nigeria number), but it certainly seems different, especially when compared to some of the yawn-inducing kits produced by Nike for China’s top tier sides in recent years. But maybe it’s not all that different. Here’s a kit that Puma made for Bordeaux’s 2016-17 season:

Great site for 16/17 football kits is https://t.co/Ce86wvYRh6 inc' this strange one from Bordeaux. pic.twitter.com/PFuYQY1stw

— Tony Kenny (@IMTonyKenny) August 6, 2016

Hmm.

But look, we don’t want to give the impression that China is a country where rip-off football shirts are common. So let’s take a look at the home strip for Greentown’s opponents this weekend, Qingdao Huanghai:

Okay, never mind.

Cover photo: Greentown FC’s Weibo