Sporting Clube de Portugal wears intentionally misspelled NOBs

If you’re a fan of Sporting Clube de Portugal, then you are probably well acquainted with the names that you see on the back of the jerseys. However, Sporting CP fans received a bit of a surprise on Saturday during their home match against Arouca — the players’ names on the back of their jerseys were all misspelled.

According to The Sport Bible, Sporting did this unannounced and went through the first half without informing the fans of what was going on. At halftime, it was revealed that this was a stunt that was part of an initiative to cut down on the purchase of counterfeit shirts.

The caption in the image above (h/t to @onefootball on Twitter for the link) roughly translates to “It’s almost the same thing, but it’s not. Buy what’s official. Say no to counterfeits.” Additionally, the player in the image above is actually named Joao Mario, not J. Dario.

While a lot of people could see this as Sporting CP just being greedy and wanting to corner the market on jersey sales, I think if you’re a regular reader at this website and a member of our forums, then you’re probably 100% in Sporting’s corner here. Counterfeit jerseys may look good from afar, but once you look at the details, the errors are very clear and stick out like a sore thumb to anybody who has an eye for that sort of thing. There’s almost never a positive comparison between counterfeit jerseys and official merchandise.

So, if you’re out there shopping for a jersey and you see something that costs $10 or something in that area, if it seems like you stumbled upon a deal that’s too good to be true, then that’s probably just the case and you’re going to receive a knockoff. Jerseys may be getting pricey nowadays, but it’s worth it when you compare it to the counterfeit stuff.