In April 1978, when most of the world still watched TV in black and white, it was important for televised football matches to be contested by a team wearing a light kit and the other a dark one as dark colours were hard to tell apart. With that in mind, 3 months before the 1978 Argentina World Cup, FIFA wrote to the French and Hungarian federations to inform them that Hungary would be playing their World Cup game against France in red and France was asked to wear their white away kit.

However, few weeks before the start of the tournament, FIFA changed their minds, and decided that France would be playing in blue and Hungary in white. Unfortunately, the French federation paid very little attention to the FIFA update, resulting in France and Hungary turning up on a warm June 10^th 1978, in Mar del Plata (situated in the east of Argentina), both wearing their white kit!

With France’s home kits more than 400km away, in the city of Buenos Aires, a solution was found not far away, in the way of a small local club named Atletico Kimberley. Atletico Kimberley’s home shirt was a of green and white kit, which was deemed good enough to be used on that day. It was decided, for the very first time, France would be playing in white and green!

However, it wasn’t that simple as the Kimberley shirts had no numbers. Kick-off was held up for over 40 minutes for all the numbers available to be ironed on each shirt! 

Eventually both teams finally took to the field, with the French players wearing totally random shirt numbers. As a result, few French players would have one number on their shirt and another on their shorts.

It didn’t stop France winning 3-1… in front of few of the Kimberley players in the stands, watching their shirts in action in a World Cup!