It is the most romantic of all the tournaments, when the allure of a bigger marketing profile and even bigger paycheck takes the backseat for the football, only the football.

Poppycock. It’s all about the money – it’s always about the money. Just ask Coca Cola and Kulula and the World Cup Blog (fancy that).

Or just ask FIFA when they try to sell the Selecao for €223m euros to pay for Sepp’s bikini wax treatments. (Would you do it for anything less? Exactly.)

A company named Frontier Economics somehow compiled an estimated valuation of the top 10 teams – or their starting lineups – at the World Cup. Presumably they would’ve done all 32 for us were North Korea not involved.

Without further ado…

Spain? Non!

How they determined the “estimated” value we do not know, but if David Villa isn’t valued at roughly €40m I’m storming the castle and declaring the whole thing null and void. And don’t forget World Cup squads haven’t exactly been decided yet. Will Spain drop Fernando Torres and lose their top spot? No. Will Marcello Lippi call up a #10 as an injury replacement and vault up the list? Unlikely. Will Diego Maradona cut Lionel Messi and send them tumbling out of the top 10 altogether? Don’t answer that.

They’ve given us the most valuable from each of the ten teams, and in the process tell us they think Kaka is almost half the man he was last year and a soon-to-be 32 year old Frank Lampard…well, I just don’t know what they wee thinking there:

Spain

Andres Iniesta – €44m
Fernando Torres – €43m

Argentina

Lionel Messi – €140m

England

Wayne Rooney – €59m
Frank Lampard – €46m

Brazil

Kaka – €41m

Portugal

Cristiano Ronaldo – €95m

France

Franck Ribery – €48m

Germany

Bastian Schweinsteiger -€ 33m

Netherlands

Arjen Robben – €34m

Ivory Coast

Didier Drogba – €48m

Italy

Daniele De Rossi – €29m

Harmless, curious, inaccurate fun, much like JP Morgan predicting England will win the World Cup.

Bayern Munich midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger has refused to commit himself to the club for next season and hinted at a possible move to England.

We’re going through all the World Cup jerseys one by one, and reviewing the home and away shirts of each of the 32 World Cup nations. Today we’re getting a look at Germany, and the shirts Michael Ballack, Philipp Lahm, Bastian Schweinsteiger and company will be wearing in South Africa.

The Deutcher Fussball-Bund has a long standing relationship with adidas, which goes back at least 50 years. So I’m surprised they haven’t run out of design ideas yet. But adidas went to the drawing boards last year and came up with a new home and away kit for the German national team.

We’ll take a closer look below, and I’ll do my very best to give you a review of Germany’s World Cup jerseys.

Germany Home Shirt

Want one? Find your Germany World Cup kits in our store.
Germany home shirts always have three elements. First of all, they are a nice bright white colour. Second, they’re made by adidas and so have three stripes on the shoulder. Third, they usually feature the colours of the German flag – black, red, gold – somewhere in the design. So seems the foundation of any German home shirt is where you put the colours.

This time adidas have gone with three thin vertical stripes down the same side of the jersey as the crest. Not everyone’s a fan, but I quite like the subtlety of it. My one complaint is that in every image I’ve seen of this jersey, the gold doesn’t look quite gold enough. More like a yellow or a sandy colour. I’ll give adidas the benefit of he doubt though, as this may just be to do with the lighting. Or maybe the gold colour becomes deeper when Michael Ballack sweats? (Note to self: Pitch idea for Global Hypercolour jerseys to adidas, Nike and Puma.)

Also, and I swear I didn’t know this before writing this post, on closer inspection you can see that the black, red and gold stripes are part of a bigger pattern of 11 stripes:

Presumably the total of 11 stripes represents 11 footballers, teamwork and so on. Nice symbolism, and I particularly like the way it intersects with the DFB crest, which by happy design co-incidence features three prominent stars for Germany’s three World Cup wins (1954, 1974 and 1990). Makes everything nicely balanced.

Germany Away Shirt

Want one? Find your 2010 Germany away jersey in our store.
This came as a bit of a shock. Genuinely wasn’t expecting to see a black Germany away shirt for this World Cup. But that’s exactly what we’ve got. Seems to be a bit of a theme with adidas this year, as they’ve also given Mexico black away shirts.

First of all I thought “cool”. Then I thought “meh”. Because aside from being black, this shirt strikes me as being a little dull. Black body, touch of red, gold stripes. Feels like there should be something more going on.

The one thing I do like is the DFB written in cursive on the back, below the neck:

The home shirt has the same feature, but it doesn’t stand out quite as much. The black and gold makes for a much better contrast with the lettering here, but I still much prefer the home shirt, mostly for that 11 and 3 stripe design.

That’s my take. What do you think of these Germany World Cup kits?