It's a numbers game...

As we know footballers are by nature very curious creatures, they like certain things to be just right. One of these things is they like a specific shirt number. It may seem like a small thing but to many professional footballers it's a big deal. I for instance wear #97 which indicates the year of my birth 1997, my score on my science SAT 97% and several other reasons that connect me to that number. This may seem like a pretty anal post but we are on a journey to see that some footballers will go to any length to wear a specific number, some get pretty silly.

Yuto Nagatomo #55
I'll start with a basic one, the Inter Milan winger is obsessed with #5 when he arrived at Inter it was already taken so he added an extra one, does that make it extra lucky?

Asamoah Gyan #21 and Antonio Cassano #99
Gyan is obsessed with the number 3, at Sunderland it was taken and 2+1=3, it was the same for Cassano he likes 18 and 9+9=18. I told you they were protective.

9x9=81 which is 18 backward, does that make it even luckier?

Hicham Zerouali

Aberdeen striker Zerouali had already gained the nickname 'Zero' so he was allowed to wear #0 for a single season. 

Not exactly confidence inspiring though... 

Diego Reyes #134 Thomas Oar #121 and Adolfo Bautista #100

Numbers over 99 are very rare but they do happen. Diego Reyes were #134 the highest squad number worn regularly in world football. In AFC Asian Cup qualifying Thomas Oar wore squad number 121 the highest ever worn in world football except for one off (he had to wear it through all the qualifying) and Bautista wore #100 as #1 had already been taken.

Come in #121 your time is up...

Pantelis Kafes #1

The only outfield player in world football to wear #1,  it's happened it England before in the nineties Stuart Balmer wore #1 for Charton. 

Just cause he wears #1 doesn't mean he can use his hands...

Andrey Shevchenko #76, Ronaldinho #80 and Mathieu Flamini #84

2008 in Milan and there three summer signing (Shevchenko on loan from Chelsea) chose squad numbers that indicated the year of there birth (1976, 1980 and 1984 respectively) as their normal/preferred numbers (#7, #10 and #16 respectively) were taken.

You'd be #75 David...

Ivan Zamorano #1+8, Firman Utina #8+7 and Freddy Rincon #3+5

Taking stuff a bit further than Gyan and Cassano, these players actually had a + sign inserted between the digits so they felt closer to there favoured numbers (though registered as #18, #87 and #35 respectively) Zamorano wore #9 until Ronaldo joined Inter and was given #9. Utina wore #8+7 as his favoured #15 shirt was taken by Aliyudin. Rincon liked #8 but it was taken so he wore #3+5 the highest shirt number available as only numbers between 1 and 35 were allowed in Brazil.

Don't you think your being a little bit silly?

To be fare we all know Ronaldo, whose heard of this guy?

Rogerio Ceni #618

Many players wear numbers on a single occasion to celebrate an event, an anniversary, to celebrate reaching 100 caps. The highest number worn in PROFESSIONAL football is #618 by all the frustrated centre-forwards between the sticks hero, free-kick maestro Rogerio Ceni to celebrate his (suprisingly) 618th appearance for Sao Paulo, notice the fact that 1 is in the middle.

If only he'd waited on more game, then you could look at this image upside down!

Thank you for reading my first post back from Dubai after a short break, I'll be commenting on the tournament when the sponsors upload the photos. So I hope you've enjoyed this brief interlude. In fact I can claim to have worn the highest number in all football. On my personalised school kit I had #97 but the printing was poor and the 7 was much higher than the 9 meaning I was wearing #9 to the power of 7 or...

#4,782,969