The warehouse storing Ronaldo & Messi's match-worn shirts

MatchWornShirt

The first thing that hits you when you walk into the vault at the MatchWornShirt warehouse is the smell. It is overpowering, akin to the familiar odour of a locker room. Except it's not any old locker room. This is effectively the locker room of the greatest footballers in the world. Here you can find a shirt worn by Cristiano Ronaldo in his Real Madrid pomp and one from Lionel Messi’s Paris Saint-Germain days.

There is a freshly worn jersey belonging to Atletico Madrid's Julian Alvarez from a recent La Liga game, caked with grass and mud stains. This room reeks, quite literally, of modern football history.

These shirts and the thousands of others in the warehouse just outside Amsterdam will soon be packaged up before making their way onto walls around the world. They are, in the words of co-founder Tijmen Zonderwijk, works of art.

And there will be plenty more to come. GOAL visits the warehouse the day after PSG beat Liverpool 2-0 in the Champions League quarter-final second leg and on the MatchWornShirt app and website that very morning Ousmane Dembele’s shirt, in which he scored twice, is being auctioned live, starting at £2000 ($2695) and rising through the day.

Matchwornshirt

Biggest World Cup collection

The auction for the shirt, like many others on the platform, began during the match itself. And the app is braced for relentless activity during the 2026 World Cup, when MWS will host the largest collection of match-worn and signed shirts from the tournament. Teams such as England, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland plus co-hosts USA and Mexico are among the 13 official partners that will be offering their shirts during the tournament.

MWS also offered shirts during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, during which 6,600 bids were made from 53 different countries. A shirt worn by Frenkie de Jong was the most expensive shirt sold on the platform during the tournament, fetching €11,000 (£9,500/$12,800).

The next World Cup, held in the US, Canada and Mexico, is set to be even busier. Once each match is finished, the shirts will be sent to a warehouse in Dallas where they will be authenticated and processed.

GOAL witnessed the authentication first-hand in the Amsterdam warehouse, where an expert cross-referenced the shirts with pictures from the match itself, watching out for telltale signs of whether the shirt was worn or not.

Cristiano Ronaldo

DNA machine provided gateway to Ronaldo shirt

Each shirt is also put through a tailormade machine which removes the DNA from each shirt to protect players’ confidential information without touching any other aspect and therefore keeping it in the exact condition as when it was removed after the game.

The machine, known fondly as the 'DNA destroyer', came into being after Real Madrid raised a red flag in discussions about becoming partners with MWS, wary of the DNA from the shirts being misused.

The ‘DNA destroyer’ removed that obstacle and meant that shirts from the 15-times Champions League winners, including ones worn by Ronaldo, got to form part of MWS’ vast collection.

MatchWornShirt

'Each shirt has a story to tell'

MatchWornShirt is the brainchild of Tijmen and his brother Bob, two lifelong Ajax fans. When their father, a high school teacher and a long-time Ajax season ticket holder, was moving to a new school they wanted to get him the perfect gift to put in his classroom as a conversation starter.

They thought long and hard and decided that a shirt worn by an Ajax icon in a match they had attended together would be the ideal gift. But after a bit of digging they discovered that it was impossible to get their hands on one and no one in Europe was offering such a service.

"Shirts were treated as a second hand, used item, rather than this super premium one out of one item," Tijmen explains. "A lot of football shirts have been so undervalued and underappreciated while they're so iconic and there’s always a story to tell. And now we just see the appreciation for it."

Davy Klaasen

The most beautiful shirt

Asked for his favourite shirt, Tijmen points to an orange jersey laid out on a desk in his office: the one Marco van Basten wore when he scored his legendary volley against West Germany to win the 1988 European Championship for the Netherlands.

"He got us our only trophy in history, scoring one of the most iconic goals in international football while being one of the greatest ever players for the Dutch national team," he says. "It's for me the most beautiful worn shirt ever."

But it could soon have a rival. Nine years after founding MatchWornShirt, Tijmen and Bob still had never got their hands on an Ajax shirt for their father. Until now. Next week Tijmen is going to meet fan favourite Davy Klaassen, the man whose shirt he wanted all those years ago and which led to the creation of the business.

"He’s now bringing me his worn shirt from the game against Feyenoord this season so I can finally give that shirt to my dad," he says excitedly. "Ajax won and he scored the opening goal so it's going to be a full circle moment for us."