At the 1934 World Cup in Italy, Austria was forced to wear Napoli’s shirts in a semifinal fallout that became football legend
If the previous story took us back to the very first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930, this time we move to the second edition of the tournament: the 1934 FIFA World Cup in Italy, the first ever played in Europe.
The tournament unfolded under the watchful eye of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime, determined to showcase Italy’s organizational strength and footballing power to the world. Six stadiums hosted the competition, and from the beginning two teams stood above the rest as favorites: Italy and Austria.
Italy’s squad featured several oriundi—foreign-born players of Italian descent—and the Azzurri would eventually face Austria in the semifinals. It was a tense and physical match, decided by a single goal from Enrique Guaita in a 1-0 Italian victory.
Austria’s team included one of the greatest talents of the era: Matthias Sindelar, often nicknamed the “Mozart of Football.” During the match, Sindelar suffered an injury that heavily affected Austria’s performance.
Italy would go on to win the World Cup, defeating Czechoslovakia 2-1 after extra time in the final.
Yet outside Italy, the victory was viewed with suspicion. Across Europe, accusations emerged regarding questionable officiating and political pressure surrounding the tournament. Those controversies would partially fade four years later, when Italy won the 1938 World Cup in France, this time on hostile territory.
But one of the strangest stories of the 1934 tournament did not happen in the final.
It happened in the third-place match between Austria and Germany.
Germany entered the game as underdogs but defeated Austria 3-2. Once again, refereeing controversies dominated the headlines. Austrian newspapers complained that the Italian referee had ignored several offside calls against the Germans. Some even framed it as historical revenge linked to old political tensions between the nations.
But the real curiosity came before kickoff.
Both Austria and Germany arrived wearing almost identical kits: white shirts and black shorts.
At the time, national teams did not always travel with alternate uniforms. And despite all the propaganda surrounding the event, the Italian organizers had failed to verify the teams’ kit colors beforehand.
The match could not begin.
In a rush to solve the problem, officials searched inside the stadium dressing rooms. Austria lost the draw that would decide which team had to change uniforms.
And so, in one of the most surreal moments in World Cup history, Austria walked onto the field wearing the shirts of SSC Napoli.
Austria played in Napoli’s iconic light blue jersey—the only time in its history that the national team wore blue.
The story became so memorable that Austria later adopted red as its secondary kit color, inspired by the second color of the Austrian flag.
Back home, while some Austrian fans blamed the referee for the defeat, others jokingly pointed to the “unlucky Napoli shirt” as the real reason for the loss.
To this day, it remains one of the most bizarre episodes ever seen at a World Cup: the only known case of a national team playing a World Cup match wearing a club team’s jersey.
And it all happened at the 1934 World Cup in Italy.
World Stories is a series that uncovers the most incredible, forgotten, and controversial stories from the history of the FIFA World Cup.
