Mateo Kovačić – Inter Milan 2013/2014 (Match Worn vs Parma)

A match-worn Inter shirt from Mateo Kovacic's first full season in Milan, the 2013/2014 campaign, worn in the fixture against Parma. Kovacic arrived at Inter as one of the most talked-about young midfielders in Europe and was handed the number 10, a shirt number with a particular weight at a club where it had belonged to playmakers rather than to deep-lying midfielders.

The garment is the Nike home kit of that season, with the Pirelli sponsor and the Serie A TIM sleeve badge, and it carries the wear and match markings of a shirt that went onto the pitch. Shirts from a player's formative Italian seasons have become the most collected part of his catalogue: they belong to the period before the move abroad, when the player was still being defined, and they exist in far smaller numbers than the shirts of his later career.

For a collector of Inter or of Croatian football, this is a documented match-worn example from a defined season, a defined fixture and a defined squad number.