By Chris Wright
A graphic designer from England has unwittingly sparked outrage after innocently posting a concept sketch for a fantasy football kit.
Angelo Trofa, 26, regularly sketches kit designs as a “geeky hobby” and posts them to his blog, though his latest creation saw him receive “torrents of abuse” from irked Bolivians.
The pandemonium began when, having spent a few weeks in the South American country earlier this year, Trofa was inspired to whip up a set of strips for the national side.
Sticking with a traditional green, red and white colourway for the home kit, Trofa decided to use the rainbow-coloured Whiphala flag (which represents the indigenous population of Bolivia) as the theme for his away kit.
However, upon posting the kit to his Facebook page, he was inundated with hundreds of hostile messages.
“I didn’t expect to cause such a huge outrage,” the designer told the BBC. “It’s just a drawing of a football kit.”
The Whiphala flag is a national flag of Bolivia and shares equal status with the more commonly recognised Tricolor, but still many non-indigenous people refuse to acknowledge it despite it representing the native people of the Andes and therefore around 60% of the country’s population (thanks Google).
Trofa added:
“The non-indigenous population disregard it (the Whiphala) and don’t associate themselves with it, so I expected a bit of abuse but it snowballed and got a bit silly.”
“I received torrents of abuse – mainly from angry Bolivian men – people saying they would kill me if I went back and that I was designing for the Nazis.
“The reaction was ridiculous.”
We concur. That’s an absolute Bobby Dazzler of a kit! Definitely would buy.
In fact, we’re talking almost “FC Bochum 1998/99 away” levels of retina-pummelling hypercolour and that’s never a bad thing in our book…
(Image: @angt34/Check out loads more of Angelo’s cool kit designs on his blog)