The Egypt Eleven, Amsterdam, 1928

Africa’s first Olympic football side, on the way to fourth place in the world.

Work: press photograph
Maker: Spaarnestad Photo
Date: 1928
Ground: Amsterdam
Era: The interwar game · 1919–1930
Source: Spaarnestad Photo, Haarlem · via Wikimedia Commons

Fourth in the world, from the first African side.

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

Het voetbalelftal van Egypte: the football team of Egypt, at the Amsterdam Olympics of 1928, from the archive of the Dutch press agency Spaarnestad. Egypt had first played Olympic football in 1920, the first nation from outside Europe and the Americas to do so, and in Amsterdam it went further than ever: past Portugal into a semi-final against Argentina, and finally to fourth place. Egypt would not finish that high at an Olympic Games again until 1964. This is the side that did it, posed in the summer of 1928.

See it on your wall

The piece, in the room it was made for

The Egypt Eleven, Amsterdam, 1928, printed large and framed — in the den, the club bar, the supporters’ bar. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

The Egypt Eleven, Amsterdam, 1928 framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A reproduction of press photograph — Spaarnestad Photo, 1928 — from the copy held by Spaarnestad Photo, Haarlem · via Wikimedia Commons. The source. The work was published before 1931 and is public-domain verified.
Printed faithful to that source scan — restore honestly, disclose always. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the piece you receive is the image as it survives, halftone grain honored as history, not damage.
Printed to order on museum-grade cotton-rag stock with pigment inks — the pairing is rated 100+ years.
Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the period’s, not ours.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed editions ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our pieces cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the maker’s hand is visible — the linework, the halftone grain, the lettering — on materials made to outlast their owner.

From the same hand