You can play a football game without name and number

Something very strange happened on Saturday afternoon on the Goodison Park turf, in addition to the resounding victory of Aston Villa against Everton, for part of the game Jacob Ramsey was forced to play with a shirt without name and number. This is an unusual occurrence, given that, as a rule, at the beginning of the season, each club is required to assign a shirt number to all players on its staff, even if they are temporarily unable to take part in matches, as well as to young players who are used in official matches. The players must obviously keep their number until the end of the season or, in any case, until they change clubs. The Aston Villa midfielder started yesterday's match with his number 41 on his back, but after a clash with Abdoulaye Doucoure, who literally dragged him into the lineout, the English player's shirt got the worst of it and tore.

The Aston Villa staff, however, were unable to find another player's shirt during the hustle and bustle of the match, so they replaced Ramsey's shirt with a standard one without name and number. This is a substitution that is only possible in cases of pure emergency, not foreseen in any point of the rules but tolerated by the referee only when it is a single player, so that he can be distinguished from the rest of the team.