The Irish football club Bohemian FC launched a special jersey for the 2026 FAI Cup on Friday, in collaboration with the electronic music group Massive Attack, donating 30% of its profits to medical aid organizations in Cuba.
The club's announcement on Instagram confirmed that the funds raised will be distributed between the Cuba Vive Medical Aid Appeal, part of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, and mediCuba-Europe, two organizations that send medications, surgical equipment, and hospital supplies to the island.
The garment, made by O'Neills, is inspired by the historical uniforms of the Cuban national football team and the historical ties between Ireland and Cuba, with explicit references to Che Guevara, who had Irish ancestry on his father's side.
The design features vertical stripes in khaki and black, a red block on the chest with a white star taken from the Cuban flag, and the Massive Attack logo on the front.
The label on the hem features the iconic image of Che Guevara created by Irish illustrator Jim Fitzpatrick, while the inner neck tape is printed with the phrase "Love is a doing word," taken from the song "Teardrop" by the British group.
The back of the collar features a quote from the guerrilla's father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch: "In my son's veins flowed the blood of Irish rebels," a direct reference to Che's Irish ancestry.
The garment also incorporates fragments of the anti-imperialist speech that Che Guevara delivered in 1965 at the Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference in Algiers, regarded as one of his most radical texts.
The Cuba Vive Medical Aid Appeal works alongside the health workers' union in Cuba and the Ministry of Health of the regime, and as of the launch date, it had already completed six shipments of medical supplies to the island, which is experiencing a severe humanitarian crisis with a chronic shortage of medications.
The initiative is part of the long activist history of the Dublin club, and serves as another piece of evidence of the Cuban regime's propaganda reach within the international left.
Since 2020, Bohemian FC has turned its jerseys into tools for social awareness: that year, it launched one in collaboration with Amnesty International under the slogan "Refugees Welcome"; in 2021, it partnered with the band Fontaines D.C. for causes supporting the homeless; in 2023, it also allocated 30% of the profits from a jersey to medical aid for Palestine; and in 2024, it joined forces with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
This time, it romanticizes a repressive regime that takes advantage of international aid.
According to the specialized portal Sport for Business, this cause-related t-shirt strategy has generated over one million euros in three years for the club and the organizations it collaborates with.
The shirt, which is the third kit of Bohemian FC for the 2026 season, arrives at a time when the island is facing one of its worst public health crises, with hospitals lacking basic supplies and a population increasingly reliant on foreign aid to access essential medications, while the regime's elite finds no solution other than to entrench themselves in their privileges.
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