England’s kits for the upcoming World Cup is not going to include the multicoloured St George’s Cross that represented a controversial feature of the previous strip.
Fans will find a way to buy the kits from Monday ahead of a tournament that’s resulting from start in June and is to be hosted by USA, Canada and Mexico.
Promotional photographs and videos released on Friday only displayed the front of the house and away jerseys, however the Telegraph reports that the divisive purple, blue and red cross has been ditched.
As a substitute, the collar will include a line from the national anthem ‘comfortable and glorious’ which can go some option to appeasing those that were so outraged by the augmentation of the St George’s Cross on the previous kit.
Indeed, Nike described the brand new home strip as a ‘modern all-white design that honours England’s heritage’.
The Three Lions’ attire became something of a political hot potato ahead of the European Championships two years ago with then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his eventual successor, Sir Keir Starmer, asked to comment on the controversy.
Sunak had said: ‘In the case of our national flags, we shouldn’t mess with them because they’re a source of pride, identity, who we’re, and so they’re perfect as they’re.’
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Starmer added: ‘I’m an enormous football fan, I am going to England games, men, women’s games. And the flag is utilized by everybody, it’s unifying, it doesn’t need to alter.
‘We just have to be happy with it. So that they should reconsider this and alter it back.
‘I’m not even sure they’ll properly explain why they thought they needed to alter in the primary place. They might also reduce the value of the shirts.’
MP Lee Anderson, meanwhile, appeared to have been rocked to his very core by Nike’s ‘playful update’ describing it as ‘namby-pamby, pearl-clutching, hand-wringing nonsense’.
And so it was left to England’s most successful men’s team manager, Gareth Southgate, to offer the voice of reason.
‘It’s not been high on my list of priorities however it depends which bit it’s,’ said Southgate, who masterminded England’s progression to 2 major finals.
‘I don’t know if the talk is concerning the St George flag needing to be on the England shirt since it obviously hasn’t all the time been.
‘I feel a very powerful thing that must be on an England shirt are the three lions. It’s our iconic symbol.
‘It’s what distinguishes us not only from football teams around the globe but from England rugby and England cricket. It’s the thing that after I put my kit on 30 years ago and looked within the mirror, the three lions really stood out.
‘Should we be tampering with the cross of St George? In my head, if it’s not a red cross on a white background it isn’t the cross of St George anyway.
‘So it’s a tough query to reply. It’s presumably some artistic take, which I’m not creative enough to know, really.’
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