Give Nike a Red Card
by Jack Watson, Daily Sceptic:
Nike has sparked outrage this week after it announced the men’s England football team’s official 2024 home kit. If you thought wokery could not get any worse, it just has. The new shirt features a flag on the back of the collar. However, it is not the traditional St. George’s flag as the horizontal line has been changed from red to purple, navy blue and pink in what is clearly a homage to the LGBT rainbow. The England squad will officially wear this on Saturday when they face Brazil in a friendly and will continue to wear it throughout the 2024 Euros.
Nike claims that this is a “playful update” of the St. George’s flag on the collar and it is meant to “unite and inspire”. Not everyone agrees, obviously, including several former England players. There have been calls to boycott the new shirt, with #boycottNike trending on X. David Seaman, the former England goalkeeper who made 75 appearances, said: “It doesn’t need fixing. What’s next, are they going to change the Three Lions to three cats? Leave it alone.” Rishi Sunak has condemned it and even Keir Starmer has given it the thumbs down:
I’m a big football fan, I go to England games, men, women’s games. And the flag is used by everybody, it’s unifying, it doesn’t need to change. We just need to be proud of it. So I think they should just reconsider this and change it back.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the away kit, on the inside, features an even more multicoloured St. George’s cross with hues reminiscent of the trans flag and the brown and black lines added to the Pride flag to represent ethnic minorities.
The St. George’s flag, a red cross on a white background, has been associated with England since 1190 when it was adopted by our ships entering the Mediterranean to benefit from the protection of the Genoese fleet. The England football kit has predominantly been red, white or both since the team was founded in the 1880s. Apparently, Nike was inspired by the training kit worn by England’s World Cup winners in 1966 and that is its reason for “updating” it. But it’s clear to anyone with eyes that it’s a nod to the Pride flag.
Read also: England shirt fiasco two years in making – and Nike ‘originally proposed rainbow colours’. Inside story of how Nike’s ‘playful update’ backfired on sportswear giant and FA in spectacular fashion by Ben Rumsby, Telegraph
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