Football Shirts: England Away

After much waiting and over-blown hype the new England away kits have been revealed. Last year's home shirt set new levels for design and quality and there was hope that the away shirt would follow suit. It was an open secret that it would be red, and due to the simplistic and nostalgic influences of the 'Tailored by Umbro' range that it would bear a striking resemblance to the mythical shirt worn when Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup trophy in 1966. However, the devil is in the detail and so there was a fair degree of baited breath until the kits were seen in the flesh for the first time.

And now we have them, both the red outfield shirt and the goalkeepers jersey. Both are wonderful. There is no question that they take an unapologetic influence from the '66 shirts, but rather than being a totally plain red shirt it is pleasing to see the designers have taken pains to make it more than a total homage and so hopefully play down the '66 references and make it something of it's own. The sleeves are capped with a white cuff and the sleeves are rendered in a slightly darker shade of material to the main body that gives the shirt a sense of strength.

I am also over the moon with the goalkeepers kit. Again, like the outfield players shirt it takes it's cues from the 1966 iteration but the styling and the colour are perfectly done.

I reached 25 without ever owning an England shirt. Having already acquired the home goalie shirt for my recent birthday (thank you special person!) I now find myself clamouring for both these new shirts and the white home shirt. They are just too beautiful to resist, and I know that is likely that there will probably not be another set of England shirts to rival them. I am compelled to have the set.

England Goalkeeper Shirt

I don't know how it's happened but somehow I have managed to write this blog for 4 or 5 months without posting about one of my geekier interests, football shirts. I have been meaning to redress this for sometime and no time seemed better than today, after England secured their place at next summer's World Cup in South Africa thanks to a 5-1 victory over Croatia.

England have generally had so-so kits in the last decade, nothing too awful comes to mind, but certainly nothing has yet compelled me to ever go out and purchase one. The new home and goalkeeper shirts have changed this with their sharp, elegant and simple design which embrace the best of the past while avoiding the trap of being too self-consciously 'retro'. They are in marked contrast to the previous few home shirts which have laboured under the 'need' to lob a load of red trim onto them, often in less than subtle approximations of the St. George's cross.

The change in direction from the kit manufacturer Umbro may or may not demonstrate the influence of Nike's aesthetic following the American giant's purchase of Umbro last year. What is certain is that there has been a clear upswing in the quality of Umbro's designs for it's roster of teams such as West Ham, Sunderland and Manchester City since the beginning of the 2008-09 football season. Not only are they renegades from the prevailing (surely cost-driven) ethos of the big manufacturers such as Nike, Puma and Adidas to hand out virtually identical template designs to as many of their teams as possible; the quality of the individual designs are also of great quality.

Of the new shirts it is the goalkeepers that attracts me the most. Usually keeper kits aren't much to write home about, and fans don't buy or wear them unless they they want to wear them to actually play football in, so what is different about the 09-11 iteration? Firstly, the deep forest green is simple and traditional. It conveys strength and a certain masculine dignity. Secondly the fit. Umbro have made much fuss over their supposed 'tailored style' for the new England kits, and while it is largely marketing gloss, the new shirts are cut well and come in a greater number of sizes (chest 34, 36, 38 etc as opposed to just S, M, L). Coupled with the new cotton-based fabric which is thicker and less shiny than usual shirts the feel of the shirts are much more like that of a normal t-shirt - i.e. even though a keeper shirt it feels like something that I could actually wear as part of a regular outfit.