England’s new shirts: It’s not a different-coloured flag that should be making us cross

The whole country is talking about a small cross of the back of a shirt, when ultimately perhaps the an even bigger controversy is going virtually unquestioned?

It’s textbook stuff from the US manufacturers.

Pitch an ‘all new’ St George’s Cross to a senior member of staff at the Football Association, get it signed off, (a process that seems to be almost forgotten looking at the vitriol aimed at Nike by sections of the press and public) and hey presto, the new shirt is right across the media.

What appears to have gone totally under the radar is the price hike for the replica shirt.

When England played Italy in the final of Euro 2021 at Wembley the cost of an adult replica England shirt was £64.99. A similar product just three years later now costs £84.99.

But if fans want to buy the shirt the players wear on the pitch, it’s £124.99 for adults with a mere £5 reduction for children. So basically the £85 England shirt is an England shirt, but not THE England shirt.

Lest we forget, the said England shirt, standard or the all-new authentic, is not made in this country. Imagine what the mark-up is on each item.

Post Covid, everything appears to have risen in price: food, utilities, whatever, it’s almost always blamed on either the pandemic or the ongoing war in the Ukraine.

But the rising price of these shirts has little or nothing to do with those factors, and the people making them certainly won’t have received double-digit percentage pay rises.

A Nike Brighton first-team shirt, made at the same factory as the England ones, costs £60, so why are England fans paying so much more?

Obviously fans can choose whether to buy a product or not, but the furore over the cross has almost seen this excessive price hike go unchallenged.

By the time England play Serbia in their opening Euro 2024 game on June 16 , I imagine the traditional St George’s Cross will have returned to the shirt, but will the shirt price have changed?

Somehow I doubt it.