Yet again, with all looking rosy, England indulge in a grand act of self-sabotage
Gareth Southgate looked a little weary. he listened to the question about Nike’s utterly predictable and pathetically provocative attempt to garner cheap publicity by bastardising the St George’s Cross on the new england shirt and just about managed to stop himself from rolling his eyes.
‘I’ve been told there’s a lot of noise,’ the england manager said.
a lot of noise? By then, the Fa had released a statement, the prime minister rishi Sunak had told Nike not to ‘mess’ with the flag, the leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, had called for the shirt to be recalled, the Liberal Democrats had weighed in, too, and Peter Shilton, england’s record cap holder, had said the design was ‘wrong on every level’. It was not so much noise as a sonic boom.
the england manager tried to point out that he had the small matter of a game against Brazil at Wembley this evening to prepare for against the backdrop of an unprecedented injury crisis and that it has kept him away from the flag furore.
‘I haven’t really followed it,’ he said. ‘I have got enough on my plate really, trying to piece a team together.’
there is something about england and the build-up to World Cups and european Championships that suggests — even for a team which has not won a major tournament since 1966 but which has been installed as favourites for this summer’s euros in Germany — we have a self- sabotaging predilection for making things even harder for ourselves than they already are.
If it isn’t stolen bracelets in Bogota, high jinks in Sardinia, a dentist’s chair in hong Kong, Gazza smashing up the manager’s hotel room at La Manga, platform shoes outside Ulrika’s bedroom door, David Beckham’s broken metatarsal or rainbow armbands in Doha, then it’s alienating part of the fanbase by creating an unnecessary furore about a grotesquely overpriced shirt before the start of a tournament in which many are expecting england to triumph.
Still, even as Southgate wrestled with the prospect of picking a side to face five-time World Cup winners Brazil without the injured harry Kane, Bukayo Saka, Jordan henderson and Cole Palmer, and acknowledging that a third of the players he is considering for the euros are unavailable through injury, he just about managed to hide his irritation with the whole farrago and brought some perspective to it.
‘My view is, if it’s not white with a red cross it’s not the St George’s flag,’ Southgate said. ‘So whatever it is, it’s a quirky design feature which I guess a Banksy or a reuben Dangoor might do.
‘If the debate is, “Should the england flag be on the shirt?”, we’ve had moments where it has been and moments where it hasn’t. the most important thing on the shirt is the three lions.
‘that is the thing that is iconic, that differentiates us even from the england rugby team or the england cricket team. So when I, 29 years ago, put my training kit on at Burnham Beeches and looked in the mirror, it was the three lions I was looking at.
‘I am a huge patriot. I believe we should celebrate St George’s Day more than we do. the flag of St George has an interesting history because, years ago, it was just the Union Jack following england. So there’s a lot of nuance to that.
‘I understand that people don’t think we should be changing the flag of St George but if it’s changed, then it isn’t the flag of St George. So I’m a little bit lost with that element of it. I think they can put a quirky design together but you can’t say it’s the flag of St George because it isn’t.
It’s therefore something else.’
SOUTHGATE will be hoping that is the end of the issue but it probably won’t be. as the euros draw closer and excitement about england’s prospects reaches fever pitch, the flag fiasco is just another symbol of how everyone wants something different from Southgate and his players.
Some want him to be Winston Churchill. Some want him to be Mahatma Gandhi. Some want the players to be freedom fighters. Some want them to ‘shut up and dribble’. Some want them to be vehicles for nationalism. others want them to lead us towards a new enlightenment.
on this occasion, Southgate and his players, who exist in that no man’s land otherwise known as the middle ground, could be forgiven for being a little irritated with Nike and the Fa for signing off on the shirt design and creating an entirely avoidable furore.
the problem, perhaps, is that
Nike loves a furore. on this occasion, the Fa should have read the room more astutely. at a time of increasing political polarisation, the change in the design of the St George’s cross hints at an embarrassment about being patriotic that is anathema to large swathes s of england’s support. suppor
Where Wh Nike have erred is that t this is international tio football, not the club cl game. You support a country in international football. that’s the whole point of it. You cheer your team on. You cheer c your country on. on the change to the flag fla design, whatever guff they spout about 1966 training kits and being ‘disruptors’, d reads as though someone so at Nike is uncomfortable with the patriotism of england supporters.
Whatengland need more than anything now, what football teams always need more than anything, is a win to focus minds on football again. a win against Brazil, however denuded of their traditional flair and excellence this iteration of Brazil is, would be a salve like no other for Southgate and his side.
and the truth is, when the fretting about extraneous matters finds pause, there is so much to be excited about. even without the raft of injured players, Southgate has stars like Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden to call upon, players who embody all the attributes we would once have associated with Brazil and the Beautiful Game.
the injuries to more established players are a frustration in so far as they have prevented Southgate experimenting with playing Liverpool’s brilliant right back trent alexander-arnold on the right side of a midfield three alongside Bellingham and Declan rice.
But they also provide a chance for the manager to look at Ivan toney or ollie Watkins, or both, as a deputy for Kane and to get more of a sense of whether Kobbie Mainoo, Manchester United’s increasingly impressive teenage holding midfielder, is ready to stake a claim for a place in the squad that travels to Germany at the start of June.
these two friendlies against Brazil and Belgium, on tuesday evening, represent the beginning of the run-in to the tournament in Germany that represents england’s best opportunity of winning a major competition for almost 60 years.
the kit design was an error by Nike but in lieu of the football fashion world’s most enthusiastic agent provocateurs recalling the strips and re- embracing tradition, beating Brazil and Belgium over the next four days will be the best way to wave the flag.