England make decision on ‘woke’ St George’s Cross on new World Cup kits | Football

England’s kits for the upcoming World Cup will not include the multicoloured St George’s Cross that represented a controversial feature of the previous strip.

Fans will be able to purchase the kits from Monday ahead of a tournament that is due to 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 home and away jerseys, but the Telegraph reports that the divisive purple, blue and red cross has been ditched.

Instead, the collar will include a line from the national anthem ‘happy and glorious’ which may go some way to appeasing those who were so outraged by the augmentation of the St George’s Cross on the previous kit.

Indeed, Nike described the 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: ‘When it comes to our national flags, we shouldn’t mess with them because they’re a source of pride, identity, who we are, and they’re perfect as they are.’

Starmer added: ‘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 they should reconsider this and change it back.

‘I’m not even sure they can properly explain why they thought they needed to change in the first place. They could also reduce the price 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 provide the voice of reason.

‘It’s not been high on my list of priorities but it depends which bit it is,’ said Southgate, who masterminded England’s progression to two major finals.

‘I don’t know if the debate is about the St George flag needing to be on the England shirt because it obviously hasn’t always been.

‘I think the most important thing that has to 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 world but from England rugby and England cricket. It’s the thing that when I put my kit on 30 years ago and looked in 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 hard question to answer. It’s presumably some artistic take, which I’m not creative enough to understand, really.’

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