Give Nike a Red Card

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.

To pour salt into the wound, the U.S. company has also announced the prices of the kits: for adults it’s a staggering £124.99 and for kids it’s £119.99. This has risen by £20 in just four years. It gets worse. Even the ‘stadium’ version, which is not the real kit, is £84.99 for adults and £64.99 for children. We all know what happens to brands when they go woke – and with these prices it seems determined to be in bankruptcy court by the end of the year.

Needless to say, the virtue-signalling company has doubled down, stating it will not change the jersey. I wonder if it’ll turn the flag of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia into a rainbow to coincide with it hosting the 2034 World Cup? Don’t hold your breath.

Jack Watson, who’s 15, has a Substack newsletter called Ten Foot Tigers about being a Hull City fan. You can subscribe here.

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Mogwai
2 years ago

This is a total outrage. Note how Nike minimize their offensive changes by referring to it as ”playful”, ergo; ”anyone complaining about this small, fun thing has a problem and is out of order, not us.” That’s how it comes across to me anyway. This quote applies to many things but it especially applies to this Alphabet Mafia/Woke mind virus nonsense which pervades our lives now, everywhere we turn; “Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and… Read more »

Jonathan M
Jonathan M
2 years ago
Reply to  Mogwai

The cowardly bar stewards wouldn’t dare to “playfully” alter the flag of Turkey or Saudi Arabia, would they?
Stupendous quote from Dalrymple.

huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  Mogwai

In complete agreement Mogs. We are being force fed a diet of insults which are intended to wholly undermine our personal and national pride.

On another point – WTF are the England Football Association doing handing this contract to a disreputable American company? Have they never believed in “Buy British?”

Freddy Boy
2 years ago
Reply to  Mogwai

Spot on 👍 everything propagated onto us the public is designed to wind us up !

kev
kev
2 years ago
Reply to  Mogwai

Will the team still be taking the knee as well. If they wear these shirts and still take the knee they need roundly booing, and their games should be boycotted.

Enough with this nonsense!

Smudger
2 years ago
Reply to  kev

The only way an individual can register their displeasure of the BBC is to refuse to pay the propaganda tax as increasing numbers of people are doing. Similarly, the only way to deal with the England team wearing this kit is the same – don’t watch them and don’t buy Nike kit for yourself or your family.

Jackthegripper
Jackthegripper
2 years ago
Reply to  Mogwai

Hayek’s book Road To Surfdom saw this coming. Our conversion to socialism is almost complete. Look at pre-war Germany to see what comes next.

Smudger
2 years ago
Reply to  Jackthegripper

Ayn Rand set this out too. She more specifically saw it coming down the road via corporations such as Nike.

zebedee
zebedee
2 years ago

The FA signed off on it. Just award the contract for the England team to another football organisation.

AlexJ08
2 years ago
Reply to  zebedee

Yes I agree, the FA is the client, and chooses whichever designs it pleases. “Oh I see what you did there, you replaced the English flag with the LGBT/BLM thingy, that’s great, it’s really going to rub the people of England up the wrong way, perfect”. The Football Association is 160 years old, and it codified the game. It is the inventor of the sport that we call football – the sport that has taken the world by storm, completely dominating the sporting landscape in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, South America, Central America…It is a legendary and historic institution. But now it has more or less been taken over by leftists, who insist that we all take the knee to black people before a match (who’s the premier league’s highest paid player – it’s Chelsea’s Raheem Sterling). They insist our captain and best ever goal scorer wears a LGBT armband; and now they insist on replacing our historic English flag. It wouldn’t surprise me if they appoint that ghastly lesbian Emma Hayes as the next manager; it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t know what she’s doing, what matters is that great British traditions need to be subverted. Yet another… Read more »

huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  AlexJ08

Hear, hear.

AlexJ08
2 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Youth academies in England and France are filled with black guys now, because they’re big and strong and they can run fast, collecting massive salaries in the process for not doing very much, and pushing out white guys from the academies, who usually physically develop later on in their teens. Talk about black privilege.

Why TF are we bending the knee to them?

Smudger
2 years ago
Reply to  AlexJ08

Down the pub the lads rant and rave about political correctness creeping into their workplace one minute and the next minute they patronise woke football matches by watching it on a pub iPad or their smart phones. When I bring this hypocrisy to their attention and ask them if they attend and support the local village teams consisting of local lads play ‘woke free’ football there is a deathly silence.

NeilofWatford
2 years ago

Go woke …
Don’t give your money to people who hate you.
Surely there’s an opportunity for an alternative, non woke and affordable design to be produced by a patriotic entrepreneur?
Very simple design to fill the stadiums and blot out Nike and the FA.

varmint
2 years ago
Reply to  NeilofWatford

All fans should tun their backs like they do with the “Poznan” when players take the knee.————There are solutions to all the wokery , we just need to use our imaginations

Free Lemming
2 years ago
Reply to  varmint

A new terrace chant: “Born and bred in white and red”.

transmissionofflame
2 years ago

The FA will have had final approval of this and of the terms of the contract including the sale price of the shirts. By all means boycott Nike, but boycott the FA too.

AethelredTheReadier
AethelredTheReadier
2 years ago

It’s interesting to note that very few of the FA Board have any actual experience of playing football at all. They’re business people.

transmissionofflame
2 years ago

Probably not ideal but a good businessman will understand their market.

Marcus Aurelius knew
2 years ago

Whoops

transmissionofflame
2 years ago

They simply don’t care I think.

AethelredTheReadier
AethelredTheReadier
2 years ago

The England team could simply refuse to wear the shirts – if they have balls that is – like a reverse ‘taking the knee’ exercise.

Incidentally, although we have the St George Cross as our national flag emblem, our older flag emblem was a White Dragon on a red background. The dragon that St George is depicted as slaying was the White Dragon of old England and is shown in the Bayeux Tapestry in the panel where King Harold was slain. It was the flag that the English fought under against the Normans. It is a highly symbolic of the might of the church destroying our ancient English heritage. I find that quite interesting. And rather disturbing.

RTSC
RTSC
2 years ago

Nothing a permanent red marker wouldn’t fix.

AethelredTheReadier
AethelredTheReadier
2 years ago
Reply to  RTSC

Or a flamethrower…

varmint
2 years ago

I thought they maybe would have learned a few lessons from that vomit inducing McElvaney affair, or whatever its name is. But actually it should not take a flag on a football strip for us to be getting outraged. We should have been kicking up a huge stink about stuff like this ages ago. ——-The wokery needs to be booted out. We have the power to boot it, if only we realised it. ——Who needs a bloody T shirt with a tick on it anyway. All it would take is for us all to buy NOTHING for even a month and they would plead never to ever ever ever indulge in this crap again.——-They would be kissing our asses and offering us free trips to Florida.

huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  varmint

I wish I could say that from now on I will never buy another Nike product but the fact is I am not a fan of logo’d goods. So I cannot hurt Nike or the other recent contender North Face by promising not to spend any more money with them. I cannot even hurt the FA because I haven’t been to a professional football match in 25 years and have no intention of returning.

Anyway, FWIW the FA and Nike can go rot.

Marcus Aurelius knew
2 years ago
Reply to  varmint

I suspect the vast majority haven’t even noticed the Mulvaney debacle. They all move together, these activists, slapping each other on the back, in their own dimension, completely oblivious to the chaos they’re causing. Useful idiots.

And the Boards of these companies think they’re just ticking a box. Until the real shareholders cotton on too late and give them the boot.

huxleypiggles
2 years ago

I wonder if Nike would care to provide a full size version of their revised flag just so that the non footballing public can have sight of this monstrosity? And the Football Association should be charged with a hate crime at the very least. Might as well get Govey’s garbage off on the right foot – 😀 … think about it.

Dinger64
2 years ago

England fans, turn your back to the field of play! Fu@king with our flag is not optional!

A. Contrarian
2 years ago

Wow, how has Starmer managed to get some backbone?!

The thing is, there is nothing else – no other movement or cause or charity – that gets absolutely everywhere like this. Trains, planes, hospital buildings, police uniforms, football kits, even pedestrian crossings FFS. This is what really gets up people’s noses, I think. Why does LGBTQ-whatever think it is so, so, SO important in that way, more important than, say, campaigning for children’s rights or something like that?

AJPotts
AJPotts
2 years ago

I doubt there are many people who thought wokery couldn’t get any worse. It will keep getting worse until the majority of decent people stop giving money to those – which certainly includes Nike and the Football Association – who hate us and our traditions and who are out to destroy western civilisation. This is a war not a disagreement and the enemy needs to be fought with all available means.

huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  AJPotts

Seconded 👍

Free Lemming
2 years ago

What’s interesting about this is how it highlights how tone-deaf these corporations are. They’re living in a different world to the rest of us, and this goes some way to explaining a lot of the nonsense we’re having shoved down our throats.

You can almost imagine the meeting:
Margo: “I’ve had an idea; everyone absolutely loves the LGBTASGUWBCVUQ+ movement and the beautiful rainbow flag, let’s colour England’s national flag with rainbow colours. Those Millwall supporters will absolutely love it!!!”
Brenda: “F*ckin brilliant idea. I’ll wear a rainbow skirt and colour my beard to match the flag!”

RW
RW
2 years ago

Same being done in Germany, just more aggressively, switching away from the traditional white & black to pink & purple. But as the national laughing stock of Germany has long since lost any support it ever had in the population due to persistent underperformance coupled with endless Gaying you harder! preaching, everyone’s just making jokes about this.

At least for now, football as sport is lost.

transmissionofflame
2 years ago
Reply to  RW

Most pro sport has turned into a virtue signalling vaxxtard masktard wokefest, populated by the corrupt, and highly paid people tarting around as if they are important. I love sport but can no longer stomach anything more than small doses, prefer to do sport than watch it.

For a fist full of roubles

My playful imagining for a flag for a peaceful Gaza

image_2024-03-23_125214903
sskinner
2 years ago

Or this intersectional inclusivity. (I can’t edit image or remove comment so I’ll repeat myself below).

sskinner
2 years ago

As I was saying…how about this ‘playful’ intersectional inclusivity?

New-inclusive-Palestinian-Flag
For a fist full of roubles
Reply to  sskinner

I look forward to seeing it waved on al the Gaza protests in future

sskinner
2 years ago

Yes, in the annual Ramallah and Gaza City Pride Month.

Heretic
Heretic
2 years ago

Good article by Jack Watson, especially including the Genoese origin of the England flag. The “George & Dragon” story was an Illuminati code for the George/Egregore/Demi-Urge/Satan killing Christ the Dragon with the “Spear of Longinus”.

England should ditch this flag, and adopt the “White Dragon on red background” flag on the Bayeux Tapestry instead, as commenter Aethelred on here said elsewhere.

We Are The English The White Dragon

In my view, we should throw out Demi-Urge George and April 23rd as Satanic and meaningless for England. Instead, we should celebrate the 12TH OF MAY, for two reasons: first, it celebrates the victory of King Alfred the Great over the Vikings at the Battle of Edington in 878, marking the creation of England. Secondly, the 12TH OF MAY also marked the beginning of the barons’ rebellion against King John in 1215, leading directly to the Magna Carta.

JXB
JXB
2 years ago

Not England’s football team, but Nike’s with the Cross if St Nike on their kit.

Jackthegripper
Jackthegripper
2 years ago

Everyone who buys one of these abominations are supporting Nike. Don’t buy it. I hope another manufacturer brings out a proper England shirt at half the price.

I don’t buy Nike anyway, and clearly their last foray into trans wokery didn’t have a big enough backlash to deter them.