Midweek Mashup – England, 1982

I actually don’t have that much of a problem with the Nike Vapor template.

This year’s Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham kits are quite nice, for instance, My problem was that, in 2016, the company decided to dick around with teams’ traditional looks, altering shorts and socks and socks colours – a recent Midweek Mashup featured Internazionale in what should have been their actual kit.

England suffered in this regard too, with their current kit having white shorts and red socks. The PR blurb on the launch mentioned honouring John Barnes’ excellent goal against Brazil in 1984 but those colours were obviously only worn because of a clash with the hosts, and the team didn’t have sky-blue sleeves then either.

The fact that two kit elements were changed from the classic look was what offended the sensibilities of traditionalists. If it had been just red socks added to a white shirt and blue shorts, it wouldn’t have been so drastic – perhaps then we should be sorry that England didn’t beat West Germany at Wembley in 1982, with somebody scoring a wondergoal, as then that look could have been the basis for the 2016 kit.

The countries had met in the ’82 World Cup in Spain, with England changing (into two different styles of red shirts), but for this friendly in October, the Germans had a brand-new green pinstriped away shirt, similar to the kit France had at the time.

Given that pretty much every country with white home shirts also has white home socks though, were the Germans engaging in a bit of trolling with their socks?

It meant that England had to wear their away socks – incidentally, they reverted back to the style they had had before the World Cup, when the ubiquity of the Admiral logos on the turnover meant they weren’t allowed.

It made for a far more cohesive look than the current home outfit.