England will debut their new change strip in Friday night’s friendly against Uruguay.
A red shirt with navy and white facings is likely to please those who prefer traditional colours to be employed on alternative outfits – however, it’s likely that the choice of shorts will draw some comment.
It has not been unknown over the past three decades for an England away kit to be all-red rather than the 1966-like red shirts with white shorts, but seeing navy shorts makes one think that a mashup is being used.
England have gone with red-navy-red on three previous occasions and each instance involved the home shorts being called into use.
What is odd about the first such occurrence, though, is that the opposition were not wearing white shorts to force the switch.
In November 1984, England had travelled to Istanbul to face Turkey and, despite the home side having red and white halved shirts, the visitors were in their usual white-navy-white.
An 8-0 win for Bobby Robson’s side suggested no confusion between the kits (Turkey’s shirts did have red backs, to be fair) but just under a year later, Turkey were in white shirts and red shorts and Wembley. England donned their red jerseys with the home shorts, presumably to make it less of an overall clash.
The game finished 5-0 to England – incidentally, this was also the kit matchup for Roy Race’s last England cap in 1987, but it would take until 1991 for the red-navy-red look to materialise again for the England senior team in real-life.
A summer tour to Australasia saw two elements of shorts-swapping – all-white was worn against Australia and, while the default home kit was used in one game against New Zealand, who were in all-red, the other game marking the NZFA’s centenary saw the All Whites in their primary look and England mashing up to accommodate that as they won 1-0.
Two years on and another summer tour to far-flung fields provided what was to remain the last red-navy-red outing for 33 years.
The 1993 US Cup featured the hosts, England, Brazil and Germany, with England only wearing white against the South American side.
While there had been a new home kit launched, the away shirt introduced in 1990 would continue on until the end of 1993, allowing future releases to be staggered – however, it did have the new all-caps Umbro logo and the crest was now placed on a larger shield in the style of the Manchester firm’s 1992 club offerings. There were also names on the back – full squad here.
Against Germany, white shorts were used – oddly, slightly different in design to the proper ones – but in the opener against the USA, the shorts from the new home kit were called upon.
A 2-0 loss ended the 100 percent record for red-navy-red – England fans will hope that the figure can rise from 66.66 percent if the configuration is reborn in the USA.
