Notes
The white
shirt--generally accompanied by navy blue shorts and either navy blue or,
these days, white
stockings--has been England's traditional strip and is regarded as their home
uniform. The red shirt--usually worn in combination with white shorts
and red stockings--has been their usual change strip and is considered their
away uniform, although they have also sometimes worn several shades of blue, most
recently in 1996. On occasion England have also had a third or
alternative strip.
The labels
"home" and "away" are not, however, reliable indicators of
where England have worn these uniforms, for they have often worn their "home" uniform
in away matches and
their "away" uniform in home matches. Thus, for example, England wore
red
shirts when they beat West Germany at Wembley Stadium to win the 1966 World
Cup and when they lost to Germany on 7 October, 2000 in the last match
played at Wembley, their main home ground for 76 years. Much more
frequently, they have worn their regular home strip abroad.
What the designations
home and away uniforms really mean is that the home uniform is England's main strip and the away
uniform is the usual change strip. There is no doubt the white shirt is England's home or main uniform.
White was the colour of England's first jerseys, and the
number of matches in which they have worn white far exceeds the number in which they have worn other colours.
The home team--the
team playing in their own country or, in final tournaments, the team designated
the home team by the governing body running the competition--has the first say
on colours and the away team may choose any colours which do not conflict with
the home team's choice. The teams may and sometimes do negotiate over the
colours they will wear. Thus England may wear the colours they want barring what is
considered a clash in colours with a team that is regarded as the home team.
Beyond that, there is no logical scheme or pattern to the colours England choose
to wear.
A variety of considerations may dictate what strip England choose.
For example, England might want to show off a new away strip in front of their own fans at home before they wear it in an away
match to help boost sales of replica kits. David Beckham asked that England wear all white
the colours of his new club, Real Madrid, in his first match in England after his transfer
from Manchester United, and the Football Association acceded to his request.
England sometimes choose to wear their red at home even though they could wear their white, as against Germany in the last match played at Wembley
Stadium. The Football Association wished to invoke the spirit of 1966, when,
in their finest moment at Wembley, England beat West Germany in the World Cup final
wearing their red shirts.
Since the late 1990s, the Football Association has changed
the home and away uniforms in alternate years so that a new shirt, either home
or away, appears every year. Each new uniform has a tenure of two years,
but the home uniform is invariably worn in many more matches than the away
uniform. To take two
examples of shirts that recently finished their tenure, England wore the 2001
home white shirt in 17 matches, while they wore the 2002
red away shirt in only six.
England have
sometimes worn uniforms of the same predominant
colour. Thus, for example, at the World
Cup 1970 final tournament in M�xico, they registered all white as their
uniform of choice and wore it against Romania and Brazil in their first two
group matches. For the third group match against Czechoslovakia, they
wore their third, alternate strip, all pale blue,
before switching to their away combination of red shirts and stockings and
white shorts for the quarterfinal against West Germany. And
the away strip they wore
in 1994 and 1995 was all red.
In a few matches England have worn
irregular combinations of their colours from different uniforms.
Thus, for example, against France in the opening match of the World
Cup 1982 final tournament in France, they wore their away red shirt and
white shorts over their home white stockings. In the friendly match against Brazil in Rio de Janeiro in
1984, they wore their regular white home shirt over their away white shorts
and red stockings. In their clash with Argentina at the World Cup
1986 final tournament in M�xico, they wore their regular
white shirt over pale blue shorts and stockings. In a friendly match
against New Zealand in 1991, they wore their red away shirts and stockings
with their navy blue home shorts, a combination also used in the
U.S. Cup tournament match against the U.S.A. in
1993. In several more recent matches, England have achieved an
all-white effect by combining their white home shirts and stockings with
either their white away shorts, as in the round of 16 teams match against Argentina at the World
Cup 1998 final tournament, or white home change
shorts, as in the World
Cup 2002 qualification matches against Albania and Greece in 2001.
England made a rare
and unfortunate foray into the world of fashion with two alternate, third
uniforms in the early 1990's. For the 1991 European Championship
qualification match in Turkey, they wore a mottled
pale blue and white shirt over pale blue shorts and stockings. And
for friendly matches in Czechoslovakia and Spain in 1992, they wore a
pale blue shirt and shorts embossed with three lions in slightly darker blue
over pale blue stockings. Fortunately, these experiments proved
short-lived and were confined to away matches, although they did little for
England's fashion reputation abroad. England's red
away shirt worn in six matches from 1997 to 1999 incorporated far too many
stylistic flourishes and was a bit of a mess. Equally unusual, but much more
acceptable because of its simplicity, was England's 2001 home white jersey,
which bore a thin red stripe running down the left side of its front.
On even rarer occasion England have
worn colours other than their traditional red/white/blue. For three away
matches in May and June, 1973, against Czechoslovakia in a friendly match, Poland in
a World Cup 1974 qualifier and Italy
also in a friendly match, England wore yellow jerseys over navy blue shorts and yellow
stockings. And
when England met Brazil in the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial Cup in Los Angeles, their traditional white
home shirts topped their white away shorts and ghastly pale yellow stockings. The following week England
completed the transformation and wore all yellow when they met Team
America in an unofficial match in the same tournament. One hopes these
aberrations have been consigned to history, where they belong, and that they will not
reoccur. - PY/CG
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PY/JB/CG/GI
