At last, Team GB has its kit for the 2012 Olympic Games. And, sure enough, it's controversial.
To many the launch of the football kit - which I'll focus on for the sake of brevity - comes as a surprise. Not to me, not to Football Shirt Culture regulars and I'd guess not to many of the modest number that read this blog, but plenty assumed that the kit released last year, when the storm over the other 'Home' nations reluctance to release players for the tournament was at its peak, was the playing wear for the Games. It was, in fact, absolutely shameless opportunism from various marketing entities - particularly demonstrated by the prococative use of Welshman Gareth Bale in publicity shots - but sadly plenty fell for it and didn't realise that its labelling of "Supporters Kit" meant that it would never feature on the pitch. Part of me died inside every time I overheard someone in the street exclaim something along the lines of "I'm gonna get that Team GB kit! It's well nice!"
It wasn't the Team GB kit, and it wasn't well nice.
It was cheap, tacky and dated. Three things that could never be levelled at Stella McCartney's wonderful creation for adidas. I speak as someone who has designed a relatively well-received Team GB shirt which featured on the talkSPORT website, but I bow down to Ms McCartney's disregard of templates, conformity and any clamour for a more literal representation of the Union Jack.
Because, as you may have heard, despite the main graphic on the shirt being a stylised version of the British flag, there is a lot of blue - various shades - and not as much red. This means the crosses of St George and St Patrick are portrayed using alternate sections of the spectrum or, for some, entirely misrepresented.
And it works. It works brilliantly and the elephant in the room is that the Union Jack - or Union Flag, to give it its proper name - could never have been used in its traditional form. This is the first Olympics for decades that will feature a British football team and replica football shirt sales - for every nation - will dwarf anything that has gone before. To join the dots for you, the right-wing morons that abandoned their devotion to England shirts when Umbro released the Hoxton-friendly "pink crosses" design after the South African World Cup fiasco have been after something to fill the void ever since. They may not have plumped for a TECHFIT PowerWEB version but a Climacool red white and blue Great Britain shirt would have been just the ticket for an English Defence League march.
The Union Jack is crude. Whatever debates people have over imperialist pasts the fact remains that in 2012 the Union Jack evokes images of the worst examples of nationalism veering into racism. We may not have the public opinion to remove it as the national flag - certainly not when so many continue to bellow an equally offensive anthem - but in the hands of the fashion world's glitterati it was never going to be anything other than toned down, especially once McCartney's mind was made up that the angular structure would be the focal point of the shirt. Therein lies the secret to its success. Even if anyone still needs to satisfy their ereuthophilia, and can't wait for the likely all-red away kit, then combining the shirt with a Tyrone Gaagle baselayer from GAA specialists O'Neills would work a treat. That'll stick it to 'em.
The alternative approach would have been to follow Umbro's lead in using the colour scheme but not the geometry, as featured in the quite open nod to the ikurrin displayed on everyone's latest favourite shirt, the Athletic Bilbao away. Schitzophrenic Umbro are somewhat more coy about admitting any similarities between the Rangers away shirt and the Union Jack, which is surprising after they seemingly had no issue with putting their double diamond on an orange Linfield shirt,
For me, McCartney rightly ignored the Umbro twist and instead used the tradition of the flag in such a brilliantly measured way - taking the right risks - that the shirt will be lauded in due course. If the Daily Mail has a problem with it, compounded with its issues concerning naturalised and dual-nationality athletes taking prominent positions for Britain at the Games, then it merely acts as an endorsement of the delight which has met the launch.
