Here’s an England shirt as you’ll never have seen it before…designed by Julian Barrett and Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh. It was passed on to us by Jeff Maysh over at Loaded magazine, who’s going to be writing some blogs for us, starting later today. The Boosh designed the shirt for a Loaded charity competition, in which top designers such as Goi Goi and One True Saxon customised the latest England home shirt – you can see the other designs here, but unfortunately the bidding to win them closed a while ago.

Here’s Jeff to explain more:

‘This must be the wildest England shirt design ever seen. Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding, of bizarre comedy troupe The Mighty Boosh, picked up their crayons to create their very own England shirt for men’s magazine Loaded. And this is what they came up with. The shirt was deemed ‘impossible’ to create for the magazine’s charity shirt project, but for the first time here, you can see their magnificent creation. Reckon you’d wear it?’

Jeff is a football shirt fanatic, and will be writing for us on all aspects of football shirt culture. If you’ve seen any interesting shirt info that you’d like to tell him about, you can contact him at twitter.com/JeffMaysh

The battle for football gaming supremacy reaches fever pitch later this week, when the next installment of Pro-Evolution Soccer is released. PES2010 arrives in shops on Friday just weeks after its main rival, FIFA10, and has the usual bunch of updates and tweaks to the formula to ensure that it remains at the top of the gaming league.

Earlier this year, Umbro’s England kit was made available for players of PES2009 to download onto their consoles at the same time as it was revealed to the public, and proved to be a massive success around the world with hundreds of thousands of downloads taking place. We’ve done a breakdown of the stats looked into the breakdown of the stats and after the UK, the kit was surprisingly most popular in France, Italy and Spain. Perhaps they wanted to try and beat an England team in the current kit!

PES2010 will feature the iconic Umbro England kit from the start, Umbro footballs and Speciali boots on the feet of players such as John Terry and David James. We were lucky enough here at Umbro to get the chance to play the game ahead of its launch, and we’ve been impressed with what we’ve seen so far. Graphically, the players look incredibly realistic, whilst the introduction of a 360 degree control system has improved things on the pitch, making the game flow much better. The addition of an official UEFA Europa League section alongside the existing UEFA Champions League mode also means you can play for the big prizes with all the official music, balls and kit for an authentic experience – could come in handy if your team gets knocked out early on.

We haven’t really had chance to test the online or management capacities yet, but there’s plenty of talk from Konami, the game’s producers, to suggest that there’ll also be improvements in these areas. All in all, it adds up to a great year for Pro Evo fans.

Young Manchester City and England defender Nedum Onuoha dropped into the Umbro offices yesterday to check out what we’re up to. Whilst taking a look around Umbro’s History Room, we took a quick snap of the lightning-fast player and asked him a few questions. Here’s what he had to say…

What are your ambitions for the rest of this season?

‘They’re similar for both myself and the team, really. I’d like to be part of a successful team, and for that team to have our best season in the Premiership. Not many people realise that the highest that we’ve finished in the league is 8th, so I’m just looking forward to having a chance to put a real marker down and improve on that.’

Have you ever tweaked your stats on Pro Evo to make yourself a better player?

‘Erm…I’ve never done it myself, but other people have done it for me! I’m never in the first 11 on these games, so I need to tweak my stats to get into the team. There’s plenty of people at City that do it though. Kelvin Etuhu has this memory card that he carries round with him, with this team full of super human players, so no one wants to play him.’

We hear you’re a big music fan, is there any artists you’d like to recommend that we should check out?

‘There is one, but I can’t remember their name! Just a minute…I’ve remembered…it’s Kenna. He’s a guy from America who’s friends with the Neptunes, he’s really good.’

What do you think of the Man City kit?

‘I really like it. To be honest I didn’t really like the last one we had, but I think most of the lads like this one. I like the England one as well, but I think I prefer the City kit.’

And finally, a question sent from our Twitter friend Dan213…why did you give up the athletics?

‘I always used to run in the summer, and play football in the winter, but when I started to play football in the summer as well, I had to give up the athletics. I haven’t been timed doing the 100 metres recently, but when I was 14 I did it in 10.9 seconds.’

And with that, he was off. Not quite as fast as that 100 metres, but pretty close.

As we have collected and displayed the huge Umbro kit archive here and on our flickr page, it has become very clear that our readers love football kits as much as we do. Everything from colours, prints and badges come under the spotlight but one thing that is constantly at the root of questioning is if, and how, the replica shirts the fans buy are different from those worn by the players. We have finally done something about the uncertainty and asked a couple of people in the know. Two people who can provide a definitive answer are Kevin and Sarah who help develop fabrics for those kits you and the players wear.

Let’s start with what Sarah had to say:

I think we could safely say that what the players wear is what is on sale in the shops. There may be some slight differences such as sometimes the Players shirt will have a different embroidery or other application than the shirt that goes in the shops. I think we have prided ourselves on delivering to the customer what the players are getting , the fabric is definitely the same for both. I know that’s not true of other brands but we like to pride ourselves on that fact.

Normally, we would feel this was fair enough, but we may have had a tip-off… ‘What about the England shirt that had the silver in it?’ we asked:

Ah! You got me on that one! That was a new technology (X-static) we decided to introduce into the new England away shirt. It had anti-microbial properties and it had a very exciting cattle-prod type tool that demonstrated the fact that there was metal in the fabric which I think sold it to us all!

We did do a player’s shirt that was fully X-static whereas in the retail version there were zonal areas that we had identified as being the areas where it needed to be X-static. I’d say that was one of the only jerseys that we did that had a difference and that was purely a cost issue because it was very expensive to produce. We just couldn’t afford to put it in a retail piece.

We were quite happy to go away with this amount of information, but Kevin let us in on another kit that had differences between what the players wore and what was seen in retail. Once again, it concerned an England kit from 2003-05 (picture at top of post) but the reason for why there ended up being two versions left us laughing for quite a while…

We did a reversible home shirt that had blue stripes on the inside which was technically brilliant, the first white reversible football jersey. The one that the players wore didn’t end up having the stripes. That was because David [kit designer] took it home and had a shower in it and the stripes were visible through the fabric. Don’t ask me why – or about his methods – but that’s what he did. It paid off though because it stopped us giving the kit to the players and the blue being visible through the white in the rain.

So that settles it. With few exceptions the Umbro players shirts are the same as the replica shirts that are sold in the shops.

So, we (England that is – commiserations Scotland and Wales) are off to South Africa! And so far there are only two other teams in Europe booked to go: Spain and Holland (who were the first to qualify).  There are still another ten places up for grabs in Europe.  But what about the other continents?

Africa have 53 teams competing for 5 + 1 places (the +1 bit is confusing so I’m not going to explain it).  Asia have 43 teams grappling for 4.5 places. North, Central America and the Caribeean have 35 teams competing for 3.5 places. Oceania, bless them, have 35 teams going for 0.5 place! (that just doesn’t seem fair does it, not even a full place) and lastly, South America have 10 teams going for 4.5 places (a far higher ratio of places to teams).  South Africa have a free pass, being the host country and all. Altogether that’s 204 countries competing for 32 places.  So far (as of the 10th September) only ten places have been secured.  So whilst England can relax there are still a lot of countries (not least Argentina, Portugal and France!) sweating on a place.

So, in preparation for June, we thought we’d try and kick start a “prospective travelling fans must-see itinerary of South Africa”. Catchy.  We’ll start it but you need to keep adding to it, please, or it will die as swiftly as Maradonna’s managerial career.  Add your ideas for the itinerary to the comments and if we start to get enough we’ll build up a proper travellers guide with maps n’ stuff.

So here’s our top 10 for a prospective football fans itinerary of South Africa (we presume you’re seeing a few football games too).

1. Go whale watching in Hermanus. It’s a bit early in the season for whales but you should see some.  Failing that, hop on one of the many shark diving trips in the area.  When you’ve finished up, head to the harbour in working Hermanus which has a couple of great fish restaurants.
2. They’re an outdoorsy bunch the South Africans, and they do bungee jumping. So, for people who either have no reason to live or who have been lobotomised and have no reason to think about a reason to live,   this one is the biggest commercially operating bungee in the world.  Try it. Wimp.
3. Have a drink.  The SAB Centre is perhaps the best place to do that in Jo’ Burg.  The local tipple Castle is good and Windhoek from Namibia is also very good. (there’s a fuller round up on wikipedia).  But for the more genteel fan, you need to head over to the Winelands and celebrate (no commiserating this time around!) over a few glasses of grape.
4. Cape Town does seem to have more of an abundance of stuff to recommend.  It’s hard to avoid Table Mountain because it’s big.  The cable car is good but walking is better (but you should go in groups because there’s been a few muggings over the last few years). Perhaps take an organised walk.
5. Surf.  In Durban on the Eastern Cape and along the many beaches of the Western Cape are some excellent surf spots.  You’ll look like a pasty battery chicken compared to the buffed South Africans of course.  Just challenge them to a game of football if they get all Alpha Male on you.
6. The Valley of 1000 Hills near Durban sounds interesting.  It sounds like a Russ Meyer film .  No idea if it’s any good.  References to witch doctors suggest it may be worth a look.
7. Visit the Dynamite Museum nr Jo’ Burg.  Dynamite allowed the gold industry to develop and made South Africa what it is now.  Flicking through the blurb, it also seems to have been where Alfred Nobel (the man behind the Nobel prize) discovered dynamite.  According to this Wikipedia article by 1903 one plant in Somerset West in South Africa was producing 340, 000 cases of dynamite annually, with each case being 50lbs in weight (17 million lbs!).
8. Hear the word of The Lord.  Gospel is really quite uplifting and very popular.  Grab a pew at one of the many churches or take a tour.
9. Do a safari, a ghost hunting safari.  Who cares about the Big 5 anyway (especially when you’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn and train your eyes to focus on the far horizon)?   If you really need to go all David Attenborough then Medikwe reserve gets lots of good reviews.
10. Visit the Big Hole in Kimberly.  It’s big.  It’s a hole.  It was made a big hole by dynamite (see 7 – can you tell I’m running out of ideas…). See …

Now it’s your turn.  Where would you go?

NB: if you’re after more practical advice The Times has a nice piece on tickets, flights and important stuff and The Guardian has a great interactive guide to the football venues.

Image credit: marxchivist

Ini a few hours England are playing Germany in the final of a major European tournament. The England vs Germany football rivalry is almost as old as football itself (the score is 12-10 to England) and includes, of course, the famous World Cup final in 1966. This time, though, it’s the England women’s team that are playing, and the match will be broadcast live tonight on BBC Two (from 4:45pm) and on BBC 5 Live Sports Extra (from 5pm).

Yesterday afternoon, we spent a few minutes speaking to Kelly Smith, one of the team’s strikers. She used to play for Arsenal ladies team, but as of earlier this year now scores for Boston Breakers in the US.

Us: Have the preparations for these Championships differed much this time around?

Kelly: “Not really, but preparation for the World Cup in China where we spent a couple of weeks in Macau acclimatising helped a lot. The experience of China, as a squad was important. That was the first major tournament we’d played in twelve years. We learnt a lot from that experience. Coming into this tournament now we’ve still got that core group of players that experienced China, the demands of tournament football, the rest and recuperation, eating right. And we’re as fit as we ever have been.”

There are six in the sqaud that play in the US women’s professional soccer league. How does playing in the US differ from playing in the UK?

“In America the sport is more accepted. A lot more girls play and it’s not seen as a man’s sport over there, which it can be in England. Our fan base is young girls and their families, and we get six to eight thousand coming to watch, whereas playing for Arsenal we used to get around two hundred on a Sunday afetrnoon. In America the teams really get out into the community, there’s a strong community link and so you get people at the games.”

And how have you enjoyed your first season over in the US?

“I’ve really enjoyed it. I was there in 2004 before the league was suspended so I knew what to expect, as a professional athlete. But it was a big deal for me because I was at Arsenal for four years and really happy with what I’d done in the game. But I felt that I needed a new challenge and went out there and I picked up the first WPA Player of the Month award, which was great, but then I picked up a slight knee injury which slowed me down a bit. But other than that, I had a great time out there and I’m ready to get going again in March.”

Tell me about the new kit. How do the team like it?

“It’s very smart. And as each kit is tailored to each individual, we have measurements for different areas, like the hips on the shorts and to have that option (of a tailored kit) is great because if you feel comfortable in your kit then your performance is going to be better on the pitch. It allows you to move more easily on the pitch. I like it.”

What do you personally do to prepare ahead of games?

“I watch some DVDs and chill out. I also do visualisation techniques before the game which help me to prepare.”

The men have a star above the England crest due to their one World Cup win. How confident are you that you’ll be able to getting a star on your kit after Thursday night?

“That would be amazing. We feel like this is our best chance of winning a final and the best time to play Germany so we’re really confident. We feel like we haven’t played our best football so far in the tournament, so we’re hoping and praying that all eleven players turn up and put in the performance of their lives. We’ve never beaten Germany but that’s not to say we can’t make history and beat them tonight.”

Every team has a joker. Who’s the joker in the women’s team?

“It’s Alex Scott. She’s quick witted and funny and the one with the most banter in the dressing room!”

image: wikipedia

Good luck!

See also:
Jaqui Oatley’s BBC Blog post
The Guardian’s excellent round-up of the final

After a shaky start last week against Italy, the England Women’s team was back on track for a quarter final place after Friday’s 3-2 victory over Russia. This match included a wonderfully taken goal from Kelly Smith.

Heading into the match against Sweden a place in the quarter-final was still within the team’s grasp. Thankfully, the team managed to hold on for a 1-1 draw and book their place into the next stage of the tournament.

England’s next challenge comes tomorrow (3rd September) against the host nation, Finland. This time there will be no room for slip-ups with a place in the semi-finals at stake.

Yesterday saw the start of the England Women’s European Championship campaign against Italy, and unfortunately for the team it started with a 2-1 defeat. Following the defeat Boston Breakers defender Alex Scott (pictured, bottom far left) reflected upon the result and looked ahead to the match against Russia, on Friday.

After just 28 minutes the team went down to 10 players following the sending off of Casey Stoney but Scott felt that the defeat couldn’t be entirely contributed to this incident. “We didn’t do the basics right, we didn’t play how we know we can play and that allowed Italy to stay in the game. So even with 10 players we are very disappointed with our own performances.”

The fact that the team went 1-0 up, thanks to a Fara Williams penalty, not long after going down to 10 players only went to emphasise Scott’s point. She also pointed out that their disappointment at losing despite having a player sent-off proves that there is still much more left from them. “I think it sums up the team that we expect so much from ourselves that even with ten players we know we should have played a lot better. There is a lot more to come from us.”

This swiftly turned Alex’s attention to the forthcoming qualifiers – namely the match against Russia, on Friday. “We’re focused on Russia, and I think they may be harder test than Italy were on Tuesday. But it’s about us now, we need to step up to the plate and take ownership of our performances. We know we have to deliver more than we did against Italy.”

 This will most certainly have to be the case as England look to record their first points in the Championship but as Alex says “there’s 2 games, everything to play for and it’s still early days in this tournament.”

We couldn’t agree more and will be looking forward to the match against Russia this Friday.

This Sunday marks the start of the Women’s European Championships – with the England team taking on Italy, in its opening match, on Tuesday. Earlier in the year, we caught up with some of the England ladies to get their thoughts on the tournament. This is what they had to say about preparation and expectation in the lead up to the team’s arrival in Finland.

Over the course of the Championships we shall be dropping in with the squad to see how they are getting on, so make sure you check back regularly for all the latest from the camp.

Yesterday, England played Holland in a friendly and it got us, at the Umbro offices, thinking about friendlies gone by. One that came up in discussion happens to have gone down in England Internationals history.

Let’s go back 21 years. Sir Bobby Robson’s England team has remained unbeaten since September 1987; the mood is upbeat going into the Germany European Championships. So, a week before their tournament kicks-off in Stuttgart, they choose to have one final warm-up game. A warm-up game against non-league opposition Aylesbury United.

In terms of confidence boosting (if the side needed anymore) it was perfect, a 7-0 victory with Peter Beardsley netting 4 goals. Unfortunately, the team landed in Germany only to swiftly return home. At the time it was a massive deal and still, to this day, Aylesbury United remain the only non-league team to have played against the English National side. In fact, it was such a momentous occasion that TV cameras were allowed into both dressing rooms prior to the match. There are plenty of familiar faces in the video clip, above, for you to spot, and doesn’t it just make you wonder – if only Mr. Capello would allow us such access to his team. It just wouldn’t happen, would it?