The mighty Russian Eagles provide England’s opposition in both countries opening game in the tournament. Adidas have ensured that they are already one-up in the kit game before a ball is kicked. The home shirt colours are collegiate burgundy and dark football gold apparently but are really just a fetching shade of dark red. The home shirt has a shadow pattern dotted around the body, showing the Russian eagle. Each one is used to represent a different chemist who has ‘helped’ the various Russian sports federations in the quest for mediocrity.
During the Soviet era the Russian players helped to form part of a team that used to consistently reach the latter stages of major tournaments and had far better kits than their current de-unified brethren. Nowadays the Russian’s are basically a better-funded version of Ukraine without the vests and pony-tails.
Adidas’s ads for the strip show five Russian lads staring moodily into the middle distance but I’ve no idea who the lads are. They probably earn a million pounds a week and play for Spartak Dynamo Zenit FC but your Russians have failed to produce a footballing superstar since that fat lad who had a season at Millwall and they could just be lads from the Adidas warehouse in Novosibisrk tbf.
The white away shirt is probably the winner of the two. Nice clean lines, simple elegant collar and probably the most effective use of Adidas’s new thing of placing the three stripes down the body rather than the sleeves. Both kits contain a lot of subtle, small detailing and patterns. The home shirt features the legend ‘Homophobic twats’ embroidered into the neckline whilst the away shirt features a shadow-print image on the chest portraying a dramatic re-imagining of Vladimir Putin’s most erotic cum-shot.
