Not worn in play

Pale-blue shorts, with white drawstring. A white strip comprising upper-third of seams, with navy-blue diagonal stripes rising from right to left, with two navy-blue concentric diamonds after every fourth stripe. Large white triangle, overlapped with a slightly lower large navy-blue triangle, underneath navy-blue stripes. Two embroidered navy-blue concentric diamonds on left thigh, with 'umbro' in navy-blue lower-case lettering underneath. Navy-blue numbers on right thigh in the same font as on the 1986 World Cup and 1988 European Championship shorts, with embroidered emblem underneath.

Pale-blue socks, with navy-blue turnover, three white lions on each.

This sky-blue shirt, the 1990 second choice, including the World Cup insignia, was issued to the England squad but never worn in match play.  England wore the 1990 white home shirt in all seven of their matches in Italy.

Yet again, a blue kit was surplus to requirements. It seems that only England were prepared to take three choices of kit to the World Cup finals, when they were only instructed to register two. An indication of its marketable value, however, came in the weeks leading up to the tournament. The England squad recorded a song (World in Motion), with the band, New Order, whose lead singer, Bernard Sumner, was filmed in the promotional video for the single in May, wearing this new blue shirt (without the World Cup lettering). The single shot to the top of the UK charts and the shirt got plenty of subliminal advertising, no doubt prompting replica sales to rise during a successful tournament for England.

This design did actually appear, the following year, for one international match, without the World Cup lettering, where the white band across the chest of Turkey's red shirts, gave the FA a reason to replace the white home shirt with the blue.

The first two photos at the top left of the page are of the shirt issued to Neil Webb. They appear by kind permission of the Neville Evans National Football Shirt Collection (curator Simon Shakeshaft).

Next picture along (the number 17 shirt) is signed by the whole squad and it was issued to David Platt. This shirt is part of Richard Clarke's Morrell Collection.