Why Wales’ new kit feels like an own goal

Mike Gwynne

I will be honest. When I saw the new Cymru home kit yesterday my first thought was not about the design. It was about the badge on the chest.

Not the FAW crest. The other one.

For thirteen years Wales wore Adidas. Three stripes. The same manufacturer as Germany, Spain, Argentina. The biggest kit brand in the world. When Gareth Bale scored the only goal against Belgium on his fiftieth cap, when Ramsey and Bale tore Russia apart in Toulouse, when the Red Wall filled the away ends of France in the summer of 2016, Wales were wearing Adidas.

That mattered. Not because of the logo. Because of what the logo said about where Welsh football had arrived. Wales had earned the right to be dressed by the best.

Yesterday that changed. And I think we went backwards.

What actually happened

The FAW has moved from Adidas to SUDU, a relatively new brand that most Welsh football supporters had never heard of before yesterday. The switch was reportedly driven by financial pressure. Wales failed to qualify for the 2026 World Cup and the commercial revenue that would have followed never materialised. Something had to give.

SUDU’s previous work includes Wolverhampton Wanderers. Their approach, according to the FAW, rejects templated designs in favour of bespoke work rooted in the identity of the club or nation they are working with.

For the Wales kit that meant traditional Welsh double cloth weaving and tapestry craftsmanship. The FAW worked with St Fagans National Museum of History. A year in the making. Players involved in the design process.

The intention was clearly right. The result divided supporters immediately and almost entirely in one direction.

The design problem

The tonal geometric weaving pattern is not an offensive design. It is considered and well executed. The connection to Welsh craft tradition is genuine.

But it does not feel like Wales.

It feels like a brand trying to tell a Welsh story rather than Wales telling its own story. There is a difference between a design rooted in Welsh identity and a design rooted in research about Welsh identity. One comes from the inside. The other, however well intentioned, comes from the outside looking in.

Welsh football supporters felt that immediately. The memes were not just about aesthetics. They were about recognition. Or the lack of it.

When you put on a Wales shirt it should make you feel something specific. It should connect you to the away end in Bordeaux, to the Ukraine playoff, to every qualifying campaign you sat through in the lean years because Wales was your team and that was reason enough. That feeling is almost impossible to design in a workshop. It has to be earned.

The Adidas Wales shirts of the past decade earned it. Not all of them were perfect. But they felt like they belonged to the same story as the football being played in them.

Why the manufacturer matters

This is the part that bothers me most.

Wales should be partnered with the biggest kit manufacturer they can get. Not out of vanity. Because it signals something about where Welsh football stands in the world.

Adidas was the pinnacle. Germany wear Adidas. Spain wear Adidas. Argentina wear Adidas. When Wales were in that company it said something about the trajectory of Welsh football. About what Gareth Bale and the generation that followed him had built.

Moving to a brand that most supporters had never heard of, for financial reasons, at a time when Welsh football is trying to rebuild after missing a World Cup, sends the wrong signal. It says we are going backwards rather than forwards.

I understand the financial reality. The FAW is not flush with cash. SUDU offered a deal that worked. These decisions are made in boardrooms not on terraces. But that does not mean supporters have to pretend the signal is a good one.

What Welsh football supporters were actually saying

The backlash yesterday was not really about the pattern on the shirt. It was about the feeling that Welsh football deserved better.

The supporters who were most vocal are the ones who care most. The ones who were in the away end in Bordeaux in 2016. The ones who paid their own money to follow Wales to places nobody else wanted to go. The ones who built the Red Wall before it had a name.

Those people look at the official shirt and want to feel something. They want to feel like Wales. Like the country that went to a semi-final. Like the fanbase that changed how Welsh football sounded and looked to the rest of the world.

When the shirt does not give them that feeling, they say so. Loudly. Because they have earned the right.

The kit will change again

The SUDU deal runs until 2028. Two years. Then there will be a new conversation about a new supplier and a new design.

Welsh football kits have been brilliant and they have been forgettable in equal measure. The 2016 Adidas away shirt is still talked about as one of the best Wales have ever worn. Some get forgotten quickly.

What does not change is the relationship between Welsh football supporters and their team. The same people who were furious yesterday will be in the away end in Lisbon for the first Nations League game. They will follow Wales to Copenhagen and Oslo. They will still sing Yma O Hyd.

Because that is what following Wales means. It has very little to do with what shirt you are wearing while you do it.

Mike Gwynne is founder of Made In Wales – clothing for Welsh people who carry Wales with them.

Find out more here…

https://www.madeincymru.com/
https://www.madeincymru.com/collections/the-ones-that-know
https://www.madeincymru.com/blogs/y-stori

READ MORE:

Fan backlash as Wales launch ‘worst football shirt in history’

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