In an online video, Farage says (with all the enthusiasm of a middle manager forced to give a speech on an office away day): “We are Reform FC and I’m proud to be its manager. What a season we’re having. We’re right at the top of the leaderboard [he must mean “table” as this isn’t golf], we’re nine points clear of our nearest rival and we need your support.”
The shirt has come in for criticism for two reasons.
First because before the European Championship in 2021, Farage said that then-England men’s team manager Gareth Southgate was “out of touch” and that England fans “have a right to boo when players take the knee for Marxist BLM” (likely meaning the Black Lives Matter movement and not the U.S. government’s Bureau of Land Management, nor, indeed, France’s former finance minister and erotic novelist Bruno Le Maire). Farage added, “Let’s keep politics out of football.”
The second source of criticism was that the Union Flag on the Reform shirt is in turquoise and white, and yet manufacturer Nike received a torrent of abuse in 2014 when they brought out an official shirt on which the England flag’s traditional red cross had been altered to one with navy, light blue and purple (and of course purple is the wokest of all the colors).
Farage called the flag design choice “an absolute joke” and was joined in the condemnation by Keir Starmer (then opposition leader) and Rishi Sunak (then prime minister).
In Farage’s defense, he admits that football is not his favorite sport. He told former football star Matthew Le Tissier (who has shared 9/11, anti-vaccine and Ukraine war conspiracies on social media) that he prefers cricket (just like in Genoa) but that his football team is Crystal Palace, who, ironically for a team followed by the leading Brexiteer, are playing in Europe this season.