P 8 W 5 D 2 L 1 F 17:A 6
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ENGLAND

v

JAPAN

01ˇ06ˇ2004

Silver shorts, with white drawstring. Navy blue hem. Red waistband around back of shorts becoming a diagonal stripe curving inwards, before running down three-quarters of seams diagonally back towards the reverse and ending in a point. Small red cross in a white diamond in middle of waistband on back of shorts. Two embroidered navy blue concentric diamonds on left thigh. Navy blue number, in the same font as on the shirt, above the Umbro logo on left thigh. Embroidered emblem on right thigh, with 'ENGLAND' in capitalised white lettering inside a navy blue panel above the emblem.

Red socks. Two large white concentric diamonds on calf. English flag on back of calf. Small red cross in a white diamond on each heel. White footings, with red stripe running across top of each foot.

• Against Croatia, England had logos sewn-on to the upper sleeves. The 'Euro 2004' tournament logo was on the right arm and the UEFA Fair Play logo was on the left arm.
• In the game against Azerbaijan, England had a black and white FIFA WORLD CUP GERMANY 2006 logo heat-pressed onto the upper right sleeve.
• The names of England's opponents, as they appeared in the match details, were AZERBAIJAN, CROATIA, HOLLAND, ICELAND, JAPAN, POLAND, SWEDEN and UKRAINE. England were named first in the four home fixtures, and second in the other four fixtures, which were all played away from home.
• Against the Netherlands, the match details were positioned centrally at the bottom of the shirt, just above the hem. NO TO RACISM was displayed in large silver capitalised lettering underneath the number on the chest and the LET'S KEEP RACISM OUT OF FOOTBALL badge was sewn on to the upper right sleeve.

7 - Ashley Cole, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Gary Neville, Michael Owen

• 34 players appeared in this kit, in only eight games, coincidentally, the same number of players that wore each of the two previous kits.

• Cole was on the field for the longest time in this shirt, by eight minutes more than Owen, not counting time added for stoppages at the end of each half.

• 6 players won their first cap in this shirt. Among them were Jermain Defoe and Shaun Wright-Phillips.

• Two of them, Anthony Gardner and Alan Thompson, made their debuts in the same game as Defoe (against Sweden), but unlike the striker, they were never capped again. Gardner only played for 45 minutes (the second half).

• Gareth Southgate was the only other player to make his last international appearance in the shirt. It was his 57th cap.

• Jonathan Woodgate won eight England caps over a nine-year period. He played for four different coaches and wore six different England kit designs. He wore this one on its debut, against Sweden.

4 - Wayne Rooney

3 - Michael Owen

2 - Frank Lampard, Darius Vassell

• Rooney's goals against Croatia, which helped England qualify for the European Championship quarter-finals, took his total for the season to nine. If he had scored one more, he would have been the first England international to hit double figures in a season since Gary Lineker in 1991. Rooney did eventually hit double figures for England in 2008-9.

• 3 players scored their first international goal in this shirt. Jermain Defoe had gone on to score 15 by the end of 2010, whilst Wayne Bridge's goal against Iceland has been his only one to date.

• Vassell's brace against Iceland took his tally to six, on which he remained for the rest of his international career.

• Paul Scholes' 14th and last international goal was the equaliser against Croatia, which set England on their way to a vital 4-2 win.

6 - David Beckham

1 - Steven Gerrard, Michael Owen

• Beckham only missed two games, with Gerrard stepping in to captain the side for the first time, against Sweden, when Beckham and Owen were injured, and Owen taking the armband in Azerbaijan, when Beckham was suspended.

England's extremely attractive 2004 red away strip made its appearance in accord with the regular cycle, under which home and away strips were changed in alternate years, so that a new shirt was now appearing every year.

The shirt was the same shade of red that England wore when winning the World Cup in 1966 and featured the same rounded neck. Like the red shirt of the 1960s and early 1970s, it lacked any trace of blue outside the three-lions emblem.

Most notable on the shirt were the St. George's crosses on the shoulders, which were the only embellishments on a very clean design. The gold star, which made its relatively unobtrusive debut on the sleeve of the 2003 home white shirt, was moved to a spot above the three-lions emblem, in conformity with the practice adopted by other national sides that have won the World Cup.

A new heat-regulating fabric called 'X-static' was used for the red shirt and, for the first time, it featured silver player names and numbers, rather than the usual white. The 'silverwear' theme continued with silvery white shorts, whilst the Umbro logo on the shorts returned to the left thigh, after its brief visit to the right on the 2003 white and navy shorts.

Umbro also got away with a very clever marketing trick on this kit. Regulations limited the displaying of manufacturers' logos to one on the shirt, one on the shorts and one on each sock, but as the Umbro diamond was such an instantly recognisable brand, they added a red cross inside a small diamond shape on the back of the neck, the back of the waistband, and on each heel. Unless you were observing them at close quarters, they appeared to be extra (illegal) Umbro logos, when in actual fact, they were English flag embellishments in the same shape as the logo. Thus, Umbro managed to circumnavigate the restrictions, quite legitimately, with what were, to all intents and purposes, additional subliminal adverts.

The kit was launched in the spring of 2004, in plenty of time for the European Championship in Portugal and it received maximum exposure in all of England's internationals before the tournament, including the two games at the City of Manchester Stadium, as part of the Football Association's Summer Tournament (though officially still late spring). It appeared for a stirring victory against Croatia, as England booked their place in the quarter-finals of 'Euro 2004' and for four games in the following season. The final appearance, a friendly against the Dutch, coincided with UEFA's anti-racism campaign and saw England wearing a slogan on their shirts for the first time in their history. Their opponents, for their part, wore a symbolic shirt of black and white halves.