There’s a problem with patches at Euro2024

The UEFA Foundation for Children is a charity founded by UEFA in 2015 on the initiative of then president Michel Platini. The aim, as reported in the official description, is to defend the rights of underprivileged children by using the power of football to improve their lives and to help them develop their potential and find their place in the community. The foundation currently invests in 180 projects over 94 countries worldwide. From Africa to Asia passing through all the continents, more than 800,000 children have already benefited from the foundation's work since its creation. The importance of the UEFA Foundation for Children has grown in recent years also due to the ever-increasing media exposure that UEFA itself has dedicated to it, an exposure perfectly represented by the patch on the left sleeve of the kits of all the teams participating in Euro2024.

Well, that patch is creating problems though. Very simply, it comes off. A malfunction was detected immediately given that the first incident that was recorded occurred during Italy-Albania, a match played on the second day of the competition. In detail, the patch has almost completely detached from Italy players' shirts. The effect was that of a sticker that remained glued only on one side while the rest of the patch hung in the air. Italy-Albania was not an isolated case, neither in terms of teams nor in terms of kit manufacturers. For example, this same incident also occurred during Turkey-Georgia, with Turkey's Nike shirts having patches hanging from them, and during Austria-Poland too, with Austria's Puma shirts experiencing the same problem.

This is a malfunction never seen before, in the sense that the UEFA Foundation for Children’s patches have been seen more recently on the jerseys of the teams participating in the Champions League but in this case no accidents have ever occurred. Euro2024 represents a rather curious first time in the sense that it is difficult to find a cause and effect relationship. For example, it is not something connected to just one atmospheric condition given that the accidents occurred both in the evening in the rain or during the day under the sun. It is not even a dynamic that involves a specific kit manufacturer given that, as we underlined previously, it has been a situation experienced by different suppliers and therefore, consequently, occurred with different materials. It is not even an exclusive issue of UEFA because for instance the official Euro2024 patch did not cause many problems. It could be a combination of all these factors in addition to, for example, a manufacturing defect in the patches. Nevertheless it could be considered a small stylistic quirk, one that enhances the uniqueness of a tournament like Euro2024, which has already been hailed as the greatest European Championship by journalists and fans.