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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Daniel Lavelle

Adidas bans fans from adding ‘44’ to German team football shirt

Adidas’s new German team shirt
Historian Michael König raised concern over the ‘very questionable’ design of the new German team kit. Composite: Adidas

Adidas has banned football fans from customising the German national shirt with the number 44 due to its perceived resemblance to the symbol used by Nazi SS units during the second world war.

The Schutzstaffel (SS), a paramilitary organisation of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, was tasked with carrying out the industrialised genocide of Jewish people across Europe.

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