Jamie Vardy is the hot topic this week, with the Leicester City striker’s move to Arsenal on hold as he focuses on Euro 2016 and the hitman’s popularity is in no doubt as he has been named in the starting XI of best selling Euro 2016 shirts by leading football shirt retailer UKSoccershop.com.
Based on data compiled on sales of every player in the last 30 days, Vardy joins Zlatan Ibrahimovic as the most sought after player shirts for strikers going to Euro 2016.
UKSoccershop Managing Director Simon Pretswell said: “For the past couple of months, Vardy has been the hot property as far as shirt sales go. The interesting thing about it is this is not just Leicester fans buying the kit – we are getting orders from America, Australia, Europe and even Zambia! It seems the whole world has bought into the Leicester fairytale and in particular the Vardy story”.
Interestingly, only four members of the starting XI are based in the Premier League, with Manchester City’s Vincent Kompany and Kevin De Bruyne joining Arsenal’s Mesut Ozil in making up the quartet.
“It doesn’t surprise us”, said Pretswell. “Football is such a global game now and fans have access to all the top leagues and players. We sell as many shirts for the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich as we do for the top Premier League teams, so we anticipated that many of their stars would be popular.”
Indeed, those three clubs alone contribute more players than the Premier League, with Manuel Neuer, Sergio Ramos, Gerard Pique, David Alaba and Cristiano Ronaldo all featuring.
One man who may well be Premier League bound though is Zlatan Ibrahimovic. “He’s just a license to print money,” said Pretswell. “Even after he retires, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was still in our best selling list year after year! We’d love to see him in the Premier League next season, because whether he joins the team you support or not, he’s box office and that can only be good for the league.”
Based on shirt sales, which are 34% up on the previous European Championships, it seems that Euro 2016 has captured the imagination of football fans around the world.
