With Euro 2024 just days away, supermarkets in England and Scotland have been busy stocking their shelves with a broad range of football merchandise.
As is the case during every major footy tournament, flags, bunting and window stickers bearing the cross of St George are produced en masse ready for excited England fans to buy in-store. One Three Lions supporter was left confused on a recent trip to his local branch of the German chain, however.
Taking to Reddit, he shared a snap of England socks being sold in Lidl, which alongside the country's flag, has the text, 'GBR'. It prompted him to ask in the CasualUK subreddit: "Why are Lidl selling socks with the England flag and GBR on?"
He elaborated: "Was looking for a teddy of the Euro 2024 mascot and spotted these socks. It's strange, right? You get two pairs, and the red ones don't have the Great Britain lettering on. Also for anyone else looking it seems they are selling [Euro 2024 mascot] Albärt in stores for £7.99."
The post drew a variety of theories, with Reddit users in disagreement over whether it was in fact a deliberate 'error'.
"My guess would be that someone was commissioned to design a series of socks and decided to go with each country's flag and their ISO 3166-alpha 3 country code for the design," one user explained. "There are Google results for NED and POL socks with the same design.
"The designer probably Googled 'England country code' and got the UK's country code back - which is GBR. There is also GB-ENG for specifically England but I guess that wouldn't fit with the other designs. I'm curious whether there is a Scotland sock that also has GBR on it but I can't find one online."
Another speculated in agreement: "These are 'designed' in Bangladesh or China, wherever they are produced and then just offered to all of the retailers. The nuances of GB versus UK versus the individual countries will be lost on them."
A third pondered: "Coz we got the Olympics and the Euros this summer. It's so tightwads can just turn our socks wrong way round instead of buying 2 pairs. Genius."
A fourth cursed: "It's just sh***y unofficial merchandise that doesn’t need much thought put into it to get the order. 90% of the value delivered is that it’s socks for (I assume) less than a tenner, then slap a St George cross and three initials on it to eke out some more value since the football is on."
Whilst a fifth joked: "Most comments here are flat out wrong, they are very obviously socks to commemorate the rollout of the Great British Railway."
England kick off their Euro 2024 campaign on Sunday (June 16th) as they face Serbia. Scotland, meanwhile, play hosts Germany in the opening game of the tournament two days earlier.
Mirror online has invited Lidl to comment.