No, it's quite common for co-branded gear nowadays, Umbro do a lot of it. Some of them quite odd, they've done Umbro x New Order, Umbro x Gio Goi, Umbro x Percival, Umbro x Boiler Room, the Umbro x Castore one is just on a bigger scale and is likely to be more long term.
They used too much spandex. I took one to Pakistan and we run some tests on it. They had about 11% more spandex in than a normal football shirt. I've got a video somewhere of the testing but I don't know how to upload them anyway
I think it was a case of taking over the existing kit deals that umbro held in certain countries . Umbro as such is still owned by Iconix who bought it off Nike over a decade ago .
They own the teamsports licence for Umbro, so effectively took over the juicy part of the brand. Unless you like those retro Umbro tops Sports Direct peddle.
Umbro were fab, my favourite kits I think, but not anymore. Castore now own the rights Umbro and Castore are utter ****e.
Castore was started by two brothers in Manchester, less than ten years ago and they've already built a £190m turnover business. It's very impressive, though they ****ed some stuff up last year and managed to lose £30m and I've got a friend who's a fairly major supplier and he says it's a very chaotic organisation.
