English club Oxford United has issued an apology after its new merchandise collection accidentally featured a connection to the 9/11 attacks.
On Friday morning, Oxford United — which sits in League One, the third tier of English football — released its new Campus Collection, which included clothes inspired by American sports jerseys. One of the items, an American football-style jersey, featured the words “United 93” in reference to the franchise’s founding in 1893.
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As a result, Oxford found themselves on the other end of an unfortunate coincidence: The drop came one week after the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. One of the planes that was hijacked in the attack was United Airlines Flight 93.
In a statement released on Friday, Oxford United apologized for launching the collection without vetting the merchandise, and said that the collection had been removed from its website.
“Oxford United would like to sincerely apologize for the recent launch of the Campus Collection. The range was released without understanding of the historical context and associations. It should not have reached the point of sale and we take full responsibility for not undertaking proper due diligence,” the statement read. “We have removed the collection with immediate effect and are reviewing out approval processes to ensure nothing like this happens again. Once again, we would like to put on record our sincere apologies for this error and for any offense caused.”
Multiple reports indicate that the new collection, which was launched around 10 am local time on Friday, was deleted from the club’s website about two hours later.
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Oxford had reportedly planned to release the merchandise last week, with The Athletic reporting that the club wanted to drop information about the collection on Sept. 9 to coincide with the start of the NFL season. The club then decided to push the release back to Friday so as not to collide with the anniversary of the attacks. However, those efforts did not limit the backlash to the collection.
United Airlines Flight 93, which departed from Newark and was headed to San Francisco, was hijacked by terrorists with a plan to crash the plane in Washington DC Passengers and crew regained control of the plane to keep it from its intended target, but the plane eventually crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board.
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A feature film called “United 93,” which told the story of the passengers’ efforts to fight back, was made in 2006.
