Head here for all your favourite football memories as a kid. Mmmnnn - soft new Patrick boots with the tag… And playing on pitches where the ball sucked up so much water when it rained that you’d attempt a pass and it’d go about 6 ft…
And then give you a brain haemorrhage if you attempted to head it
Playing on a pitch that had goalpost made out of plastic drainpipe …
These being the best gloves known to man …
Also - shout out to Adidas Connection, which was THE place for all the Ivan Lendl tennis attire, plus the best trainers of the era. I frequented the Oxford store.
As I mentioned in the other thread - there was a fantastic goalkepper shop in Caversham, iirc, just outside Reading. Quite unusual to have such a niche shop in that era, and they stocked every brand of glove known at the time, but yes, uhlsport, were the daddies!
Yeah heding that ball hurt… We had a kid we played football with - Eddie Jones - and his dad wouldn’t let him head the ball as he said it killed too many braincells hehe.
One of the highlights of my career was when I played for Blackburn Rovers and we had Uhlsport as the kit manufacturer and the brand rep came in with a catalogue asking us to take our pick and he would sort it out!
99p Flyaways, mastering one of these was a whole new skill in itself.
The original knuckleball …
Got one for my 11th bday, had it roughly 2 or 3 days before I kicked against a fence and a 6" nail went right through it
Remember the excitement in the playground when the Tango Espana came out and one of my mates whose parents were loaded bought him one for his birthday.
Ah yes so many memories
First match I got taken to by my Dad, Blackburn v Man City, the old second division. 1985. All I remember is fans fighting in the stand above us. Peak hoolie era.
Getting woke up in the middle of the night to watch England in the Mexico 86 World Cup. Pique the most Balearic WC mascot
Pretending to be Mark Hately in the park
Full Members Cup Final, Wembley 1987. Blackburn v Charlton. Some fucker threw a fire work backwards and hit me on the arse, got taken down to A&E and missed most of the game. We won 1-0.
There was always one of these knocking about
I had the fire strike TR ones my dad wouldn’t get me airstrike or eurostrike and Adidas World Cup they were incredible boots. Think my first ones were Patrick Keegan Kid seem to remember them being like wearing wood on my feet.
I had a pair of these too
Picture this. It’s Christmas Day 2002, myself and the rest of the kids in my street were all real close and we’d play street football every day without fail and Christmas Day was no exception. We all rise early open our presents, get decked out in all our new clobber and meet outside for the big game. Liam my next door neighbour at the time and childhood best friend brings out this silver Nike scorpion ball he got for Christmas. It was amazing, some might even say mind blowing. It was definitely the best thing I had ever seen up to that point. So we all pick teams and get going. No more than 30 seconds into the match one of the lads receives the ball at his feet and fancies his chances so strikes it clean through the laces somewhat reminiscent of a Roberto Carlos free kick and the ball goes straight through someone’s living room window. We all froze for a second then once we realised what had happened we scarpered. We never seen that Nike scorpion ball ever again and the people whose house it was had to spend Christmas sat eating dinner with the most perfect circle hole through their living room window.
I’ve just looked up that same ball on eBay.