The Fall 1994 Eurosport provides an interesting look into the production of a Copa Mundial.

Take a look into the production of a Copa Mundial

I found some nice shots of Brad Friedel while flipping through the Winter 94/Spring 95 Soccer Madness Catalog. Brad would have been playing in either Denmark with Brondby or in Turkey with Galatasaray when he posed for these photos.

More photos of a young Brad Friedel

Soccer Madness produced colorful, glossy catalogs that paid as much detail to art direction as it did to soccer. The Soccer Madness catalogs always felt more like a magazine than a catalog. The pages were glossy, in full color and always contained great action shots. The catalog set itself apart from other catalogs I was receiving at the time in the sense that it had high profile stars wearing Soccer Madness products. John Harkes, Marco Van Basten, Ruud Gullit, Tony Meola and Roberto Baggio were just a handful of footballers pitching the Soccer Madness brand.

I always wondered how the Florida based company managed to land such high profile stars to hawk their gear. From what I can gather, the company does not appear to be in existence anymore…or…if they are in existence they’re not doing anything with the soccermadness.com url…aside from redirecting to starstruck.com. How was it that Soccer Madness was able to snap a photo of a young Paulo Maldini wearing a Soccer Madness cap? How were they able to get Marco Van Basten to don a Soccer Madness sweatshirt for a few pics? The biggest soccer catalog, Eurosport, never featured professionals wearing Eurosport branded t-shirts.

Who was the brains behind the Soccer Madness machine?

I was talking to Jay and Heather the other day about Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Apparently, Heather is quite taken with saying his name…”Zlatan Ibrahimovic.” It’s almost as fun to say as it is to spell.

Anytime someone brings up Zlatan I tend to talk about two thigns: a) how is “Zlatan Ibrahimovic” Swedish (turns out he’s of Bosnian and Croatian descent) and 2) the gum incident.

“What gum incident?” you say?

Back in 1993 Soccer Master sent out a request asking for “profiles of American soccer.” I remember I penned some lines about myself, enclosed a really awkward striking photo of myself and dropped it in the mail.

Months passed…I had totally forgotten about the submission. We returned home from a family vacation in Hilton Head and what do I find in the mail? A copy of Soccer Master…but it’s not like the usual Soccer Masters I had received in the past…this one was packaged in a padded envelope.

Continue to the awkward part