Goalies in Headgear

Petr Cech isn’t the first goalkeeper to grace the Englist league with headgear. Before Stephen Hunt crashed into Cech…forcing him to play with his protective helmet there was the always colorful Bruce “Crazy Legs” Grobbelaar.

Petr Cech v. Bruce Grobbelaar

More CrazyLegs…and a surprise guest after the jump

What I love about Saturday mornings

Batigoal!

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Acme Soccer & Widget Works

Half comic book, half soccer catalog…that’s probably the best way I could describe the Acme Soccer & Widget Works catalog. Each catalog followed Billy Preston and his team FC Nil. Bill and his teammates would face different obstacles in each catalog. Billy gets his Acme Boots Stolen in this issue…quickly needing another pair of quality boots at a reasonable price…before FC Nil faces off against the mighty Bayern Monster.

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Simply the Copa

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

Baby faced Brad Friedel

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

Apprentice: Brian McBride

I remember my high school coach mention he was heading off to the University of Dayton to watch one of the best players in the country, Brian McBride, and the rest of the St. Louis University soccer team take on the UD Flyers after practice one day. I knew who Brian McBride was. His name always seemed to grace the Soccer Americas that I received weekly…much like Claudio Reyna did at the time. I did not realize that I would still be talking about him some 10+ years later.

More McBride after the jump

Apprentice: Frankie Hejduk

One of the things I love most about flipping through old catalogs is seeing the footballing stars of today as fresh, green, young players. Remember young Frankie Hejduk?

More Frankie

Who was behind Soccer Madness?

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 am Zlatan…and I am great.”

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?