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

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

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

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?