Football fans of a distinguished vintage may recall the frisson of excitement when, on receipt of your favourite weekly magazine of choice (‘Shoot’ for the connoisseurs, ‘Four Four Two’ for the poseurs, ‘Match’ for godless heathens), one could skip to the back and marvel goggle-eyed at all the cool kit your parents couldn’t possibly afford to buy you.
We’re talking metallic blue Valsport boots, Reusch goalie gloves, random Deportivo la Coruna away shorts, etc, etc – the whole caboodle.
As it happens, things were much the same in France as evidenced by this fabulous ‘Maillots du Monde’ (‘Shirts of the World’) mail order magazine advert for the ‘Foot Center’ shop just outside Dijon.
Where else could you possibly hope to find the new Sochaux, China, Kuwait, Chicago Sting and Leeds United kits all under the same roof, and all for around £50 (adjusted for inflation) a pop!
Pies might have a bash at printing off the order form, posting it to Messigny and seeing if we can still get our hands on that sweet, sweet Adidas sweatshirt.