It’s quite a phenomenon that, somehow, a football kit fan’s interest is similarly piqued by something new and something familiarly vintage.
These 1994 “Soccer Master” catalogue pages, which were brought to our attention by Jimmy from The Glove Bag, are fittingly goalkeeper apparel-heavy. With adidas and Umbro shirts which equally scream “mid-nineties” and “don’t hesitate to wear me on Hackney Marshes the moment the pandemic’s done”, and trefoiled and double diamonded work of art gloves, our current era somehow holds a mirror up to the USA-hosted World Cup’s epoque.
And several outfield international shirts from that tournament feature too. Several demand being labelled as approximations with hindsight, unashamedly the adidas t-shirt versions for the US and Germany, but half the fun for a kit geek is the “spot the difference” outlet for pedantry. And who would decline these designs on technicalities today?
Lotto and Reebok make the cut too, with designs which enchant in 2020, when they would perhaps have induced cringes a decade ago. But there’s no time to philosophise and analyse; here, there’s too much on which to feast your eyes.
Thanks to Jimmy from The Glove Bag - tgbjimmy on Twitter - for bringing this to our attention.
