Probably like a lot of male 30-something football fans I was sad to hear about the closure of long-term football magazine ‘Shoot’ last week. The publication was a football institution as far as I was concerned and although it had lost its way over recent years I still have fond memories of poring over its pages as a small boy, looking at the latest kits and seldom seen away outfits.
I was lucky enough to come across a whole batch of Shoot magazines from the late 70s/early 80s recently and although the replica kit market was still relatively new I was delighted to see them packed with some memorable ads for replica outfits. Here are a selection of them:
I was an avid reader of Shoot during my younger days in the 1980’s and 90’s, always bought it every week until my attentions started turning to other football publications. I too used to always find out about the latest kits when they got released, back then of course the likes of Shoot used to be the only resource given the lack of the internet.
I’m rather saddened to hear about the magazine’s demise 🙁
As was I, used to love getting every Thursday (two days later than England here in Ireland!). Used to love seeing the ads for sports shops and seeing all the different kits, especially the ones from abroad
Shame Shoot has now bit the dust, and is not only available as a Tesco’s football mag.
Shame Nobby, or You Are The Ref isn’t in it though.
Umbro run a serious of adverts earlier than your with 4 stripes on a page (slightly angled) showing 4 different club’s players in their colours, it was late 70s as all the shirts had the diamonds down the sleeve.
Shoot was my first ever footy mag when it caught my eye with the Mexico 86 review. I bought it for years until I grew out of it, though I’d still always buy it when the World Cup was on as they covered it all in their special supplements. In later years though, it went the same way as Match and was just full of tacky adverts and lame features to appeal to the so called text generation’. A great shame, but hardly surprising given the availability of info now available on the net.
how come most of those kits have no sponsors logos on? i’m referring to the later kits,the 1984 ones such as the ‘sharp electronics’ Man Utd and ‘avco’ west ham ones.I had the Man Utd one and it had the sponsor on.
It was not always the norm to have sponsors on replica shirts John. I guess back then they thought who in their right mind would want to parade around with Sharp or JVC on their shirts! I owned several Liverpool kits from about 79-86, and none of them had sponsors logos except for the first adidas kit of 85-86. I think they were available though…they may have cost more.
“Shoot!” or “Match” was essential reading at the beginning of each season, just to see the advertisements for the new kits. I remember one year (it must have been around 1984-ish) that Umbro took out a four-page advertisement in Shoot and you got to see every new Umbro kit they released for teams in England and Scotland. New kit heaven! The advertisement I remember most from back then was the one for “Goalpost”. No photos as I recall, just teams listed with (H) or (A) next to their names.
Re: the question about sponsors not being on kits: when I started collecting shirts in the early 80s, sponsors on shirts cost extra. I don’t remember how much extra, but you did have to fork out more. I think around 1984 it became standard. What I find weird is that nowadays, you can pay extra NOT to have the sponsor on the shirt. Rangers charged an extra £5 last season.
I also remember the Umbro (full) kits being released in cardboard presentation boxes (early 80s). One Christmas I got the Rangers and Brazil home kits in those display cases – and the reason why our local sport shop was reluctant to sell the shirt, shorts and socks separately.