Memories in a Mailbox
Filed under: Culture
I was having a conversation with a friend over the weekend, and the infamous Eurosport catalogue got brought up. If you are, or were, anything like me, the arrival of this famed catalogue held some sort of magical power.
This might be hard for some of you cats to imagine, but for a long time (even after the Internet was holding things down), Europsort was the only source of the latest and greatest gear for soccer geeks like me. Finding the Eurosport catalogue in the mailbox was like finding a treasure chest of everything that I wanted to cop. Boots, jerseys, training gear, bags, accessories…this was my Willy Wonka Factory and I wanted all of it.
The thing is, the arrival of the Eurosport Catalogue represented one of those simple things in life. A collection of everything that a kid could want and dream of, interspersed with photos of the players that they idolized. Hard to imagine the mailman dropping off anything more exciting (hold off on the jokes here). You always knew the catalogue would arrive at some point, you just never knew when. So its arrival always made my day and kept me busy marking off item after item that I was trying to figure out a way to get my hands on.
Things may have changed a bit since these days. Everything you want is a click away, and that is an amazing thing. As much as I embrace the Internet, I’ll always have an affinity for printed material. Be that magazines, books or catalogues…and even more so when it is filled with all the latest soccer equipment I could possibly imagine. I have no idea if there is a future for physical catalogues, but every once in awhile it’s good to look back and remember.
right on….that catalog was always a welcome site in the mailbox. seeing the old-school cover brings back some memories….thanks!
I remember when they started selling replica jerseys. I circled about 8 of them I wanted for Christmas and hinted to my parents about what I wanted. I had serious wood for that magazine
Soccer porno
what i really miss is ACME!!! everything was like $2
Found a recent catalogue laying around at a sportclips - heisted it right there and then.
And don’t forget the VHS highlights tapes….
i tell my foreign friends all the time — growing up the eurosport catalogue was the only regular way to get news about soccer, especially american soccer. i was just a kid and couldn’t afford Soccer America, and there were no soccer websites or anything like that. i still get eurosport and look through the whole catalogue once a month.
I used to save every issue, sometimes I would get two and cut out the sweet Nike ads and photos from the extra one.
the real question is: where do you get that feeling today? in the 24-hour news cycle, in the wired world of internet, where does a guy go to get that feeling beyond a memory?
Adam -
I purposely wait for the catalogue to show up in the mail before I go online to buy something. Eurosport still comes to my mailbox and that’s still my soccer fix.
A little sucking up here, but I also go to TIAS for a solid in-depth soccer story that I can fix on.
Awesome post. No lie, I still have a copy of that exact Eurosport. Eurosport was the best, but I also loved TSI and Soccer World too.
I was devistated when I no longer got ACME in the mail…I would wait for the boots i wanted to go on clearance there!
Damn. This post made my day. Those walks to the mailbox were my favorite. I loved that catalog.
I used to feel the same way about the old style Soccer America magazine.
I remember receiving my first one as a handout at a soccer game. Biblical.