As we are approaching Christmas, I have been thinking about the best football related Christmas gifts I’ve received in my life. As I was a football nut as a kid, football gifts were a large part of my childhood.

Here are a few that stuck out in my memory.

1. Subbuteo Set

Do you know what Subbuteo is? Do you know what Subbuteo WAS, is probably the better way to phrase that question. When I was a kid, Subbuteo would take up a huge amount of real estate in any self respecting toy shop. Subbuteo was a game that involved flicking these teeny plastic figures at a ball.

The branding of Subbuteo was fantastic and you could buy any team you wanted. What’s more with Subbuteo you could buy stands, floodlights and build your dream football stadium. It was so popular that there were vast Subbuteo tournaments that people took very seriously. I must be honest - the game itself was not too much fun to play. But it didn’t matter. It just looked great.

2. Footy Books

I had a library of football books as a kid. Two that stick out were -

The Times Illustrated History of Football

By most people’s standards I think I have a pretty strong knowledge of the history of football. Why? Well one Christmas I got The Times Illustrated History of Football. The book dedicated about 4 pages to newspaper stories telling the biggest football stories of that season, along with a couple of pages with every league table for that season. I poured over that book like it was the Bible.

The Comic Book History Of The World Cup

Another absolute beauty of a book - The Comic Book History of The World Cup brought to life the history of the world’s greatest sporting event through beautiful illustration. The book isn’t particularly big, and has an unconventional shape, but it feels so unique in your hands. You don’t get bored going through it again and again. Between World Cups, the book has short interesting profiles on the greatest managers and all the results from that particular tournament. Sadly, the comic book only goes up to the 1990 World Cup in Italy, and as far as I can see has never been updated. If you can get a copy of this on Amazon if will make a unique item on your coffee table.

3. Premier League Trading Cards

For a few years of my youth, collecting and swapping Merlin’s Premier League stickers was as addictive as crack cocaine - not that I have any experience with the later mind you. Building onto the frenzy kids had in the mid nineties for football stickers - Merlin brought out a far more expensive trading card set. I managed to collect all the cards at great expense, but I needed to find one to finish the collection. My poor old grandmother would buy tons of packets of cards hoping I would find it, to no such luck. The particular card I was looking for was known as a Laser Cut card, and there was something like a 1-in-a-million chance of finding it. One Christmas, with my aunt light on funds, she asked me what I would like as a gift. I told her to just get me a couple of packets of cards. That Christmas, when she gave me the two packets, I wasn’t expecting to get the elusive card. But like Charlie Bucket himself… I did. I celebrated the find like scoring the winning in the last minute of a World Cup Final.

Here is the card in question which I see you can now get on Ebay for about 8 dollars. Had I known the value would climb so poorly, I could have saved my family a lot of money had they just waited 20 years.


4. Footy Videos

Back before the days of YouTube, I was a huge collector of football videos. You could buy all manner of videos on the beautiful game. I particularly liked goal-compilation videos. Those videos would have imaginative titles like ‘500 Great Goals’ or ‘All the Goals of USA 94.’ I wore those videos out like the footy geek that I am.

Around Christmas time it was often common in the UK for videos to come out featuring the best of footy bloopers. The videos would be marketed on TV as the ultimate Christmas gift. These productions always seemed thrown together - and were often hosted by some b-list TV presenter. Now, of course, you can find them all on YouTube. So without further ado… enjoy Danny Bakers Own Goals and Gaffs:

5. Footy Kits

I was only really into getting football jerseys when I was young. My best jersey memories included getting the Ajax shirt from around 1995, and the Brazil 98 jersey. That was a classic. But I suppose my all time favorite kit memory was when I got the Irish goalkeeper jersey after the 1990 World Cup.

6. Footy video-games

There were so many football video games that I loved as a kid. The first one I remember having was simply called Soccer for the NES. It was made by Konami and was ultimately a precursor to PES. After that, there was Super Soccer on the Super Nintendo. That was dodge, even if it did allow you to run the field and score with the goal keeper.

My friends loved Sensible Soccer with its top down visuals. Apparently, that was the thinking person's football game. But I never got into it. FIFA Soccer came out around 1993 but was all style and no substance. I preferred Striker and World Cup Striker. Me and my friends would all gather around have have high stakes tournaments on it. No jammy goals allowed. But in hindsight, the football game I played more than any other was International Superstar Soccer on the Nintendo 64. After that, there really was no point in playing a footy game ever again.

That was a good trip down memory lane. Get writing your Santa wish lists kiddos.