Replica World Guide to the 1998 World Cup

I’ve never tried to hide my past.

You might have heard rumours and it’s best to confront them – yes, I subscribed to World Soccer magazine as a teenager.

The gateway was a desire to keep my early 1990s edition of Sensible Soccer up to date and it just grew from there. Each month, the need to find out how Legia Warsaw or Steaua Bucharest would be sated as the magazine arrived in the post.

Of course, the growth of the internet ate into the magazine’s usefulness. I did take out a subscription again in 2018, almost out of nostalgia as much as anything else, but it wasn’t the same.

Back in the 1990s, the sports shop ads in World Soccer often threw up some interesting stuff and this Replica World Guide to the 1998 World Cup definitely falls into that category. Essentially, what was a 16-page catalogue in its own right was included towards the back of the preview issue for the tournament.

There are some oddities where prototypes were altered before seeing action on the pitch – witness the navy trim on the Italy shirts or the adidas wordmark on the France jerseys – while the intended Chile shirts were in the same style as that used for the 1997-98 Aston Villa change kit. Instead, they ended up keeping on their existing Reebok logo style, albeit with the two ‘legs’ absent so as not to contravene branding rules.

The blue and white striped Paraguay away shirt didn’t make the cut either – instead, their second kit was mainly white – while the Mexico shirts had red trim added.

Elsewhere, we’re fairly sure that this was the first time where adidas made ‘fauxback’ shirts for countries that did not wear the three stripes while the England tracksuit is quite reminiscent of the early 1990s adidas ‘West Germany’ style. There is also a rare sight of an England shirt – albeit a goalkeeper’s – with a sponsor’s logo.