Football you grew up with

Az.

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We have quite a range of age of the fans around here,so i thought we should all share our views about how was football for us when we grew up and what changed now in the modern game as most people like to call it.

Being born in 86 im naturally a 90`s brought up football fan.Till 94 my contact with the sport was mostly trying to kick the ball but without any team affiliation or actually knowing who are the best football players etc.

1994 was a great year for me ,it was a world cup year.I still remember watching the Romanian NT games on tv with my Hagi shirt on.Screaming like a kid off his meds out the window when our team scored ;going at half time in front of the building meeting with my friends,quickly discussing the first half then running back up to see the second half.

226-668-1994.jpg


At some point during the world cup ,i got my first Panini world cup 94 album.From 94 till about early 2000 this albums where quite a big thing in the world of kids who like football.

After the world cup was over i went to my first game of Poli Timisoara.Our team was shit(still suffering hard from the aftermaths of the communism shit teams)but the atmosphere in the stands was amazing and it was what made me a instant fan.

poli_timisoara_centru1.jpg


Since we where kinda on and off from the first division ,i rarely got to see away games( no tv coverage ) but i did see the home ones.

Anyway does Panini albums are actually what got me to watch the Serie A and become a Milan fan.I still remember being so proud every time i finished my collection of a Milan team(94 ,96 &98 :D )

panini.jpg


But sadly i could not watch most Milan games as i didn't get them all on tv.Till 2004 since i got to watch Serie A constantly weather on tv or on internet streams ,i mostly got my info on Milan from does albums or from TV/TELETEXT.

If any of you had the similar experience regarding Milan ,do you remember coming home from school or wherever quickly checking the teletext page to see if Milan won the game?Tv has never been more exciting for me as back then,right now i rarely watch it anyway .(tv tuner ftw)

Calcio from the 90`s till 2005 was the most exciting league in the world.People breath football in the stadiums week in and week out.You had all this legendary players in the league ,all this emblematic players for there teams.

No other league even came close to that.It inspired kids to want to play football every free second they would have.I still remember spending hours on the football field of all the schools i went to ,even though the quality of the pitch was as shit as it could get in most cases .

Around 2004 the internet really kicked off(football wise) and also managers games /fifa games started getting better and better.Most kids nowadays actually prefer playing does games to actually playing football IRL.Dont get me wrong i like the "football manager " series but im not a teenager anymore ,and what ever chance i had to play football professionally is gone.

I feel kids who like football should only get into this type of games after there`s no chance of actually playing the game professionally .Also playing does games & watching every game they can get there hands on(streams etc) kinda increases the number of arm chair fans.

From what i saw and experienced personally ,playing football in the dirt makes people want to go to stadiums more regularly then people who only play the games.

So to conclude this long ass post,i wanna say i feel lucky being apart of the 90`s football generation ,cause things right now for football are going in the wrong direction.
 
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MilanMB

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Great thread and great post Az.

1994 was the year for me as well... ahh great memories:proud:
 

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Brought up an Everton fan, when i was a kid Everton were crap and usually trying not to get relegated so i started watching Serie A which was on TV a lot in the UK in the 90's, i first started watching Juventus around '97 when i was about 6 or 7 but i can't remember very much because i was so young. I then started watching Milan games even though they were struggling at the time but i saw Costacurta and Maldini playing (they were just amazing) and i knew Milan were the club for me.

Ever since i've followed Milan as a second club and i will continue to do so, they're kind of like a drug, Everton, despite being good again, just can't give me the experience of watching some of the best players in the world, Milan can.

Some people don't see how you can support two football clubs, personally i think its a privilege.
 

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I didn't use to check teletext or whatever, i used to check the Milan site just before bed. :D Or i would catch it on Bravo, i remember the first Serie A match i watched was when Milan lost to Palermo. A shame, but i still supported them. :D
 

anth183

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I started supporting Milan about 10 years ago since I was 10 didnt really follow them as much as I do now but I'm pretty sure I supported Milan when I picked them on Championship Manager 99/00 I remember thinking that this team looked pretty good/ I liked the colours lol I was 10. From then on supported Milan I must admit I did play as Man U for a little while but never loved them like I do Milan and now I hate them lol. It's quite surprising I stuck with football seeing as around that age I was playing a bit of rugby and cricket at that age
 

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i remember first footballer that left impression on me was ruud gullit back in early 90's. i remember his hair and he was badass player just like gattuso few years ago. i was following wc in usa '94 and it was awesome. i was a bit sad italy lost. i became fanatic after WC '98 when i used to live in croatia. as you know croatia was minnows but won 3rd spot, and was unlucky not to beat france in semi finals when thuram scored 2 goals for france, it was the only goals he ever scored for france if i'm not mistaken. the atmosphere back then was something you really have to go through, you can't explain it with words how we felt than. my favorite player back then was davor suker and of course zvonimir boban. after that i followed ac milan almost every game. i remember when sheva came, he scored 24 goals and was capocannoniere. first time i saw him i knew he was something special. rest is history. i was lurking on this forum since 2002. but i register years later.
 

Az.

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Great thread and great post Az.

1994 was the year for me as well... ahh great memories:proud:

Thanks and do expand on that!

Brought up an Everton fan, when i was a kid Everton were crap and usually trying not to get relegated so i started watching Serie A which was on TV a lot in the UK in the 90's, i first started watching Juventus around '97 when i was about 6 or 7 but i can't remember very much because i was so young. I then started watching Milan games even though they were struggling at the time but i saw Costacurta and Maldini playing (they were just amazing) and i knew Milan were the club for me.

Ever since i've followed Milan as a second club and i will continue to do so, they're kind of like a drug, Everton, despite being good again, just can't give me the experience of watching some of the best players in the world, Milan can.

Some people don't see how you can support two football clubs, personally i think its a privilege
.

Nice post mate.Thoroughly agree on the last part .
 

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Being born in 86 im naturally a 90`s brought up football fan.

1994 was a great year for me ,it was a world cup year.

Till 2004 since i got to watch Serie A constantly weather on tv or on internet streams ,i mostly got my info on Milan from does albums or from TV/TELETEXT.
Exactly the same but I got to internet 2005 :D
If any of you had the similar experience regarding Milan ,do you remember coming home from school or wherever quickly checking the teletext page to see if Milan won the game?
Um, no. The games were on the weekends. I checked teletext before school in the mourning, to see weekend + NHL results.
Calcio from the 90`s till 2005 was the most exciting league in the world.People breath football in the stadiums week in and week out.You had all this legendary players in the league ,all this emblematic players for there teams.
You have to know things look better when you're a kid. Still ... one could say Serie A peaked on that period.

Though I didn't have the panini stickers my affection started somewhat similar. I had this poster on my wall that made Milan the first team I was aware of.
199394.jpg
 

Az.

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Exactly the same but I got to internet 2005 :D

Um, no. The games were on the weekends. I checked teletext before school in the mourning, to see weekend + NHL results.

You have to know things look better when you're a kid. Still ... one could say Serie A peaked on that period.

Though I didn't have the panini stickers my affection started somewhat similar. I had this poster on my wall that made Milan the first team I was aware of.
199394.jpg

Nice !As for the bolded part i was kinda including the European games also. Plus there where some games that where playing mid week.But yeah should have put it better,my bad

Also nice poster,do you still have it ?( not on the wall,as a collection item )
 

MilanMB

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Thanks and do expand on that!

I'm born in 1983 so the first world cup I followed was the on in Italy 1990. I remember it because my family were refugees back then and the only fun we had was to watch the world cup games at the place we were hiding.

The only game I remember really well from that WC was the final. Germany vs Argentina. I was devastated when Maradona picked up a knock in the middle of the game and I asked my dad if he's gonna be alright. And he said sure, he's the captain, captains never get injured.

1994 is very important to me when it comes to football. That's when I fell in love with Maldini. Maldini and the 4-0 rape against Barca was the reasons I started to follow Milan...

During the WC I remember that I read an article about Maldini in some newspaper and the headline was: Maldini, the new king of the world. :proud:

I saw every game in that world cup and I followed Maldini's and Italy's progress carefully. Once again I was devastated when this time Italy lost on penalty shoot-out.

Before and after the world cup I tried to follow every Milan game, but there were no streams so I had to settle for what TV had to offer. When TV didn't show the Milan games on Sunday (they showed one Italian game every Sunday in a show called "Uno cross due") I remember that I had to follow the game on teletext.

Wonderful days back then. Thank you again Az for making this thread and letting me remember the good old days again.
 

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Current generation
please show me anything close to this




and this



and finally thisssssssssssssss




So many many great players, I havent seen anything from youngsters to replicate this kind of shit
 

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Nice !As for the bolded part i was kinda including the European games also. Plus there where some games that where playing mid week.But yeah should have put it better,my bad
You know I won't let those slide :tongue:

With the Europeangames I remember the game vs Ajax. I couldn't see it but Finnish television swithed onto it when a goal was scored. So when the broadcasted game ended and nothing was said I checked teletext for once and shut down the TV. In silence I thought if I want to know if some miracle happened. Then after a moment I switched it on and instantly the commentator said 'There always sth happening at San Siro and they showed Pippo's winner'. I was about to go balloons.
Also nice poster,do you still have it ?( not on the wall,as a collection item )
Don't have the poster. Have searched it in times, but settled with this pic. Also had it as my wallpaper for a while.

For the first time I went to the stadium on 03.09.2000 where Estonia lost to Portugal 1-3. Figo was a star that time(Was that famous match against English in the group stage of EURO 2000?) and I abused some w@nkers who all wore his replicas despite being Estonian. It was the last time that stadium was our official national stadium(I think some games have been there)

The next on was vs Holland in the new national stadium. We went ahead twice but collapsed on the 86-th minute letting in 3 goals in the last 4 minutes plus extra time. Unbelievable experience but we didn't get the great vicroty we want. Still don't think we have gotten it(should be different tomorrow after beating Italy) though we spanked Russia on the last minute of a friendly which was SWEET resulting preparty, game, afterparty and after-afterparty.



I also wrote about Estonian club facing Milan in Ba's thread. This is a common discussion to have here when I mention to be Milan fan. Unfortunately I don't remember it + I didn't have the channels to see it. SAT TV was a luxury those days. http://forum.acmilan-online.com/showthread.php?p=794677&highlight=kirs#post794677
 

crazy4milan

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Started knowing about football since I was 3, games from here mostly, thanks mostly to the super unfair matchup of a 3 year old baby girl vs a 7 year old boy, that my mom obligated my brother to play :D (eventually we started playing because we both liked to). Then I started learning about international football with the 94 WC, thanks to the Upper Deck cards + an album that wasn't the official one. I swear Brazil, Italy and Germany sounded incredibly HUGE to me back then, and names like Hagi, Stoickhov, Romario, Baggio, Maldini, Bebeto, Valderrama, Batistuta were like "WOW!"

That said, it wasn't till 97 when I TRUELY became a fan of the game (or should I say when I learned what offside was and it changed my world :D). My dad started taking me to more games than usual, almost every sunday trying to convert me to his team + I decided it was my time to beat the crap of my brother when playing football (oh yes and I did :tongue: ). And in 1998 was when I became an extreme fan (weirdo, lol), by becoming a Milan fan, and expanding my football knowledge to everything.

This new era had Maldini, Ronaldo, Zamorano, Salas, Redondo, Raul, Roberto Carlos, Del Piero, Vieri, Zidane, Rivaldo, Chilavert, Barcelona Fig etc. More grown up with few exceptions (Maldini of course) they weren't as impressive as the first set of players I mentioned :D. But I remember those days with all my heart, I don't know how, I learned so much about football in so little time, I basically got all my brother's magazines and read them all and rarely missed a game of Serie A or La Liga or CL.

I also remember going to my dad's office to use internet, and once my dad said, "listen the info you see the people that manage this can see it, so please go look for useful things not Milan" (and 90's boy bands :D). I of course replied "I'm reading about Berlusconi, very important man!". My dad just rolled his eyes hehe.

I see 90's football as something soo big, and I have this idea of La Liga and Serie A being superb, really huge, of course it's because it's my "kid" imperssion, but I dunno I just don't think either league holds up to what they had in the that decade (I didn't had EPL back in the 90's so I can't really have a point of comparisson). Geez the 7 sisters was an amazing concept (pity it's part of the reason the league went down lol) and before there was Napoli, and Samp, and teams like Bologna or Udinese could turn out to be horrible to face.

And La Liga was also on a whole other level in the 90's and early 00's. The mediatic biggest dick battle between Madrid and Barcelona wasn't huge, Atletico, Bilbao, Valencia, La Coruña all had a fair shot at the league, and were interesting to watch, I remember Cuper's Mallorca being very entertaining (and there was this show Estudio Estadio, that I loved, that used Spice Girls songs to show the goals of the weekend :D).
 

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I think that football for me was lived in two whole different levels. First, there was my local team here in Brazil, a really small club of a small town, but who overachieved a lot for some time. I grew up going to the stadium and sometimes traveling to away games. So it was a very real and intense experience - being a small town club, you will know the players, the management, the people in the stadium are always the same and so on. You really feel like an active part of the club. The experience of going to the stadium to watch the games with friends, drink and smoke and soo on was very important in my youth.

On the other side there was Milan, and I became a supporter very young watching Calcio on the TV. But it was a very different relation. If the local team was some kind of next door love, Milan was some kind of platonic love because of the distance, who turns everything more respectful and beautiful, and of course, the whole different level of the clubs. Apart from TV, football magazines and then internet, growing up in an Italian community, I have some friends who are supporters of Lazio, Roma, Juve, Inter... and other Milan fans of course. This helped to let my support more "real" and intense.
 

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My family moved to the US in 1994 when I was 7. I was at the World Cup final with my dad. I don't remember anything about the game except for my dad crying on the drive home. Flash forward ~2 years to an early Sunday morning in late April and I am dancing with my dad celebrating our 15th Scudetto. :proud:

I like to think I remember everything from that point on, but I'm not perfect.
 

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My family moved to the US in 1994 when I was 7. I was at the World Cup final with my dad. I don't remember anything about the game except for my dad crying on the drive home. Flash forward ~2 years to an early Sunday morning in late April and I am dancing with my dad celebrating our 15th Scudetto. :proud:

I like to think I remember everything from that point on, but I'm not perfect.
Also+unrelated but I wanted to share, I will admit that I am biased for Italian players (Totti, ADP, Toni, Baggio, Pippo). But 2 of my 3 favorite strikers EVER are non-Italian: Weah and Sheva. :star:
 

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During the early days it was also a blessing to see the goals. I rarely had the chance but we got Finnish television and Champions League Weekly at some point. I didn't even blink wathing that show on Sundays. It isn't the same anymore with the online version and whatnot. The most legendary was the music of top ten goals. I've searched the net upside down and backwards but still don't know who'e the author. Here it is again:
 

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Also+unrelated but I wanted to share, I will admit that I am biased for Italian players (Totti, ADP, Toni, Baggio, Pippo). But 2 of my 3 favorite strikers EVER are non-Italian: Weah and Sheva. :star:

And Van Basten?
 

crazy4milan

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:proud:. I loved him, I love Sheva, but I love George even more (and keep in mind I didn't see him when he did that goal vs Verona, and I first saw him in a season he struggled to score till late october).
 

MilanMB

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I remember the partnership between Weah and Simone. One of few good things during those awful years.
 

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been playing football since kindergarten, 18 now. First started getting to know players in 1998 with ronaldo partly due to fifa 98 on n64 (completely due to fifa 98, it was me and my brothers favorite game). Grew up being a metrostars fan being that my neighbor was one, never watched them once just i idolized my neighbor. I loved the red and black jerseys :). Became a milan fan in 2001/02 though i was still young. Inzaghi was my favorite player in fifa because i liked his name being like 9 and then found he played for milan which also had red and black jerseys! Only caught a few games ( american tv hates football :( )until around half way 07 where i found you could watch football on internet. Though i must say where i truly became inlove with football was 2006 world cup, was in 8th grade and was rooting for italy all the way. Later on i would see many documentaries and such on the greatest players and my own research. And thus we have a now hardcore milan fan from america inwhich i will forever be no matter what the cause :) Can not wait till after college really want to visit the san siro.
 
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gaizka22

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My dad was a family friend of the owner of 1 Indonesian club (now defunct) and the team was quite successful in Indonesia. The team was based on my hometown so at the age of 9 he started taking me to the stadium (where we got the VIP seats :D ). I was lucky since my grandpas (from both sides of my mom and dad) loved soccer but my father's father was a real freak. He taped all the game of WC 82 and re-watched it again and again. After school I usually went to his place before my mom or dad would pick me up. I would sit with my grandfather and usually one of my uncles will accompany him while we watched those Beta tapes. He would explain to me aspects of the game ("See that one in number 10? He's Zico, you watched him closely, he's very good", "Now look at how Paolo Rossi positioned himself, that's clever", "You see how Platini made the pass?" etc). Not only the players but about the formation as well.

Then came WC 86. It arrived conveniently during school break and my parents allowed me to watch some of the games (mind you, live game from Mexico was played at around 3.30 AM in Indonesian time). After the tournament, I had posters of the players, I knew the name of all the coaches of the NT participating, I remembered all the scores, I memorized the groupings and the pairings in the knock out stage, I knew which players missed the spot kick during the penalty shoot out (as a child your brain seemed to be able to remember a lot of things, maybe because there isn't much to remember aside school studies. I can't even remember the groupings in last WC in South Africa, let alone the results).

My dad (he played as a GK in university, quite funny because I played as GK in my highschool team and after I graduated, my younger brother literally took the glove position) supported my passion. He brought me more and more to the stadium, introduced me to the players and even tried to enroll me in one football school but sadly my mom rejected it since she wanted me to concentrate on school. We watched games together on TV. He idolized Maradona often screamed calling me whenever there's footage of Diego's exploit in Napoli (remember, no ESPN at that time).

So it was full bloom by the time I was 11. The final puzzle was supporting foreign club. I was supporting Lpool in my early days when they had Ian Rush, Peter Beardsler, John Barnes and John Aldridge. Simply because that was the only league shown started to be regularly shown in Indonesia.

Then starting 87/88 season, Indonesian channel started showing Serie A. Being a Maradona fans, I went for Napoli. The change came after Milan beat them 4-1 at the San Siro.

I never looked back.
 

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Great thread and great post, Az.

The year I was born was the year football died – Aberdeen won the Scottish Cup for the last time, and Scotland got beat by a nation of boob-withholding moderators.

The next 4 years were a pleasant mix of blissful ignorance and familial indoctrination. Then my dad recorded the BBC’s USA ’94 review. My big brother and I watched that video a ridiculous number of times – almost as much as we watched the Aberdeen: Team of the Decade video – to the point where we could practically quote the commentary when we watched it again last year. Aside from being the beginning of Ilian Kiriakov’s haunting of my fucking childhood, this was my first taste of top level football. I loved everything about it; from the foreign players’ brilliant names (you have no idea how exotic names like Romario and Dumitrescu sound when you’ve never left Aberdeen) to Carlos Valderrama’s haircut and Baresi’s crippled heroism.

Presumably due to my obsession with that video, my dad took me to my first match in April ’95. In an outstanding display of responsible parenting, he took me into the section populated by ex-hooligans to watch Aberdeen beat Celtic to kick off our miraculous escape from relegation, and I was hooked. There are photos at my grandfather’s house that suggest that I was wearing hand-me-down Aberdeen kits, complete with shorts and socks, most days. I resent not being allowed to do that anymore.

It was around this time that I started watching Football Italia’s live matches and highlights of Serie A in the UK. This was mainly because it came on immediately after Rawhide. Maybe it was the disembodied shout of “goallllllllllazzoooo” that began the programme that got me, or maybe it was the outrageous suaveness of James Richardson as he sat outside a café reading from La Gazzetta. Whatever the reason, this was when I first became fascinated by calcio. I can’t claim to recall much about the games, but I remember Boban, Maldini, Signori and Albertini being some of my favourite players. That lasted until Ronaldo joined Inter and became the focus of my adulation.

Then came Euro ’96 and the first of many crushing disappointments, in the shape of a 2-0 defeat to England. Gary McAllister’s missed penalty and Gascoigne’s goal are memories that I’ll probably never be able to shake off. I was still too young to sit through most games (I would always want to go out and kick a ball around instead), but I watched the highlights over and over. My favourite players from the tournament were Suker and Bierhoff.

During this period, Aberdeen were going through a long spell of miserable decline, and…fuck it, I’m nae writing about that.

France ’98 remains my favourite ever tournament. For the first time, I had a proper knowledge of the players and countries involved, but I hadn’t yet reached the stage where I was consumed by anger and prejudice – except towards Glenn Hoddle and England, of course. Scotland got beat by Brazil (and fucking Morocco), and I decided that in 10 years’ time I would take every opportunity to slaughter gloryhunting Brazil fans on messageboards. Argentina gained my lasting respect and admiration for a combination of the England match and Ortega’s hilarious upward headbutt on Van der Sar, and I loved the Croatians until Bilic’s cheating got Laurent Blanc suspended from the final. Bergkamp cemented his place as one of my boyhood idols; Ronaldo raised my expectations of strikers forever; Italy had a defence that included Maldini, Costacurta and Cannavaro…I could go on.

And now I’m going to stop writing before Scotland start failing to qualify for tournaments. Berti Vogts effectively ended my childhood, so this seems like a good place to finish.
 
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