Who's The Daddy: Re-living the glory days one retro shirt at a time
People who say nostalgia isn’t what it used to be obviously don’t have a crippling addiction to long-sleeve Manchester United adidas football shirts based on early 1990s classics, like what I do.
For people not lucky enough to have lived through that golden decade, literally everything was better than the ****show we exist in now. The Cold War was over, by the mid-90s the country was coming out of recession, and Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United team was filled with a bunch of maverick geniuses who could score three in five minutes or start a fight in an empty house - and they weren’t too fussy which.
And the kits they wore were absolute perfection. Take this week’s latest release which the club have called adidas x MUFC 90-92 Away Bringback, which in plain English means the blue and white “Madchester” kit the likes of Mark Hughes, Lee Sharpe, Paul Ince, Brian McClair and Clayton Blackmore ran riot in - particularly at Highbury in November 1990 in a 6-2 demolition of the best Arsenal team I ever saw.
It was kind of weird watching today’s players model the kit in a promotional video and in pics on the club’s website because even the old timers like Harry Maguire weren’t even born (March 1993) when United ran around in it and Leny Yoro (checks notes, November 2005, really?) came into the world a full 13 years after it was last worn.
But let’s be honest, people of their age are not the target market. It’s those in their mid-50s and older, who wore the shirts at the time, don’t baulk at the price tag and instead say “Here, take my money… please” every time a new range from that era drops.
Speaking of which, if you have the original and it’s in decent nick, you won’t believe what the excellent Classic Football Shirts is selling them for. Me and The Boss were in its Manchester store a couple of weeks ago and I showed her a 1990 original on the rails and she made a sound like she’d stepped in something, until I pointed at the price tag - £349.99 - and she said, “How many more have you got like this at home?”
And, gentle reader, I honestly daren’t say. But in mitigation, I paid around £30 for them back then, and even got David Beckham to sign one from the Treble season.
Anyway, other additions to the burgeoning collection this year have been The Stone Roses/Man Utd/I Wanna Be Adored, and this season’s third shirt, modelled on the classic black kit worn by Eric Cantona when he put his feet up at Selhurst Park in January 1995.
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