My son’s first football boots. Or as they say here, ‘soccer shoes’. No, no they say ‘cleats’. It took me years to work out what ‘cleats’ meant. They are the studs. Anyway, my son has finally started playing football (soccer, cleatball, or whatever) and he loves it. These are his new (and very green) diadora boots, sketched in the S&B Alpha book.
Me, I am the referee. Refereeing under-six, three-a-side was very nerve-racking. I had my first game, twenty-minutes long, in which it actually rained (our first rain in months and months). It went ok. I need a stopwatch!
Football boots are so bright and colourful these days. When I was a kid they were all black, with a white logo (usually white; Roy of the Rovers I remember had a yellow Nike logo at some point). Then there’s the old brown leather boots; I think of that other strip in Roy, “Billy’s Boots”, with those ancient and possibly magical boots. (Good idea for a comic strip, “Pete’s Cleats”…) Speaking of Roy, I should go back and find all the old “You are the Ref” strips, though of course they have those in the Guardian now. Maybe I’ll learn something…
petescully 
Hi. I read Roy of the Rovers, quite liked him. All our comics when we were kids were second hand from an older boy cousin. So this girl grew up with Roy of the Rovers and Dan Dare. Can you do a Dan Dare sketch?
You go, soccer dad! Those kids are lucky to have a real Brit coaching them. Only a German would be as good ;-) But seriously, it’s hard to find the same passion for, and knowledge of the game in North America. Cheers from a German-born sketcher in Vancouver.
The Mornington Crescent rulebook stipulates that a green card must be used in 3-a-side, under 6 matches. Sketch the ref!
Good !
I apreciate your sketches and also the humour of the little stories you often tell. I like to follow tour work from Paris. Also about the classical car of the fifties
congratulate,
Pierre
Great sketch as always, and yeah, I hear you one the football versus “soccer” thing. I may be an American, but my sporting tastes are purely European, so I love when I hang out with my American friends whom are football fans and talk about football pitches, matches, and clubs instead of fields, games, and teams (of course, I’m not much of a football fan the way I am a hardcore pro cycling fan).