When I first started playing soccer in the early ’90s, my father used to tell me stories about his teenage league football in ’50s Manchester. Back then, they practiced with a soccer ball made of real leather, which, when waterlogged with Northern England’s mud and ice, became so heavy that it could break ribs.
From Esquire‘s Spring/Summer 2011 Big Black Book. Read more here, or purchase here.
Source: Esquire.
