Whether you’re looking for advice on buying gifts for football fans or a list of great football gifts to buy, you’ve come to the right place. Read on for our tips on buying football gifts or jump down to our list of best football gifts (most are very affordable).
Football Gift Buying Tips
Set Your Budget: Gifts can range from the $30 to $300, and it’s easy to get caught up in the moment when you’re buying something that you love (or you’re buying something for someone you love). Give yourself a range (e.g. $80-$110) and work with that. As with all such suggestions, use common sense – you don’t HAVE to spend that much, and you can always go above the limit if it’s really good. However, chances are that it looks a lot better now than it will when you’re giving the gift.
Useful over Flashy: The flashy gift looks good in the store / in photos but the ‘useful’ gift last longer and reminds the receiver of you regularly (if that’s what you’re going for). It could be something as simple as a keyring or something like I have, a small Manchester United traveling bag. Scarves work great just for this reason.
Personalise, Personalise, Personalise: If the store gives you the option, spend the extra $10 or $20 to personalise the gift with the receiver’s name / initials.
Differentiate on Age, Taste and Support: Not all football fans like a personalised shirt. And sometimes a footy shirt isn’t the ideal thing for all ages. And sometimes you should think twice before giving a Manchester City fan a crimson-colored gift item 🙂 Buy the DVD / scarf / personalised journal for your dad, save the footy shirt for your mates and make sure you get the team colors right (especially if you’re shopping for your kids).
And if you need just one bit of advice, remember this:
Make It Memorable: Gift-giving is a sacred social custom and a chance for us to show each other how much we care about them (believe it or not, it’s always about the other person). As such, make your gift count and give the receiver something to cherish and remember you with (fondly) for a long time. That’s why the cool keyring and the scarf and the bag works and the shirt not so much – shirts change every year, boots and scarves and bags are with us for longer.
Now let’s move to our recommendations for where to buy your football gifts from online:
Recommended Football Gifts
If you’re looking for a present for a football fan, the following list will be very useful for your research. There are two kinds of football presents that would attract fans: general presents, which include club specific merchandise and personalised presents, personalised merchandise according to the fan or a player.
General Presents from sportslens.com/Store
If you’re looking for club specific football presents, you can look at bags and back-packs. If you don’t really like them, you can scare them with a black Juventus bear; of course, there are many other kinds of non-scary cuddly bears also available.
Early morning coffee in an Arsenal mug will be okay for me but for your Arsenal fan husband (or partner or whatever), it could be something that he will look forward to. SL.com/Store has a wide variety of mugs that you can check out.
If your Arsenal fan buddy is a little kid, you can get him one of the appropriately named Arsenal training mugs (it’s actually a kid’s feeder).
The Store also has a limited collection of sloffies. They’re available in Brazil, Germany, Italy, Machester United, Spain and a few more colors. They’re extremely comfortable and pass a strong statement about your affiliation. Really.
If you did not like anything from the SL.com/Store collection so far (and you insist on buying a gift from our Store), maybe we can interest you with club-specific wallets. If that doesn’t cut it for you either and your buddy is a fan of Arsenal, Athletico Madrid, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man Utd or Valencia, a watch from our limited edition watches could do the trick.
You can take it a step ahead if your loved ones already have small merchandise and get them a quilt cover for their bed.
Personalized Presents from ICONS.com
Icons sells exclusive signed merchandise from the world’s greatest footballers from Pele and Diego Maradona to Kaka and Lionel Messi. They have 100% authentic signed football shirts, boots and photos (they’ve got photo ecidence if you need proof) and although these are the most expensive gifts, they’re also the most ‘memorable’ gift you can give a football fan.
Keeping Robin van Persie’s recent performances in mind, a personally signed Arsenal shirt will blow a Gunners fan’s mind. It was signed by the Holland striker in November 2011. If that’s no good, a 2010-11 UEFA Champions League final shirt signed by Messi is an excellent option for Messi fans (please make sure that the recipient is not a Man United fan).
For the Man Utd fan, here’s a signed Paul Scholes shirt. It will not remind them of the Champions League defeat against Barcelona or the 6-1 humiliation against Manchester City; rather, it will remind them of a Scholes that they’re now looking for in Fletchers and Carricks.
Who doesn’t like Maradona? A lot of people, maybe. But this personally signed photo of him taking on six Belgium defender in the opening game of the 1982 FIFA World Cup is an amazing sight. For fans of older times, a signed Pele photo of him celebrating his goal in the 1970 FIFA World Cup final with Jairzinho would also be a memorable present.
Check out the top personally signed football memorabilia here.
So these were our top 6 recommendations for buying personal, useful and quality football gifts for football fans. If you have any suggestions to make to add to this list, please let us know.
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