THE ’70s wasn’t all about hipsters, bellbottoms and flower children. It was also an interesting time for sportswear, especially the English variety that came with the invasion of football and how so many leagues flowered from townships and cities all over England. As young boys were turning into men, teenagers wanted to be the next big thing in sports and claim undying adulation from a generation of fans and couch potatoes who loved sports yet were glued to their television sets.

How these leagues flowered during tough financial times was a miracle. If it weren’t for the sponsors, a lot of the dreams of football players would have been nipped in the bud. One such league was the English Football Conference that has survived through the decades and its various name changes, often as a response to the brand who was footing the bill.

One of the earliest sportswear brands to call the shots in England and sponsor the leagues in the heydays of the 1980s actually had earlier beginnings. In 1905 a small footwear company named Gola began producing handmade football shoes, and has been busy at the factory lines ever since, although this effort turned to producing combat boots during the war years.

But as football’s popularity eventually reached all corners of the world during peace time, more players came to know these football shoes for themselves. A following started—and who could guess that couch potatoes were easily also the earliest converts to the brand.

This year Gola celebrates its 106th birthday. No one remembers how the brand got its name but some guess that it’s an anagram of the word “goal.”

Like the couch potatoes who eventually got up from their comfortable sofas and began supplying the fitness craze(s) with more warm bodies, Gola also got up from from its narrow niche market in football shoes to enter the world of street fashion and eventually add ballet shoes, sandals, and the popular all-leather Gola sports bags that first became a hit during the mid-’70s.

Today, Gola—which is available at the men’s shoe section of SM Department Store and its stand-alone shop at Greenbelt 3—still churns up the same retro-minded imagery for its two main markets: the young-at-heart baby boomer with fond memories of those wild early years, and a new generation of street-wise urbanites who may dimly recall the Liverpool and Manchester United football teams of the ’70s, but can definitely pick good quality shoes from today’s assortment of brands.