Booty is in the eye of the budget beholder.

If you are a young footballer who doesn't get enough pocket money in exchange for the back-breaking chores he does around the house (the official term is slave labour), you will know that football boots don't come cheap and are rarely in your budget. (I hope you're reading this, dear parents of mine).

While we are waiting for the UN to deal with this pressing matter, the bottom line is you need football boots. And I mean good football boots.

So how can you get good boots but still have a few cents over to hire that much needed social worker?

The answer is be willing to wait until the boots you have your eye on turn up on sale in your local Adidas, Nike, Puma etc. outlet store.

Using this cunning strategy, your favourite cash-strapped young footballer purchased a pair of Adidas Predator X boots at the Adidas Outlet store in the WorldWear shopping centre for R499. Not bad when you consider that the original retail price was over R2000. 

When looking for a good deal, be sure to ask the staff to check in the back what boots they have in your size. A shout out to the Adidas Outlet staff, who spent a lot of time rummaging in the storeroom to find me a pair of boots.

In the end they didn't have the colour that I wanted but I decided to choose features over style. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The aforementioned 'bootiful' bargain basement Predators

A Joga 11 promise:

We will keep an eye out for killer deals like this and keep you posted, follow us on Twitter to make sure you don't miss out.     

If you are in the Fairland area or driving along Beyers Naudé you can check out the Adidas Outlet store at WorldWear shopping centre.

Adidas Outlet

Shop 15, World Wear Shopping Centre, Corner of Beyers Naude and Wilson Avenue, Fairlands,

THE GREAT INTERNET ODYSSEY

Do you shout  ‘¡Viva la furia roja!’ but are furious when you can’t find the latest Spain football shirt? Or are you simply unable to find the latest football shirt that your team has released?

This is exactly the problem that my brother and I had when we were searching for two Spain 2011 home jerseys (with the Official World Cup winners’ badge) in our sizes. After searching in South African stores for hours, and enduring our parents’ exasperated comments when we said we were going to try ‘just one more shop', we decided that we were only going to be able to find these shirts on the Internet.

 Our first stop on the great Internet odyssey was the Spain-based ‘La Liga shop’, where they had what we wanted, but the only remaining shirts were in small men’s sizes. Which was fine for me, but the idea of forking out R700 for a piece of clothing that would look like a dress on him did not appeal to my brother Xavi. We then found that most of the American stores had the shirts we wanted/needed  (depending on whose side of the argument you take.) but didn’t deliver to SA. We thought to ourselves, ‘these Americans are just plain selfish, and couldn’t care less about us‘.

After this heartbreaking disappointment, we came across UK soccershop, where we found not only the shirts we wanted/needed, but good prices, and on top of all this luxury/necessity they also delivered to SA. We then purchased one David Silva #21 and one Andres Iniesta #6 shirts, with the gold World Cup winners badge! (Sorry, I simply have to boast!) Our only worry was whether or not the South African Post Office would something scary to them! But despite our concerns the shirts arrived on the 14^th of June, only seven days after ordering them, and just three days after the anniversary of that historic night in Johannesburg!

So, in a nutshell, if you're looking to buy shirts overseas, I thoroughly recommend UK soccershop.

UK soccershop