Champions

I'm still coughing my lungs up but hopefully, its on remission.  We've, got a new drink, a tradtional English drink, for when you are sick.  Its called Lucozade and maybe marketed as sports / energy drink, was for a long time delivered glucose energy to the poorly, hence me grabbing a bottle.  No glass bottle this time, its fully plastic and as its a limited edition is a cola.  For Americans or just damn lucky Brits, it tastes a lot like Jones Cola, which is a cane sugar coke which is wonderful.  As its Lucozade its a lot easier to get than Jones Soda here so if you come across it and are in need of energy don't hesitate to buy.

Captain Tsubasa

For some of you this will be familiar to you, but just goes to show how the UK missed out especially in the mid 90's.  The original game was done by Tecmo and was sort of a football game which takes place entirely in box out shots describing the action.  The game came across to Europe but I don't remember seeing it on the shelves.  Most NES football games are of course completely evil and shouldn't be touched with a bargepole.
Unless is Technos Nintendo World cup, which is still shit but allows complete carnage.

In fact this was a long running franchise that included Manga and Anime.  The Anime was localised for Europe under the name Campeones and had a big following worldwide.  There is a link to a version in English called Flash Kicker, but just leads to dead ends and clearly non English versions.

This is the best we can do, English subs that you can imagine sung by the players of the day, Maybe even Glenn Hoddle.

Flash Kickers licence was owned by Enoki Films, they seem to have a long list of obscure Anime, like Inspector Fabre, based on the Entomologist of the same name and got a total WTF when I saw it on Spanish Kids TV.  They also hold most if not all the Captain Tsubasa licenses which they license to  Mainland Europe.    England loves its football and when they came out in the late 80's noone knew what Manga was save for Robotech and Lensman on Premiere (later Sky Movies).  Mainstream was a bust, Channel 4 showed only the violent stuff at Midnight, and Sci Fi Showed some tamer stuff, If you consider Mangas Sweary version of Appleseed, orHell City Shinjuku Tame.  Sky one or Nick would have been your only home for kids manga.  With Foxs Peter Pan and Tokusatsu shows like the Power Rangers.  Nick had the updated version of Speed Racer which came to the BBC. 

Flash Kicker would have certainly have entertained English kids.  Most of us grew up playing football with jumpers for goalposts in a local green space.  I've yet to see kids do that now, but 80's kids were different.
Depending on the dub, whether American or English (likely in the early days, but not now), I'm sure it would have taken off either as Flash Kicker or simply renamed as Champs, it would only take a forward looking BBC or ITV to add it to their afternoon schedules, maybe even have Andy Crane Introduce it.

But it didn't happen, it simply rattles around the continent in various dubs, ITV did actually licence a football Cartoon, but its only the barely remembered Hurricanes.

Lately there is Inazuma Eleven by Layton Creators Level 5, but its dubbed by yanks (who know nothing of real football) with various Japanese names left in.  What I saw was a keeper use a punch shot which he called a Fire punch,  which was subbed as Fire Kobushi, an entirely unnecessary elaboration.

One of these days they'll show Champions dubbed, but I'm getting its a long day in hell.