David Duke: The 5️⃣Strips That Made Me
The founder/CEO of Street Soccer chooses the kits that have bookmarked his life
David Duke played for Scotland at the 2004 Homeless World Cup and went on to found the incredible Street Soccer charity. Their latest initiative, Kitback, is a football shirt store with a difference, combining a love of football with social and environmental impact by collecting donations of unwanted or unused football jerseys. Donated shirts are upcycled and resold via their online platform or at in-person pop ups, with 100% of profits going to Street Soccer.
David sat down with Nutmeg to pick the football kits that mean the most to him…
Manchester United (home) 1998-2000
I grew up in Govan and everyone was so proud that Sir Alex Ferguson came from there. Manchester United was always my second team. We felt connected to the club through Sir Alex, so they were always my second favourites. I also played for Harmony Row in my younger days and Sir Alex used to send a lot of the old training kit back to Govan, to Harmony Row and some of the other community youth clubs. So you’d get kids in Govan fighting over Eric Cantona’s training top!
His 1998-99 Manchester United team was top drawer and I loved the strip, too. You can rhyme off that team, the players who won the Treble that season: Keane, Scholes, Beckham, Schmeichel, Stam, Johnsen, the Nevilles, Giggs, Yorke and Cole. They were just relentless.
Sir Alex was our founding ambassador at Street Soccer. I wanted to avoid going down the Celtic or Rangers route, and I was looking for a big name outside of those two clubs. So I wrote him a letter just explaining what we do, and a wee bit of the history of my own journey — coming from Govan and knowing a few people who knew him. I sent the letter off, not expecting to hear anything back, but sure enough I got a letter from him saying he was happy to support in some way and get involved. He invited us to Carrington so I took some of the Street Soccer players down and they met all the Manchester United players.
For the first 10 years of Street Soccer, we got signed stuff from Sir Alex and worked on some video content together. By 2017 we had lost a bit of funding, so Sir Alex offered to speak at our gala dinner. He did an ‘in conversation with’ and 650 people turned up from the business world. Our gala dinner is still going and the following year we had Cantona speaking, then Francois Pienaar, the captain of the South African rugby team in 1995. We’ve also had Harry Redknapp, Andy Robertson, Brendan Rodgers and Bradley Wiggins. But Sir Alex was first.
Italy (home) 1990
My first memories of watching football was Gazzetta and live Serie A on Channel 4. And the first World Cup I can remember was Italia 90. I’ve got olive skin and I just love everything Italian — I think I may have some Italian in me! Roberto Baggio (below) was the superstar. He was such a good player, with his technique and Diadora boots. A magician. It was a class strip — even today it still looks stylish.
Celtic (home) 1997-99
Celtic won the league in 1998, stopping 10 in a row. I actually went away to Dunfermline the week before we won the league. We would have won it that day had we beaten them. Simon Donnelly scored and then Dunfermline equalised. Gutted. So it came back to the last match, St Johnstone at Celtic Park. I was at the game. Henrik Larsson (above) scored the opener and Harald Brattbakk made it 2-0. I had been going to see Celtic when I could for 10 years, but we’d never won anything. 1998 was a real turning point. And it stopped Rangers from doing 10 in a row. I can’t remember another strip that had the make (Umbro) as the sponsor.
Scotland (away) 2002
It’s not a classic shirt, is it? But it’s memorable for me. That was the jersey I wore when I played for Scotland at the Homeless World Cup. We got to the semi-finals and lost to Italy, 5-3. They went on to win it.
In the first group stage we beat Brazil 9-2. The Daily Record picked up on it and ran with a full page 3, “Scotland 9 - Brazil 2”. And there was a subheading which said, “Hat-trick hero from Govan”. What had happened was one of the girls in the press team had asked me to do the interview, so I just sat talking away to this Daily Record journalist — I’d never done an interview before in my life. The guy asked me who had scored the goals… and I couldn’t remember! So, thinking I was doing a good thing, I named every member of the team (the Homeless World Cup is a four-a-side competition with each squad containing a goalkeeper and seven outfield players); I gave all the boys a namecheck! And then he asked, “What about the other goals?” and I replied, “That was me.” But I didn’t realise that meant I was actually claiming I’d scored three of the nine goals. I was actually claiming a hat-trick when, in fact, I hadn’t even scored!
The boys gave me pelters and it became a long-running joke. The next year I was assistant coach and this time the headline was: “Hat-trick against Brazil turned my life around”. The journalist had just used the previous article to write the piece… it was the hat-trick that never happened.
Brazil (home) 2006
I’ve got that actual picture framed and signed by every squad member, including Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaka, Roberto Carlos and Cafu. A guy I knew who worked for FIFA got it for me.
When I was younger, I had that strip with Ronaldinho on the back. I loved Ronaldinho. Ball skills, changing direction and flicking it over people — he did stuff you’d never seen before. He dominated for two years. He was unplayable.
In 2007, Rangers got drawn against Barcelona in the Champions League. I was working for the Big Issue magazine doing street work. One of the young reporter guys texted me saying, “The Barcelona team are arriving at Glasgow Airport at 12 noon.” So I popped over to the airport on my lunch break. We had a wee futsal ball which we hoped to get signed. Ronaldinho was the biggest star. I ended up getting squashed between him and a lot of security guards who were trying to usher him through. I got the worst autograph ever — it didn’t even look like Ronaldinho! In one of the newspapers, there’s a picture of Ronaldinho with all of this furore around him — and me stuck in the middle.
We got a few autographs that day: Thierry Henry, Yaya Toure… and Lionel Messi. He had just been brought into the squad at that point — he was like a child. It was just interesting that he was a nobody at the back of the pack… and then he went on to become the best ever.
To buy and donate shirts, visit Kitback or follow on Instagram; to find out more about volunteering opportunities or hosting a pop up event, contact hello@kitback.org.uk
