The shotacon manga trigger Captain Tsubasa 

Cool, I googled them and Captain Tsubasa turned up! I guess that was the 1983 to 1986 first anime, 128 episodes? The only one I've watched.

@@karl.andersson Pretty sure that's the one yeah. Apparently most other properties had a spanish (and latinoamerican, let's not forget they're as mad about football as us, if not more) versión too, though I'll be damned if I can remember them. Looking around at the opening and episodes I remember it seems like they were content to re-run it basically forever given that I saw it as a kid in the 00s. We had sing-song jokes about Oliver y Benji, kids in the playground would pretend to be them, to this day I can still get a laugh out of my friends if I talk about how the ball took 3 episodes to get to the goal after being launched and how the field seemed to be endlessly big. This has brought back a lot of memories. Oliver and Benji really were just, unalloyed heroes if you were a kid around that age.

​@@karl.andersson Thanks to Captain Tsubasa football (soccer for north americans) grew in popularity in Japan until get a professional league since 1993 and became the second most popular sport there behind baseball. And of course, becoming the most succesful sports anime of all time worlwide.