Panini Continental: Football 81 (Belgium)

Ever remember that feeling you got as a kid at Christmastime; that feeling of envy towards your friends when you saw the presents they’d received? Oh, you were happy enough with your own gifts, sure... but you always felt that their Electronic Battleship game was slightly better than your Buckaroo. Well that’s how I felt when I recently won an eBay auction for a Panini ‘Football 81’ sticker album from Belgium. The English version was great... but my new acquisition had an extra undefinable something that made it ‘better’.

In all my years as a Panini devotee, I’d only ever collected the Italian company’s UK stickers. I knew nothing of their annual ‘Football’ albums from across the channel, but when I did stumble upon them during an eBay visit one day, I soon realised they would be an unattainable fantasy. The eventual selling price for these European Panini albums was always well beyond my budget, and I had to accept that some things in life were just never meant to be.

Luckily for me, my luck changed a few weeks ago when I snapped up the Belgian version of Panini’s Football 81 album for a very reasonable price indeed. What I saw inside was an alternative take on the sticker collections of the early Eighties as I knew them with some subtle (but no less significant) variations.

To begin with, there was the inside front cover. In Panini’s UK albums, this was where you’d usually find a grid in which to write the First Division results for the current season. In the Belgian version, there was a series of small, individual score charts for each gameweek. They both fulfilled the same function, yet somehow the latter version looked more appealing.

After an introductory page featuring a two-piece team picture of the Belgian national team and a review of Belgium’s excellent Euro 80 campaign, the 18 clubs of the Belgian First Division were dealt with in the traditional manner. The double-page layout looks familiar, and yet it’s slightly neater than what we were used to seeing in the UK with 14 players, the manager, the club badge and a two-piece team picture all arranged with pleasing formality.

Look closer, however, and you’ll notice that the player stickers are all in Landscape format rather than the UK-favoured Portrait. Strange as it may seem, this allows for a square space in which the player can be seen, as well as a decent-size club badge, the club name and a rectangular symbol showing the club’s colours on the right. Contained within an outline box along containing the usual profile details, the overall look is smart, even if some of the profile text appears randomly above the sticker rather than below it.

So what else was different about this Belgian book of brilliance? Well, frankly, it was the novelty of everything being so.. non-British. For a start, every shirt worn by every player in every team had an enormous sponsor logo. Then there were the team badges - so unfamiliar to one used to seeing the famous crests of Arsenal, Everton or Manchester United. And then there were the players, many of whom mean nothing to the average British fan, yet a scant few shine out like diamonds. Close examination reveals Dutch master Arie Haan in the line-up for Anderlecht, Cloughie’s 'clown,' Jan Tomaszewski, in goal for Beerschot and his Polish team-mate Gregorz Lato in the white shirt of Lokeren.

Looking for familiar faces indeed becomes something of a preoccupation here as you turn each page. A star of the Belgian national team surfaces occasionally (Jean-Marie Pfaff for Beveren, Erwin Vandenbergh for Lierse) amid a welter of talent from Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark and beyond, yet I was also surprised to find a few lesser-known Brits as well.

Plying their trade in the land of beer and waffles, we find James Gillespie of Gent, a one-time Queens Park player and Scottish ‘amateur international’. Down in the Second Division, there was Ron Ferguson, once a young striker at Sheffield Wednesday and Darlington but now playing in Brussels where, over six seasons, he averaged a goal every four games. And at KV Mechelen there was Stan Brookes, a defender who spent six years at Doncaster before spending another six in the Belgian second tier. Overlooked in Britain, their reward for moving to Belgium was seeing their face on a Panini sticker - something that wouldn't have happened had they stayed in Blighty.

As mentioned earlier, the strangeness of seeing unfamiliar team badges on foil stickers was undeniable, but some of them are worthy of particular mention for their sheer peculiarity. Dip into the Tweede Afdeling (that’s the Second Division, to you and me) and you’ll find La Louviere represented by a sheep’s head emerging from a fur coat. No, wait a minute... it’s a wolf, apparently. Or how about Sporting Hasselt, who appear to have adopted someone’s rough sketch of two hands holding a football? One wonders whether Millwall missed a trick by not following Olympic and their iconography, but the top prize for surrealism surely goes to RC Harelbeke. Their badge showing a stylised football player with a rat’s head and tail shows just how far behind the UK was when it came to LSD-influenced logo design.

The final eleven pages of the album dedicated to the Second Division are arguably the best of all. They’re comprised of two sections, the first dedicated to the badges and team pictures of all 16 teams, the second showing off the players in a half-and-half style that Scottish fans of Panini will be all too familiar with.

This is where we get our introduction to the brilliantly named Boom from Antwerp and Santa Claus’ favourite club, St-Niklaas. We also get to see Charleroi SC sporting what looks like Southampton’s Admiral shirts from the late Seventies, but with black stripes instead of red.

Add those to the welter of odd-sounding foreign player names, Pony kits and team managers that look like they could form a police identity parade for someone arrested on a charge of indecent exposure and you have, in many ways, a Panini album that surpasses anything available in the UK 34 years ago.

True, I was curious to know what football in another country looked like while I was growing up, and I hoped this latest purchase of mine would finally tell me. All I can say is that Panini have rewarded me for my curiosity, just as they always did, by making a wonderful sticker album that delivered in every possible way. With colour, attention to detail and great efficiency, they were undoubtedly the masters of the football sticker world.

- Chris Oakley

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Football on Film: Gregory's Girl

In 1981, one of the greatest films in Scottish movie history was released. Gregory's Girl was a story that could have been about any one of us; a tale of growing up, going to school, playing football and falling in love with someone without ever fully knowing how important any of it was.

Written and directed by Bill Forsyth and starring John Gordon Sinclair as Gregory Underwood, the film brings to mind memories of younger days, our insecurities and inexperience, of living life in the moment and understanding who we are as individuals. And if none of that struck a chord, there were also the sequences where football played a strong part.

If a discussion about football nostalgia appeals to you more than Dee Hepburn or Claire Grogan, you've come to the right place (although decency and integrity prohibits us from having an online vote about which of the two female stars you liked best).

Gregory's Girl is littered with football references and imagery, so if you needed a reminder of where the memories lie, here's a brief selection.

1. School football

Shortly after the opening sequence, we're taken to a secondary school in the Scottish new town of Cumbernauld. There we see a number of football matches taking place involving school children wearing kits of many colours.

They look basic and a little old-fashioned for 1981, but that's how it often was back then. Hands up who played for their school football team in a kit that seemed older than they were? Yeah, me too...

2. Partick Thistle #1

If any one football club had a bigger influence on this film than any other, it was Partick Thistle. Dee Hepburn honed her football-playing skills at the Firhill club before filming began, and here we see them represented in the form of a couple of players wearing Partick's kit from the 1975-76 season.

In the foreground, we get our first sight of Gregory himself, wearing a natty Umbro shirt in blue that, to the best of anyone's knowledge, didn't belong to any particular league club at the time. Judging by the styling, however, it was a new piece of Umbro teamwear at the time, unlike the yellow Umbro goalkeeper top worn by Rab Buchanan who played the part of Andy.

3. Balls

Gregory turns out to be anything but the hotshot goalscorer his team coach, Mr Menzies, had in mind, so a series of trials are organised to find someone more suitable.

Back out on the gravel training pitches in the school grounds, a number of willing (and not-so-willing) participants are put through their paces. Each of them has a Mitre football that looks more designed for the rough playing surface beneath their feet rather than the luxurious turf of Hampden Park, but there again we see the harsh realities of school football.

Actually, come to think of it, those footballs look familiar. Where have we seen those before?

4. Kits of all kinds

The boys that are lined up for action are wearing a colourful array of shirts, some basic and some altogether more in tune with modern football.

In the picture on the left, you can see someone wearing the same sort of yellow top that would have been worn by Alan Rough while playing in goal for Scotland around the same time. Ironically, Rough played his club football for Partick Thistle when the film was made.

At the other end of the desirability scale, we see the kid on the right wearing what seems to be a cheap imitation of a Barcelona shirt.

Note the Umbro diamond logo on the yellow shirt, though. Spotting a theme developing here?

5. Umbro again

Yes, there's more Umbro apparel to marvel at, this time in the form of a tracksuit worn by Dorothy (Dee Hepburn).

Arriving late for the trial, she's convinced she's better than most of the boys and demands a place alongside them. After a lengthy discussion with Menzies (Jake D'Arcy), she finally persuades him to see sense and before long is dribbling the ball around the training cones with all the easy grace of Kenny Dalglish in his prime.

As for that tracksuit, what else can we say except 'Bella bella'?

6. Teamwear-a-go-go

The pale blue shirt we saw being worn by John Gordon Sinclair earlier looked distinctly Manchester City-esque. It'd be nice to think this was once worn by the likes of Paul Power or Kazimierz Deyna, but clearly it wasn't.

More believable, perhaps, is the other Umbro kit that crops up in the film which looks a dead ringer for a Manchester City away kit from the same era. Sadly, this isn't true either, but it looks pretty good all the same - even with those old Partick Thistle socks.

7. Umbro yellow

While Dorothy struts her stuff in Gregory's old outfield position, Gregory himself ends up in goal and clearly he's not up to the standard of the fella we saw earlier. It's a plain yellow goalie top this time (like Andy's earlier) - no Scotland badge and no Umbro diamonds down the sleeves... but there is the ever-present diamond logo in its usual top-left position.

Also worth noting are the cheapo goalie gloves further underlining Gregory's lowly status between the sticks. It's probably a fair bet that those green patches are made of plastic and are consequently of no use to man nor beast. (See also 'Catalogue of Eras'.)

8. Not Dundee

Later in the film, Dorothy, ever conscientious about improving her footballing technique, asks Gregory to help her out with a lunchtime training session.

Forced into goal to provide the most minimal of opposition, he this time wears a short-sleeved Umbro shirt (what else?) in navy blue with white sleeves and red trim.

On first sight, I thought this modern-looking shirt might have been worn once by Dundee, but clearly my imagination was playing tricks on me. The Dees never wore this shirt, but maybe another team did? If you know, drop me a line.

Looks nice though, doesn't it?

9. Do the Tango

If you're going to pick the ball out of the net with as much regularity as Gregory, you might as well make it a good one, and Dorothy clearly knows good balls when she sees them. That's why she's gone for one of the all-time classics - an Adidas Tango.

That's right, you read that correctly... That's Adidas, not Umbro.

And what a fine ball it was. Introduced in time for the 1978 World Cup as the Adidas Tango River Plate, it was well established when Gregory's Girl was released and would be seen in reinvented form at countless World Cups thereafter. Mind you, the one Dee Hepburn's holding is probably a cheap version, but even so...

10. Partick Thistle #2

And so to the final football reference of the film which provides one last mention of Partick Thistle Football Club (well, almost).

Here we see Gregory making some noise on his drum kit, releasing some pent-up nerves ahead of a date with the object of his affections, Dorothy. Standing in the doorway to his bedroom is Madeleine (never Maddy), his younger sister, who's on hand once again to dispense some much-needed wisdom about the opposite sex.

Pinned on the wall behind Gregory, we see a Partick Thistle scarf, confirming the identity of the other love in his life - his favourite football club, located 14 miles away in Glasgow.

From here until the end of the film, football takes a back seat as Gregory attempts to woo the girl of his dreams. For those of you that haven't seen the movie, I won't spoil things by telling you whether he gets his girl or not. Instead, lets take solace from the closing credits which confirm that Partick Thistle Football Club and Umbro International were both integral to the making of the film, and that the named 'Football Coach' was Donnie McKinnon, one-time Partick Thistle captain.

And that's Gregory's Girl. A fine British movie, and one that's now available to buy on DVD and Blu-Ray via Amazon.co.uk. Buy it and enjoy it (especially if you like a bit of football nostalgia).

-- Chris Oakley

All images featured on this post copyright their original owners and used for the purposes of review and illustration. No attempt at superseding original copyright has been made or should be inferred.

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Collectables in 1980/81: Part 2

The second and concluding part of Greg Lansdowne's look back to the football sticker and card collecting scene at the start of the 1980's.

Having launched in 1978, the Daily Star felt confident enough to chance its arm in the football sticker market just three years’ later.

Although it would turn out to be a one-off, ‘Top British Teams’ was a decent effort from the newcomer.

Peter Batt, Chief Sports Columnist of the Daily Star, misjudged his audience in the foreword, however, by pitching it more to adults rather than the accepted target market of kids:

“Middle aged dads browsing through these pages will be instantly reminded of those magical pre-television days when the football circus came to town once every fortnight.

“If I close my eyes I can still inhale the steamy aroma of wet mackintoshes on the crowded top deck of the bus transporting us to wonderland.”

With 412 stickers, the Star opted for two First Division players to a sticker – slightly bigger than the Scottish versions we became accustomed to with Panini. Most were paired in the same clubs but occasionally you would get a Coventry player (Mick Coop) with a Nottingham Forest (Garry Birtles) or David Langan (Birmingham City) with Nicky Reid (Manchester City).

Where the newspaper differentiated from conventional albums was in the shape of their landscape publication, which gave them space for 14 individual player shots (as opposed to 13 from FKS and 12 from Panini that season).

With room for an extra squad member or two, Top British Teams featured a fresh-faced Ian Rush in what Americans would call his ‘rookie card’.

Nominally the players were ordered alphabetically but Ryan came after Suddaby for Brighton and Bannister after Hunt for Coventry when spelling went awry. There is even a rare shot of Clive Allen in an Arsenal shirt... albeit shoved in between Peter Nicholas and Neil Smilie at new club Crystal Palace.  

Claudio Marangoni (Sunderland) and Steve Archibald (Tottenham) compete for the worst superimposing job, the latter of which looks like his head has been placed on Lou Ferrigno’s body.

Claudio Marangoni, Steve Archibald and Garth Crooks

Selected Division Two sides were afforded 12 smaller-sized stickers (Chelsea, Newcastle, Swansea, Sheffield Wednesday, West Ham) while 11 stickers were given out each to Aberdeen, Celtic, Dundee United and Rangers in the Scottish mix. These were sold as four to a sticker.

A swanky competition finishes the album, to win a complete ‘Video Outfit’ - in conjunction with JVC - by naming your best Great Britain team and a slogan for them! A closing date of November 30, 1980 indicates the album came out early season, meaning a lot of credit should be given for putting together, in the main, a worthy first effort.

Less credit goes to Topps for their album-less Footballer ’81 set.

Topps/A&BC had previously brought out series after series of impressive individual player cards but the latest effort would prove the beginning of the end (as just one more set was produced for English football thereafter before the US company took a lengthy hiatus from the UK).

Just as Panini would innovate from Modena and then transfer those ideas abroad, Topps’ US head office would set the guidelines for any tinkering to their products. So it went, Footballers ’81 imitated the same three-players-to-a-card format being used for American sports at the time.

Notwithstanding some bizarre card ordering, the basic premise saw players divided into club sides based on the 1979-80 First Division placings. In between fourth-placed arsenal and Nottingham Forest, in fifth, were the top scorers for the previous season’s Division One teams.

Leeds United and Norwich City were separated by England players; Manchester City and Stoke City were bracketed by internationals from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and Wales; at the end were an assortment of Division Two players.

So far so moderate.

But then you find Larry Lloyd marooned from his Nottingham Forest team-mates, in with Manchester City. Quite why Billy Gilbert of Crystal Palace and Gary Owen of West Bromwich Albion are stuck together before the Second Division players is another mystery.

I will spare Topps’ blushes and leave their ‘out of ordering’ there.

Known as ‘pink backs’ (each Topps set used a different colour on the reverse to differentiate itself), Footballer ’81 packs were an attractive offering to any would be collector: nine picture cards (albeit three cards divided into three each), plus one of 18 ‘Super Star Posters’ and a stick of bubble gum.
Problems only start to arise when one looks deeper into the collection.

With just 198 mini-cards to the set, there really is no need for some of the players to crop up three times (as the likes of Paul Mariner, Glenn Hoddle and John Robertson do for their club, country and as last season’s top scorer).

Some of the photo selections also leave a great deal to be desired. Manchester United’s Ray Wilkins in a Chelsea kit (whom he left in the close season of 1979) appears quite reasonable compared to Southampton’s Kevin Keegan in a Liverpool shirt (a club he departed in 1977).

Brian Kidd would be forgiven for struggling to remember which club he was playing for at that time as he features on a Bolton Wanderers club card in painted on, badgeless, kit as well as on a top scorer card for Everton in Manchester City apparel.

I could go on... but it would be easier to put this collection out of its misery.

As a postscript, Topps did bring out an album for its ‘Footballer’ set in 1981-82 but there was a reason that collection was to be their valediction in England.

With the sketchy competition outlined, it just leaves Panini’s ‘Football 81’. As a previous Football Attic post has already done this album justice, I will close with some embellishing from Peter Warsop, who was the sales and marketing manager at WH Smith Distributors at the time, responsible for, among many other publishers, the sales, marketing and physical distribution for Panini UK:

“Nineteen seventy eight was a great year for Panini on football. As well as the World Cup we sold over 80 million packets of stickers on the Panini ‘Football 78’.  Nineteen seventy nine was down 10% but 1980 and 1981 shot back up to above 1978 levels. During this period we did market collections heavily but I put the main growth contributor down to completely overhauling the distribution system; this was done by reducing down fairly considerably the numbers of wholesalers involved. Those that remained had to provide agreed levels of service to retailers and their performance was carefully monitored and performance reviews given at regular intervals. Both wholesalers as well as retailers were put under some pressure to reward our marketing investments and due to the high volumes being achieved this worked in everyone’s favour.”

With the Daily Star bowing out after one year and FKS and Topps signing off in 1981-82, the path was well and truly clear for Panini to dominate for years to come.

Got any memories about the cards and stickers you collected back in 1980/81? If so, drop us a line and tell which collections you favoured most or those elusive players you needed to complete your sets!

Meantime, as ever, our sincere thanks to Greg Lansdowne for his wonderful blog post, and don't forget, you can buy Greg's book, 'Stuck on You: The Rise & Fall... & Rise of Panini Stickers' from Amazon UK and all good book stores right now (prices vary).

See also:

• Collectables in 1980/81: Part 1

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Collectables in 1980/81: Part 1

Once again it's our absolute pleasure to welcome back Greg Lansdowne who this time takes us on a sticker-packed trip down Memory Lane to the start of the 1980's. Here's Part 1, with the concluding part coming soon to The Football Attic website.

By the time of the 1980-81 season, resistance to Panini’s allure in the football collectables market seemed futile.

An irresistible mix of self-adhesive stickers, up-to-date strips, official club badges (in foil!) – all readily available to a hypnotised audience – made Panini the album to collect.

And yet…

FKS and Topps had been left bloodied and bruised following the entry of Panini into the UK mix from the late 1970s. Prior to that, the pair had dominated the collectables scene with their picture stamps and card sets respectively (Topps having bought out A&BC in 1975).

Rather than bowing out gracefully they carried on for the 1980-81 campaign, like washed-up boxers getting off the canvas on the count of nine to take another beating.

Panini’s ‘Football 81’, Topps ‘Footballers ‘81’ and FKS’ ‘Soccer 81’. What more could any collector need?

Why, the ‘Daily Star Top British Teams Football Album’, that’s what.

Each of Panini’s rivals provided a style of their own but none came anywhere near to putting up an offering likely to compete with the market leader.

It is possible to encapsulate this collectables season in one player: Peter Withe.

The legendary striker had just signed for Aston Villa that summer, at the start of a season to remember for the Villans.

Looking back at that Championship-winning squad in Panini’s double page spread, there sits Withe, in the bottom row of the second page, looking resplendent in the claret and blue outfit for which he is best known.

From this collectables high point, it quickly descends among the rivals.

While Panini traditionally waited until January to get their album out – ensuring the current season’s kits could be utilised – the rush to be first to market among competitors had more negatives than upsides.

Hence, Withe appeared in Newcastle United kit – from where he had moved in the summer of 1980 – in the Daily Star album. Topps opted to paint a claret and blue strip over one of Withe’s many former outfits.

Neither of these were satisfactory but FKS really pulled the stops out when it came to committing a Peter Withe fashion faux pas. If it wasn't bad enough to use a picture of the forward in the shirt of local rivals Birmingham, Withe had left that club in 1976 and played for a further two clubs since (Nottingham Forest and Newcastle).

Despite this oversight (among others), FKS did put up a reasonable showing with their Soccer 81 album. At 450 stickers, this was a comprehensive set that is mostly (if not solely) let down by copyright issues. With Panini having long since agreed deals with the English and Scottish Football Leagues, as well as their respective players’ associations, FKS needed to tread carefully.

As a result, the club badges are artist’s impressions – with varying degrees of inauthenticity.
Leicester City’s resembles a primary school art project; Manchester City’s elaborate badge was just too much like hard work; by the time they got to West Ham United they had completely lost interest!

Although the desire of Panini’s competitors to get their collections out early meant a large chunk of the head shots were taken from the previous season’s press call, this wasn’t as much of a problem at the time, as it was less noticeable with kits barely changing from season to season.

Except Brighton & Hove Albion had made a drastic alteration, for example, ditching their blue and white stripes in 1980-81 for an all blue shirt, making it obvious FKS and Daily Star were using dated photos from 1979-80.

‘Soccer 81’ opened with a review of the previous season, plus a swift welcome from Bobby Charlton at the bottom of the article (“I hope you enjoy collecting and swopping Soccer 81”). Also featuring a competition tie-in with Charlton’s soccer schools, the England great would later shift allegiance to Panini as the decade went on.

A continuing issue (not quite on the scale of the FKS ‘Soccer Stars 80’ album) was the presence of two clubs sharing each double page. It saved on paper but was not pleasing to the eye.

As has been recounted in other articles (as well as in my book ‘Stuck On You’) one of the more piquant aspects of these old albums (for the anally retentive football fans among us) is the errors that, pleasingly, crop up quite regularly.

In what one can only assume was an undetected cock-up by a photographer when captioning, Gordon Cowans appears as both himself and Des Bremner in not just ‘Soccer 81’ but also the Daily Star album.

Eccentric kit choices are also to the fore with, for example, Plymouth Argyle’s Brian Bason in a Chelsea shirt, despite having left the Blues in 1977.

Scottish clubs are featured prominently in equally-proportioned stickers to their English counterparts. To distinguish them, they are bordered by Scottish flags – except FKS forgot to add them in some instances, such as Paul Sturrock of Dundee United.

Similarly, a section of ‘USA Star Players’ (with players from the NASL) were framed by American flags, giving us a rare opportunity to collect UK domestic stickers of Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Muller among others.

FKS were pioneers in the recycling movement by offering a discounted Umbro sports bag – as endorsed by Gary Owen – in exchange for 20 empty packets.

While Panini benefited from the huge promotional push of giving the ‘Football 81’ album away in ‘Shoot!’, FKS carried on their relationship with ‘Scoop’, - a comic that eventually ceased publishing in October 1981, the same season in which FKS also gave up the ghost.

Greg Lansdowne concludes his round-up of the collectables scene of 1980/81 later this week here on the Attic website. Meantime, our huge thanks to Greg, and to Alan Jenkins of Football Cartophilic Football Exchange for unearthing the above image of the rare FKS ‘Soccer 81’ album 'free with Scoop'.

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World Soccer: August 1981

With less than a year to go until the 1982 World Cup, there was much concern among the writers of World Soccer. Concern over Spain's readiness to host the tournament, concern over England's ability to qualify, and concern over the standard of football being played by Europe's top clubs.

A survey of officials and observers in Spain suggested the twelfth World Cup hosts would indeed be ready when the tournament started in June 1982, however while the areas of transport and accommodation appeared to be in good shape, the upgrading of certain stadia appeared a little sluggish.

Despite having been appointed as hosts in 1964, work on improving the Balaídos Municpal Stadium in Vigo and the San Mamés Stadium in Bilbao was only just beginning, and a similar tale could be told for many of the other 15 venues too. Barcelona's Nou Camp was due to increase in capacity and have a new roof fitted, while elsewhere media facilities were being beefed up too.

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Commercial Break: Match Weekly 'Quiz Disc' (1981)

Back at the start of January 2014, we recorded Football Attic Podcast 15 on the subject of Shoot! and Match magazine, and as has become traditional, we put out an appeal ahead of the recording to ask for your memories of either.

While many people regaled us with their remembrances of Shoot's League Ladders, two of you tugged our coats to tell us about a long-forgotten give-away gift in Match Weekly magazine.

Andrew Rockall said at the time: "Match gave away a flexidisc record with a quiz on it. Hoddle, Peter Withe and stretching my memory I think… Alan Kennedy were the contestants. Hosted by Mike Ingham, it was a three-parter and the discs were coloured 7-inch."

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Pirelli slippers ad, 1981

There are times in life when nothing seems to make sense.

Here's an example. What would you get if you combined Pirelli, the renowned maker of Formula 1 car tyres (and all the excitement that motor racing brings) with Kevin Keegan, the ultimate football superstar of the late-1970's and early 1980's? Something epitomising the excitement, glamour and exhilaration of international sport?

No. You'd get a pair of children's slippers, that's what.

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Shoot! 14 November 1981

Imagine a world where football fans across England could, in effect, choose which players could represent their country in international matches. Back in November 1981, Shoot! magazine wasn't quite able to offer such a direct influence on England team selection, but it did invite readers to send in their preferred team to beat Hungary in the upcoming crucial World Cup qualifier.

Having received a “phenomenal” response to their appeal in a previous issue, Shoot! compiled the team that its readers thought Ron Greenwood should pick. “Some positions were clear-cut” it said, while for “one or two we almost needed a recount” due to the closeness of the vote.

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Panini: Football 81

You could hardly miss Panini’s Football 81 sticker album as it rested on the newsagent’s shelf alongside the Angling Times and the latest instalment of Carrier’s Kitchen. The bright yellow cover and dynamic picture of Ray Wilkins taking on Gerry Francis shouted ‘come and get me’ to any passing 10-year-olds, and I'm proud to admit that I was one.

By now, a strong format had become the foundation of the annual Panini sticker album. First Division teams had a double-page spread upon which were printed rows of stickers showing head-and-shoulder pics of the manager and various players. A team picture and foil badge headed it all up with mini player biographies and a club profile thrown in for good measure.

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Kick-Off (1981)

It's our absolute delight to welcome back Al Gordon from God, Charlton and Punk Rock who provides us with another excellent guest post - this time on the simple pleasure of playing a classic football board game...

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two types of people on a Sunday morning. Those who like their bed, and those who would rather endure the wind and the rain to rummage through boxes of other people’s cast-offs at a boot sale.

I’m firmly planted in the former category whilst my wife will gladly come home clutching an armful of early bird ‘bargains’ which miraculously we have previously survived without.

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Videoblog 2: Kick-Off (MB Games)

Chris O returns with the second Football Attic Videoblog, this time taking MB's Kick-Off as its subject.

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JVC 'Goal Makers' ad, 1981

We've featured adverts before on our blog site, adverts like this one for JVC taken from the back cover of National Geographic magazine in 1981.

Usually the main image is something football-related (else we wouldn't bother bringing it to your attention) and here we have an actual match in action, or so it seems. Chances are it's not really an actual match at all - more likely a staged scene at a US stadium (this was a US-syndicated magazine, after all) that made use of the resources before an NASL match.

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