Fantasy Nostalgia: Retro Sweets Football Kits

At the end of June, I published a post which comprised of fifteen football kit illustrations, each one representing one of the old ITV regional television stations. I did it for no other reason than to provide a whimsical antidote to the serious world of modern football.

It was, by Football Attic standards, one of the most popular things we've done in recent times. Many of the comments we received at the time said things like "This is totally bonkers... but brilliant" (for which I'm personally very grateful), but Beyond The Last Man contacted us on Twitter and said: "I dare you to do a set based around 70's sweets and chocolate brands."

As if we'd waste our time on something as fatuous and stupid as that...

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Left to right: Aztec, Banjo, Bounty, Curly Wurly

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Left to right: Dairy Crunch, Double Decker, Flake, Fudge

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Left to right: Milky Bar, Pacers, Polo, Refreshers

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Left to right: Fizzy Spangles, Texan, Topic, Turkish Delight

-- Chris Oakley

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Fantasy Nostalgia: Interior Colour Guide For Football

You may have the experience, you may even have the equipment, but when it comes to decorating your home, it takes a certain eye for colour when it comes to choosing the right paint.

But fear not! If you're a football nostalgia fanatic and are wondering what colour to paint your home, help is at hand with the new Football Attic Interior Colour Guide For Football!

We've got every colour under the sun to suit every room in your house, and all as a tribute to some of the greatest players that ever set foot on a pitch. So before you pick up that brush and don your overalls, check out our colour chart first - it's every interior designer's favourite style guide!

(OK - can we stop talking crap now...?)

-- Chris Oakley

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Fantasy Nostalgia: Regional ITV Football Kits

In much the same way as our League of Blogs graphically rendered websites as football kits, this little exercise in pointless fantasy does exactly the same for some of the ITV regional TV channels of yesteryear.

And so we present the likes of Granada, Thames, Grampian, TVS and many others in football kit form. No real reason for it... just thought it might be a pleasant distraction from football in the real world...

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Left to right: Grampian, Scottish Television, Border, Ulster

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Left to right: HTV, London Weekend Television, Thames, Television South West

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Left to right: Anglia, Channel, TVS, Yorkshire

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Left to right: ATV, Granada, Tyne Tees

-- by Chris Oakley

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Fantasy Nostalgia: Fantasy League 1971/72

Well, there may only be a few weeks of the 1971/72 Football League season left, but we're quietly confident that our Fantasy League team's going to romp home to victory.

Oh alright then - here's who we've picked... It won't do any harm to tell you now...

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Fantasy Nostalgia: Shirt Sponsorship in the 1960s

What would the football kits of English football teams have looked like if shirt sponsorship had arrived a decade earlier, during the late-1960's? Go on, admit it - you've been wondering about that, haven't you?

Well wonder know more as we conjure up some more fantasy illustrations to take you into an alternative reality where things really did happen...

We begin with Sheffield United (above left) who in this image are sporting the sponsor's name of Woodbine. Why? For no other reason than the once popular cigarette brand features in The Greasy Chip Butty Song, favoured so much by fans of The Blades. So there.

Then we have Watford (above centre) who perhaps might have had the Green Shield Stamps logo on their plain yellow shirts. I matched the logo with the team because the building that once acted as the Green Shield UK headquarters was based in Edgware, a short distance from the Vicarage Road ground.

Lastly, on the right of the image, I've paired up Manchester United with Watney's Red Barrel. Again, no complicated reason for this, other than the logo looks quite nice on a red shirt.

Onto the next selection...

Tottenham and Persil (above left) - a perfect combination, purely because we were always told that 'Persil washes whiter'... and just as well, as those white shirts can get really rather muddy sometimes...

Above centre is Aston Villa and their HP Sauce-fronted shirts. Here we have another local connection as the factory that used to make HP Sauce was located in Aston, Birmingham. (And you thought I was just throwing this stuff together...)

Lastly on the right, we have Oxo on the shirts of Nottingham Forest, proving once again that some logos just look better on a particular background colour. Oxo's packaging has been red for many years, so it just seems to fit.

And so to the last selection of 60's-sponsored kits, and we begin with the Hoover logo on the QPR shirt (above left). Anyone that's driven down the A40 Western Avenue in London has probably seen the lovely Art Deco building that once produced Hoover appliances at some point or another. The Hoover Building is situated just over five miles away from QPR's Loftus Road ground, thereby creating yet another tenuous link.

The middle kit is that of Norwich City, and their shirt is sponsored by Fairy Snow. The name might be faintly embarrassing, but there is a connection as packets of the erstwhile detergent used to have a yellow and green colour scheme. Fact.

Last, but not least, there's Everton and their Lyons Maid splash across the famous old blue shirt. Here I have to admit I really have been throwing this together as the weakest of all connections is based on Everton once having the great Mick Lyons on their team roster during the 1970s. Pathetic really, isn't it?

-- Chris Oakley

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Fantasy Nostalgia: The Football Shirt Collection

Imagine a fantasy world where the greatest artists, designers and illustrators known to mankind work alongside football kit manufacturers to create Premier League team shirts...

Imagine...

-- by Chris Oakley

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Fantasy Nostalgia: Liverpool wear Admiral

When I recently read Bert Patrick's book all about the history of Admiral, legendary kit makers to the great and good of British football, one episode sent my mind into a tailspin. It was the section where Patrick, looking to grab the kit contracts for as many top clubs as possible, approached Bill Shankly at Liverpool and gained his agreement to provide them Admiral outfits.

Sadly for Bert Patrick, what would have been a huge name to add to his company's portfolio turned out to be a false dawn as Liverpool's board of directors overruled Shankly to prevent the deal from going through.

Yet it got my mind thinking: what would Liverpool have looked like in an Admiral kit back then, and thereafter?

Time to get doodling, I thought...

Kit 1: Circa 1973

If Bill Shankly had been backed by his board, this might have been the first pair of Admiral kits worn by his team. (Click on images for a larger version.)

Applying Liverpool's colours to the Admiral kit for Leeds United at the time, you get an all-red outfit with a flappy collar, oval badge and those famous Leeds number ribbons stitched into the socks. Well we can all dream, I suppose...

For the away kit, I've gone for the white and black that was preferred by the Anfield club at the time.

Not bad, but quite plain and basic as were many of the kits at the time.

Kit 2: Circa 1974

Admittedly this is the most 'out there' design of the lot, but this is Fantasy Nostalgia after all...

Here I've used Admiral's Luton Town kit template which would have originally used orange, navy blue and white. Given that Liverpool only wore two colours at home in the early 70's (red and white), I've had to use a bit of artistic licence by adding a darker shade of red on the first kit. As for the vertical band, I hardly think it would have been accepted by the Anfield faithful, but it was somewhat in vogue at the time!

Once again for the away kit, I've chosen a predominantly white and black colour scheme, but this time there's more red thanks to that red band flanked with black.

A more interesting pair of kits than the last ones, but perhaps better suited to, say, a Swindon or a Middlesbrough...

Kit 3: Circa 1975

By 1975, the England national team had an Admiral kit of their own, and that's the design I've used for this third version of what Liverpool might have been wearing around the same time.

Again I've employed a shade of dark red on the shoulders and shorts as an accent colour, but this time it's predominantly red with white trim for the home kit, and quite smart I think it looks too.

For a bit of variety in the away kits, I've provided two options - white/black again, but also an all-yellow version, even though Liverpool rarely wore that colour until 1979.

Personally I think these kits are the most believable of all those shown here and I think Bob Paisley's team would have looked quite fetching in them.

Kit 4: Circa 1976

Yet more flights of fancy now as we enter the era of the glorious Admiral tramlines. For Liverpool to have embraced this design would have meant a leap of faith of gargantuan proportions for club officials and fans alike, and yet it's not completely beyond the realms of fantasy to think of Liverpool in such a series of kits.

One shortcoming of the design, however, would have been exposed when Liverpool became the first top flight team to have an official shirt sponsor around 1978/1979. Having to fit 'Hitachi' onto the front of their kits would've broken up the tramlines motif somewhat, and yet according to my home kit design shown here, it doesn't destroy the whole look, in my view.

Could you imagine Graeme Souness or Ray Kennedy wearing any of these? Probably not, but it's worth remembering that if Shanks had got his way, that Admiral logo really would've been worn by the English champions rather than the Umbro diamonds...

-- Chris Oakley

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Fantasy Nostalgia: How to get Scotland into World Cup Round 2...

Football is full of traditions. Whether it's the need to go for a pre-match pint of beer or the irresistible desire to support the little team in a 'David v Goliath' cup tie, there are some things we can't help ourselves doing where football's concerned.

Another tradition, especially if you're English, is to remind those kindly Scottish folk that their national team are as likely to reach the Second Round of the World Cup as it is of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. It's an old joke and getting more and more worn out with every passing year.

Yet a friend of The Football Attic, Andrew Rockall, seems to have come up with a valid reason why Scotland failed to progress beyond the group stage of at least one World Cup Finals. Andrew writes:

'Have you ever wondered how the 1982 World Cup would have played out if they'd used a different format - say the one used in 1986?'

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Fantasy Nostalgia: Panini World Cup 2014 Wish List

Just over 122 days. That's how long we've got to wait until the arrival of FIFA's 20th cavalcade of football brilliance, the World Cup Finals. And where there's a World Cup, there's always an accompanying Panini sticker album to look forward to...

Rejoice!

It's always a big event when a new Panini World Cup collection comes along, so what would we like to see when the new album finally makes an appearance?

I've been looking back through some old Panini albums for some ideas that would brighten up this year's compendium, and I've drawn up a wish list of the things I'd like to see when it finally reaches the shops. See what you think...

1. A decent cover

If a picture paints a thousand words, it's fair to say that some of Panini's previous albums didn't have a lot to say for themselves. Quite often, the front cover would feature a picture of one or more players painted by an artist that clearly didn't understand the excitement that football provides. Sometimes, we'd get a generic montage of flags or a picture of a football that seemed a little soulless. Very rarely, we might get to see some real players on a pitch, but they were usually unidentifiable and therefore boring.

Painted players... uninspiring

Finally, however, Panini ditched that approach for its Euro 2000 album by basing the entire front cover design around the official tournament logo. At last - something modern and dynamic... and corporate. Oh it was fine the first couple of times, but the same approach has been used over and over again right up until the Euro 2012 album. It'll no doubt be used again for World Cup 2014, too.

Panini's Munchen 74 album

It needn't be that way, though. Going back to the Munchen 74 album, Panini used the official poster of the 1974 World Cup as it's main cover art. And art it most certainly was - a no-nonsense abstract painting of a player striking the ball on a stark black background. How refreshingly mature. So why not go back to having some proper art on the cover again?

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Any number of artistic approaches could be used: Impressionism, Surrealism, Art Nouveau. Here's my very basic example of how it could look, using a Pop Art approach... (see right)

It needn't be technically complex, so long as it was more visually interesting than a corporate tournament logo or a badly painted player. How hard can it be?

2. Map and flags

If there's one image that sticks in my mind from my earliest sticker collecting days, it's the opening page of Panini's Europa 80 album. It featured a three-by-three sticker image showing a map of Europe with lots of flags stuck in where the competing nations were located. Perhaps a little juvenile to some people, but to me it was a pleasing summary of who had made it to the prestige finals in Italy that year.

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Putting aside the fact that it was the devil's own job trying to line up nine stickers in a perfect grid, I think Panini should bring back the big map - but this time apply it to this year's World Cup. Here's how it might look... (see left)

Admittedly my attempt to show all of the European flags became rather challenging due to the imbalance of too many flags and not enough land mass, but in general terms I think it admirably keeps the spirit of Europa 80 alive.

Before you say it, that bottom-left sticker does look a bit bare, but hey, you can't have everything, right?

3. Excluded Nations

If you go back to Panini's main albums of the 1970's/early-80s, you'll find one of my all-time favourite features - the Excluded Nations section.

Here, you can allow yourself a brief snigger as Panini attempted to make its collection more appealing to a wider audience. You see, England singularly failed to qualify for anything of note during the 1970's and that meant few kids in England were likely to buy its sticker albums whenever a World Cup came around. The same could be said for many other countries - France, Portugal, Ireland, Switzerland, Greece...

Panini Europa 80: Excluded Nations

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The answer? To create a section showing some of those self same teams that would have been given a double-page spread if they had qualified. Miserable over the fact that Eusebio didn't make it to the 1974 World Cup? No problem! There's a sticker for him in Munchen 74! Crying over Trevor Brooking's absence from Argentina '78? Weep no more - he's in the World Cup 78 album! (etc, etc, etc...)

Taking this wonderful attempt to please all of the people all of the time, I think Panini should bring it back for 2014. Unlike the old way of doing things, there's actually no need to include a few players from each of the excluded nations. A simple page showing the badges for each country should suffice, because everyone loves a foil badge, right? Perhaps it could look like this... (see right)

4. World Cup Posters

The idea of including former World Cup posters is not a new one where Panini is concerned, but the posters themselves were often included in a wider look back at previous tournaments. They were usually packaged together with pictures of legendary players and teams, and good though that was (and sadly absent as that's been from recent World Cup albums), it did rather detract from the lovely artwork of those posters.

With that in mind, I suggest that as a tribute to this year's 20th Finals, Panini should display all 20 tournament posters on a decent-sized double page spread. Think of it as a gallery of artistic greatness, displayed for posterity and viewed upon with pride. Something like this, for instance...

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5. Venue Posters

And while we're on the subject of posters, who's seen the creations for each of Brazil's 12 stadium venues? Aren't they magnificent?!!

If you haven't guessed already, I'm a big fan of art and graphic design. When it's done properly (something I wouldn't know about personally), it lifts the spirits and nourishes the soul. So once again, let's see if Panini can show off such a wonderful array of poster art with another double page spread. Go on Panini, you know it makes sense...

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So those are my ideas... what would you like to see in Panini's World Cup 2014 sticker album? Leave us a comment and tell us your thoughts!

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Fantasy Nostalgia: The Football Attic Does The FIFA World Rankings

Let's face it, whenever FIFA releases its latest monthly World Rankings list, the international football community collectively thinks "yeah whatever" and carries on with its normal activities.

We at The Football Attic, however, think it could be made more exciting. Not only that, but we think we could present the World Rankings in a way that keeps all you nostalgia freaks happy as well as the international football fan in general.

Here's how it should be done...

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Fantasy Nostalgia: League Ladders 1913-14

Ever keen to bring you football memorabilia that never actually existed in the first place (see 'Subbuteo 1900'), here's another born from our willing imagination and an abundance of time on our hands.

As today sees the start of another new Premier League season, our minds were taken back to the equivalent weekend years gone by when as kids we'd be ready and waiting to finally start using our Shoot! League Ladders.

For anyone that doesn't remember, League Ladders were a simple device. Essentially the main part consisted of a thin piece of cardboard with slits cut into it, on top of which was printed the empty league tables for England and Scotland. Into the slits you'd slot some thin cardboard tabs that displayed the names of all the English and Scottish league clubs. As the league tables changed each week, it was your job to pull out the tabs and place them in the right slots to show each team in their new position.

The process of updating your very own full colour league table display was addictive and hugely enjoyable up until, ooh, the third week of the season, by which time the novelty of rearranging 130 small pieces of cardboard had dramatically worn off.

And that was if you had a full set of tabs, by the way. Such was Shoot's ingenious ability to nurture your excitement for the new season (and for increasing revenue), they'd only give away two divisions worth of team tabs every week, thereby meaning you had to buy Shoot for four consecutive weeks to get them all. Chances are you'd fail to get a copy of Shoot for at least one of those four weeks, thereby leaving an aching chasm of emptiness where Queen of the South should be. Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing, actually...

Anyway, now you know what League Ladders were all about, it's time to show you what they might have looked like had they been available 100 years ago, just before the start of the 1913-14 season.

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As you can see, we've tried once again to be as authentic as possible when it comes to the admittedly minimal styling (give or take the occasional bit of indulgence here or there), and rest assured the details and team colours shown are as accurate as we could get them.

Better still is the fact that if you download the PDF version of the graphic here and print it out onto thin A3 cardboard, you could have your very own working version of our 1913-14 League Ladders. All you need to do is cut out all the tabs and cut the slits where marked, and bingo - more post-Edwardian fun than an entire DVD box set of Downton Abbey. Enjoy.

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After They Were Famous: The Secret Lives of the World Cup Mascots

World Cups come and go, some leaving behind a raft of fond memories and a lasting legacy for the host nation...others merely leave behind white elephant stadia and an increased national debt!

But what becomes of the World Cup Mascots? Their moment in the spotlight burns brightly, but is over quicker than a Girls Aloud reunion tour.

Chris & Rich asked this question and after some exhaustive research, invite you to take a look at the fates of some of those forgotten icons...and find that life after a World Cup rarely fits in with FIFA's family vision...

World Cup Willie (1966, England)

William Lion, as he was known before joining Equity, took on his first major acting role as the logo that appeared on UK-farmed eggs in the 1950’s. Annoyed by the continual battering of thousands of spoons across the country, Willie searched the small ads for a new job and eventually replied to an advert placed by the FA for a new football tournament mascot. With his only opposition being a humanised sparrow holding a football and a bulldog with a limp, Willie easily won the public vote.

After the triumph of a home victory for England at the 1966 World Cup, the excitement and interest in football slowly started to diminish, as did their hunger for World Cup Willie. The lion that had carried the hopes and earned the affection of the English fans was now yesterday’s man and there no longer seemed to be a part for him to play.

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Fantasy Nostalgia: Subbuteo 1900

While writing our recent article about football cigarette cards from 1938, it occurred to me that the game of soccer in the UK back then must have been a very colourful one indeed. Like many of you, I've occasionally seen pictures of footballers from the early twentieth century and marvelled at the garish colours and antiquated styles of the uniforms worn in that long-forgotten era.

But the thought quickly came to mind that if football really was so colourful back then, what would a Subbuteo poster from that era have looked like if the game had existed?  It was at this moment that I hatched a plan to create the image you see below:

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To be specific, I tried to create the image of a Subbuteo poster as it may have looked back at the start of 1900. The teams that are featured are from the Football Leagues of England and Scotland during the 1899-1900 season as well as international teams. Not that there were many of the latter; only England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales were playing football at international level until 1902.

Where the kits are concerned, I've used artistic license from time to time where specific details were unavailable for the start of 1900. In those cases, I've used an approximate image based on the nearest kit recorded to that date. In short, this is a very generalised depiction of the kits being worn back in the day.

As for the poster itself, I've kept the styling fairly simple to maximise overall clarity because if the Victorians liked one thing, it was ornate decoration. Don't get me wrong - I like a curlicue as much as the next man, but one can have too much of a good thing.

Anyway, you're invited to click on the image for a closer look at the teams playing at the start of the last century (apologies for small index text, by the way), and if you can't find your favourite club, they either hadn't been formed, hadn't joined the league or were operating under a different name back then. No prizes for identifying any teams in the last category!

(To view the image at full size, left-click on the image above, then when the image appears on your screen, right-click on it and save it to your computer. Once there, you can view it in a graphics package or Windows.)

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Top 5 Subbuteo World Cup Accessories That Never Were

Subbuteo, as we all know, created many many accessories to enhance the realism of the beautiful tabletop game. Some were great and their existence was without question... Others made you wonder who exactly came up with the idea (ball throwing goalies on sticks?!?!).

To that end, I hereby present some more Subbuteo accessories that, for all we know, may have been one step away from production... assuming the decision makers were tripping balls of course...

Triggs - Roy Keane's Dog

Forget host country South Korea's extraordinary journey to the semi final. The true star of the 2002 World Cup was a bit more hairy though probably covered just as much ground.

Meet Triggs, the lovable labrador who shot to fame after Roy's early exit (I'd say hissy fit, but I value my legs too much) from the Republic of Ireland's base camp.

Combine him with any Roy Subbuteo figure and the TV Tower and you too can recreate those hazy days 11 years ago when the world media chased a bloke and his pooch round the streets while the rest of the world wanted to watch some football... at 9 o'clock in the bloody morning...

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Subbuteo: Accessories for the modern era

Subbuteo today leads a charmed life. Having peaked in the late-1970's, it dwindled away into virtual obscurity during the next decade or two and looked for a while as though 'flick to kick' had breathed its last. Luckily, despite several clumsy attempts by various companies to try and reinvent the brand, it survives to this day thanks to a loyal legion of fans keen to bring the game up to date in their own inventive ways.

Yet one can't help wondering what Subbuteo would be like today had it continued uninterrupted on its upward curve of the 1970's. The game of football today is different in so many ways to the one we knew back then, but would Subbuteo have changed with it? If so, what would we, the humble consumer, be buying for our collections if the game was as big today?

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Football kits 'The Talbot Way'

The Coventry 'Talbot' kit

If you listened in to our recent podcast on retro football kit design, you'd have heard Rich and myself yakking on about the famous Coventry City 'Talbot' kit (see pic right). For those that still aren't aware, this was a special kit brought in between 1981 and 1983 to capture the spirit of Coventry City's new-found partnership with the Talbot motor group. At one time the club were even planning to rename themselves Coventry Talbot, but that's another story.

Sadly for Coventry, not even their fancy new kit got to see the light of day as often as they'd have liked. On those rare occasions when the BBC or ITV outside broadcast trucks rolled into Highfield Road, the cameras were never allowed to cast their gaze upon the big 'T', the Football League banning such obvious sponsorship from appearing on our screens.

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Al Gordon's Five Subbuteo Items They Never Made

Following on from our Top 5 Subbuteo Items articles, regular Football Attic contributor Al Gordon of God, Charlton & Punk Rock has come up with a novel twist on the idea...his top 5 Subbuteo accessories they never made...

Subbuteo had pretty much every angle of the beautiful game covered didn't they? From ambulance men to TV commentators, from floodlights to dugouts, every fixture and every fitting was scaled down and turned into plastic so that we could recreate the whole mesmerising experience in our living rooms when it was far too miserable outside to kick a real football about.

Have you ever noticed gaps in the catalogue though? Have you seen something on a Saturday afternoon and wished you had the miniature version back at home. Streakers were never an official accessory but a table football shop in Wales saw the need and created their own.

Here are five items I’d add given half the chance, not everybody’s cup of tea I’ll admit so please feel free to comment and tell me what you’d have added to Subbuteo to give it even more charisma.

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