Moving the goal posts

It's a great pleasure to welcome into the Attic our old friend Jay from DesignFootball.com who today gives us his take on goal frames, Italian style and Subbuteo (among other things)...

Like most things in my life, I look at goal frames in terms of pre- or post-Italia '90. As much as we can talk about BSB, BSkyB, Murdoch and "the inception of the Premier League" (the second best "inception" of all time... after "Inception") it was the 1990 World Cup in Italy that really moved the goalposts. Because this is an article about goalposts. So I used that metaphor.

Before Italia '90, goals looked to me like they looked in terrible footage of British domestic hooliganism. That is to say, either the goalposts shaped like enlarged P's, with the net draped down at the back of this protrusion, or with a 45° stanchion propping the net up. This was usually with the crowd separated from the pitch by advertising hoardings and/or fences, being mere inches from the byline. This look didn't work for me.

And so to Italy. I say this piece is about goal frames I have loved, but this is really the anti-goal frame goal frame. This is minimalism in goal frame form. In Italy the stadia - the like of which I didn't even realise existed - had a running track and acres of room behinds the goals! The fans were miles back, in some kind of Colosseum-aping divide between the entertainment and the paying public - which would surely call for sociological analysis if I had the time, inclination or requisite education to tackle it - and the nets... oh, the nets...

Roughly 500 yards back from the byline were two further posts - detached stanchions, should your imagination allow - and nylon cords ran from the upper corners of the nets, to these posts, securing the goal nets in a position of both statuesque poseurly confidence and louche malleability. The goal nets were the focal point of the pitch, given enough room to breathe and beckon the ball into their yawning chasms, but also sprung tightly enough to repel the strike should it evade a goalkeeper's reach.

And this is why I loved them so much. Because a ball shouldn't ever "nestle in the net". For one thing, "nestle" looks like "Nestlé", and we really don't have time to go into that, but mainly because when a great goal is scored, the ball shouldn't hit the net before its entirety has even crossed the line and retire to some dark corner in front of an oversized Draper Tools logo. Rather it should whip its way around the mesh, repeatedly bulging it like a foetus lashing out at its mother before rolling out, back into the active area and winking at the shattered and grounded goalkeeper that notices its reappearance in his peripheral vision.

Italia '90 did this, 501 Great Goals did not. Seriously, if you've ever watched that video you'll know it feels like at least 251 of them are penalties and the rest are tap-ins by Kerry Dixon. They all involved nestling. And the advertising hoardings are so close to the pitch that if Peter Shilton had staggered and fallen backwards over the goal-line as an Andy Brehme deflected free-kick looped over his head in a Barclays League Division One game in 1988 rather than in the Stadio delle Alpi in Turin, it would have seen him decapitated.

In 1990, I asked for "square goal nets" for Christmas, as the closest thing that Subbuteo did to the Italia '90 versions. As I was opening my gift, my grandfather (he's been dead for 17 years - THAT's football nostalgia) pointed out, in partial apologetic apprehension and, I suspect, with an undertone of pedantry, that he couldn't find any "square" goal nets, and these were the best he could do. They were exactly what I wanted, they were perfect and, post Italia '90, my views on football had changed. Bring on the inceptions...

Our grateful thanks to Jay, who not only manages Design Football brilliantly but also does a sterling job documenting the world around him at Marceltipool.com. Well worth checking out if you can!

Jay can also be found on Twitter so follow him and have your life enriched by talk of football and many other things besides...

See also:

• Goal Frames We Have Known and Loved: No.1
• Goal Frames We Have Known and Loved: No.2
• Goal Frames We Have Known and Loved: No.3

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Goal Frames We Have Known and Loved: No.3

Empire Stadium, Gżira, Malta:

Look closely at the grainy black-and-white image above and you'll see something rather spectacular. It's a set of goalposts made entirely out of pelican crossing lights.

Actually that's not true. They couldn't get the bulb to flash on the top.

No, these are in fact proper black and white striped goal posts as seen for many years at the Empire Stadium just north-west of Valetta, Malta. The above picture is taken from the Malta v England match that took place in 1971, and as you can see, they're every bit as bizarre as they are eye-catching.

Not only are the posts an absolute delight to behold (Newcastle United fans, contain yourselves) but the back frame of the goal was also peculiar because of its three support posts. That's THREE - one at the back left of the net, one at the back right and one in the MIDDLE.

Quite why it was deemed necessary to add a third post down the middle is anyone's guess, but it's just the sort of idiosyncratic idea that added so much fun to the world of football years ago.

As if the goalframes weren't crazy enough, the pitch at the Empire Stadium in Malta was made up predominantly of white sand. Any team that played there (and many did, from England to Ipswich Town to Real Madrid) could tell you how tricky that was to play on - in fact Sir Alf's band of happy wanderers only just scrambled a 1-0 win there back in February 1971.

Then again, it's easy to be distracted by innovation and originality when it's so unavoidably in your midst. We can only imagine every visiting player must have spent hours gawping at the monochrome genius of those goal frames, so if possession of the ball was easily lost, so be it. We'd have no doubt done the same.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the goal posts of Gżira: true black and white brilliance.

Structure: 9.5
Net pattern: 7
Net colour: 7
Overall: 8.5

-- 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.

See also:

• Goal Frames We Have Known and Loved: No.1
• Goal Frames We Have Known and Loved: No.2

Read More

Goal Frames We Have Known and Loved: No.2

Manor Ground: 1971

The very definition of a 'box goal', Oxford United had continental style and panache long before anyone in England had the foresight or budget to match them... at either end of their ground, at least.

Oxford's goal frames were as unambiguous and no-nonsense as it was possible to get. With a sturdy metal tubing structure helping to maintain the very essence of a 3D rectangle, the masterstroke was undoubtedly the inclusion of a red net pulled tight across it.

There's something about a coloured net that makes a goal frame look ostentatious, in our view. Somehow it's possible to believe a world where, in the early 70's at least, teams playing in Brazil, Spain, Italy and beyond all had fancy coloured nets because unlike Great Britain, they weren't living life in black and white. And yet here in sleepy Oxford, someone had the brilliance to bring a touch of international quality to an ordinary Second Division club.

For what it's worth, the netting itself was formed of small squares that were just the right size to create a feint red glow behind the goal when seen from certain angles. True, there might have been a few fishing trawlers up in Grimsby lacking some of their equipment back in 1971, but we think it was a sacrifice worth making.

Subbuteo introduced their coloured World Cup Goals in 1972-73. Did Oxford United prompt them to add such a splendid accessory to their range? We'd like to think they did. Case closed.

Structure: 8
Net pattern: 8
Net colour: 9
Overall: 8.3

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Goal Frames We Have Known and Loved: No.1

From time to time, we here at The Football Attic are asked to cover the much overlooked subject of goal frames and goal nets. It's true that those wooden or metal structures into which the ball is eternally struck have evolved and developed in different ways over the years, but it's also true that we've never really bothered to show an interest in the subject.

That will all change now as we start an occasional series where we'll upload a picture and write a few plain words to highlight some truly classic goal frames.

Old Trafford (1978):

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