At last - we're on Facebook!

Yes, it's true. The Football Attic finally has a page on Facebook and you're all invited to 'Like' it!

When we started out back in November 2011, we decided to ease ourselves gently into the murky world of social media. We didn't want to rush into anything, so we created our Twitter account first of all and waited to see if there was any negative fallout. With news reaching us that nearly 600 of you have since followed @FootballAttic, it's fair to say we're far from disappointed at the outcome, so thanks to all of you for that.

After Twitter, we dallied with Google+ and created a YouTube account but we always kept a Facebook page back as a last resort. We were never quite sure whether it was strictly necessary, but now we've decided to give it a go.

So what will you find on our Facebook Attic page?  For a start, lots of notices telling you about the great stuff we're providing for you on this blog site, but that's not all. We'll be spiralling off into all kinds of directions discussing the football nostalgia topics we know you love and getting you to interact with us too. We'll even tell you about great nostalgia material on other blog sites, because we're rather nice like that.

All in all, we'll hopefully provide you with a wonderful extra outlet through which we can satisfy your appetite for everything from Panini to Subbuteo. Just visit www.facebook.com/thefootballattic, 'Like' our page and spread the word.

Thanks very much and have fun!

Chris O and Rich J.

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Steven Gabb's Top 5... World Cup Shirts

Yet more suggestions for the best World Cup Shirts now from Steven Gabb from the excellent blogsite Spirit of Mirko who has come up with his own mixed bag in more ways than one...

United States (1950, home)

Some kits are classics because they are stylish, others because they were used during a particularly successful era for a team. But to be a true classic I think the perfect storm of a wonderful performance and a great design are required. This is certainly the case for USA's 1950 kit. Not only is it smart - it's a truth universally acknowledged that the best kits feature a sash - the US recorded one of their finest ever international results wearing it, a 1-0 victory over Tom Finney's England.

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I've Got Stripes: The five most wretched striped football shirts of all time

Ed Carter returns with a fabulous guest post all about the place of the striped shirt in football history...

Listeners to the latest Football Attic podcast will now be fully aware that I have become part of the problem. The problem, specifically, is the way the world of football fans dotes on the Peru international kit. But we love sashes. Sashes on kits are brilliant things and, moreover very difficult to mess up.

Stripes, on the other hand, are a different matter. My own team are Brighton and Hove Albion, so I dote on striped shirts. Brighton of course once famously had a kit with striped shorts as well, by way of demonstrating the massive inadvisability of doing that.

There's another magical aspect to striped football shirts of a sort unrelated to sartorial concerns: teams who wear them underachieve magnificently. The last time a team who wore stripes as their first choice kit won the English football league championship was Sunderland in 1935/36 and the last FA Cup winner in stripes were the largely otherwise stripe-free Coventry City in 1987. The last team who are regular striped shirt wearers to prevail in football's oldest competition: Southampton, in 1976. And naturally, they weren't wearing their red and white striped shirts that day... the impossible glamour of the no-hoper is hard to overlook.

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Arsenal - Barclays League Division One review (VHS), 1989

A warm welcome to Rich Nelson, the man behind the wonderful Nelson's Column and designer of Kits 5 and 6 on our League of Blogs 2012 wallchart. He's discovered a VHS tape that covers one of the major high points in Arsenal's history...

Not quite from the Football Attic, this is a treasure from the Football Garage (aka Nelson’s Column). The video was a present for being so brave…

My first experience of travel sickness on the way to a school trip to Suffolk in July 1989, the nine-year-old Rich N survived, and returned home to be greeted by happy parents and a shiny shrink-wrapped purchase from the Islington Woolworths. I couldn't claim to be any sort of connoisseur of production values with my collection, mostly of Transformers and various editions of The Big Match (unknowingly recorded over with Coronation Street), but just pressing 'Play' on the video player was like I'd become a true sophisticate. Flowing titles, a saxophone-heavy soundtrack and the dulcet tones of Jim Rosenthal were in place, and it was time to remember the finest end to a season ever, far closer than its poor relation, May 2012.

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League of Blogs Wallcharts - NOW AVAILABLE

Remember the League of Blogs? Remember when we all had fun together? You do? Well, that's marvellous, for I have have good news fellow League of Bloggers as the actual, physical wallchart posters are now available!

Took a while to find somewhere I could get them for a decent price for a decent size as I wanted them to look good and you know what..they do!

They are 20" x 30", printed on glossy photo paper, shown below...DVD of the awesome Sledge Hammer (look it up, then go buy it) included for scale.

DVD not included...

And so to the money side of things...and these are being done at virtually cost price.

£8.50 + £3 P&P

If you want one, email us at admin [at] the footballattic [dot] com and I'll let you know how you can pay.

Thanks,
Rich & Chris

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Attic Kits Feature in Coventry City Matchday Programme

Today is a very proud day for The Football Attic and in particular, the Rich (@sofa_soccer) shaped half.

In today's Coventry City Matchday Programme for the game against Bury, 3 of my fantasy kit designs are showcased to all who buy a copy. As someone who, like Chris, spent hours of his teenage years designing kits, to have them in your home team's programme is just fantastic!

Before I go into how this came about, I want to say a big thank you to Derek and Gary of the brilliant Got, Not Got, for it is they who made this all possible. For those of you who may have missed it, we interviewed the Godfathers of Retro back in February.

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Arctic Software's World Cup (C16 & Plus/4)

THIS is the game I talked about in the podcast! Turns out it was the game that US Gold utilised for World Cup Carnival, which Chris mentioned (and the fantastic 200% article he mentioned is here).

The C64 version doesn't seem to be too bad, but this is what I had to put up with...

Football computer games...screw you!

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The Football Attic Podcast Episode 2: Computer Games

Welcome back for Episode 2 of the Football Attic Podcast!

This week we delve into the uber-nerdy world of football computer games and discover that Rich seems to be bitter about almost any game he's ever played, except for Sensible Soccer

So...prepare for reminiscence and rants as Chris and Rich relive their geeky pasts ;-)

Download it here - (or right-click and 'Save as' to save your own copy)

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Ed Carter's Top 5... World Cup Shirts

The kits keep on coming as today we welcome Ed Carter's choice of his favourite five World Cup shirts...

1. West Germany (1970, home)

(West) Germany have a virtually unblemished record of brilliant, tasteful football kits. Even when they went completely insane (1990 and 1994) they did so with such panache and style that it was brilliant and the world and Jeff Banks rejoiced. However, for me it's always the plainer the better and the 1970 West German kit is perhaps the most beautiful ever seen in the World Cup finals. Two-tone with simple collar and cuff trim and a brilliant black German eagle badge in a thick black circle. Dutch people would go to their child's wedding wearing this kit.

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Al Gordon's Top 5... World Cup Shirts

Al Gordon from God, Charlton & Punk Rock is the latest fellow blogger to give us his Top 5 World Cup Kits:

1. England (1982 Away)

Once upon a time Admiral set the standard in kit design.  This Leicester based firm had the best logo, the best templates and the best of the clients, England.
Many think the home kit of this era to be the greatest England shirt of all time, yet it is the red away version that I always fondly remember. A quarter past five on the 16th June 1982 we kicked off our World Cup campaign against Platini and the French. A Bryan Robson goal just a minute later and we all really thought it could be ‘This time’ after the disappointment of missing Argentina in 78. It’s interesting to note that both sides wore their away strips although the home ones didn’t clash.

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