For years it was the gold standard of football quality. Twenty-five yard screamers, fabulous team efforts, flying headers... they've all featured in the BBC's Goal of the Season competition over the last 45 years, and for a lucky few, the ultimate accolade has been theirs. Thanks to the votes sent in on the back of a postcard or sealed down envelope (latterly championed by a self-imposed panel of 'experts'), a succession of goals have been crowned the greatest seen on BBC Television every season, and they in turn have attained legendary status.
To score a BBC Goal of the Season requires talent, technique and skill. For several decades, however, you'd have needed a sizable portion of luck too. It was only comparatively recently that the BBC Match of the Day cameras started covering every match in England's top flight, but in the days before the Premier League, you were more likely to see the highlights of only a few games from the four divisions of the Football League every weekend. As a goalscorer of considerable ambition, the chances of scoring a goal capable of being remembered for generations was slim enough without the randomness of getting it captured for all posterity.
But lets now celebrate the goals that made it; the Goals of the Season, as shown on BBC television since 1970, and choose the greatest of them all. Listed below are all 45 winners of the BBC Goal of the Season competition, and we invite you to watch them all and savour their beautiful brilliance. Once you've done that, we'd like you vote for your favourite at the foot of this page. No need to write your three goals in order of preference on the back of a postcard - just type in the number of your top goal and technology will do the rest. The closing date for entries is 10 November 2015.
Goal 1 Ernie Hunt (for Coventry City against Everton, 3 October 1970)
Goal 2 Ronnie Radford (for Hereford United against Newcastle United, 5 February 1972)
Goal 3 Peter Osgood (for Chelsea against Arsenal, 17 March 1973
Goal 4 Alan Mullery (for Fulham against Leicester City, 26 January 1974)
Goal 5 Mickey Walsh (for Blackpool against Sunderland, 1 February 1975)
Goal 6 Gerry Francis (for Queens Park Rangers against Liverpool, 16 August 1975)
Goal 7 Terry McDermott (for Liverpool against Everton, 23 April 1977)
Goal 8 Archie Gemmill (for Nottingham Forest against Arsenal, 21 January 1978)
Goal 9 Ray Kennedy (for Liverpool against Derby County, 24 February 1979)
Goal 10 Justin Fashanu (for Norwich City against Liverpool, 9 February 1980)
Goal 11 Tony Morley (for Aston Villa against Everton, 7 February 1981)
Goal 12 Cyrille Regis (for West Bromwich Albion against Norwich City, 13 February 1982)
Goal 13 Kenny Dalglish (for Scotland against Belgium, 15 December 1982)
Goal 14 Danny Wallace (for Southampton against Liverpool, 16 March 1984)
Goal 15 Graeme Sharp (for Everton against Liverpool, 20 October 1984
Goal 16 Bryan Robson (for England against Israel, 26 February 1986
Goal 17 Keith Houchen (for Coventry City against Tottenham Hotspur, 16 May 1987)
Goal 18 John Aldridge (for Liverpool against Nottingham Forest, 9 April 1988)
Goal 19 John Aldridge (for Liverpool against Everton, 20 May 1989)
Goal 20 Ian Wright (for Crystal Palace against Manchester United, 12 May 1990)
Goal 21 Paul Gascoigne (for Tottenham Hotspur against Arsenal, 14 April 1991)
Goal 22 Mickey Thomas (for Wrexham against Arsenal, 4 January 1992)
Goal 23 Dalian Atkinson (for Aston Villa against Wimbledon, 3 October 1992)
Goal 24 Rod Wallace (for Leeds United against Tottenham Hotspur, 17 April 1994)
Goal 25 Matthew Le Tissier (for Southampton against Blackburn Rovers, 10 December 1994
Goal 26 Tony Yeboah (for Leeds United against Wimbledon, 23 September 1995)
Goal 27 Trevor Sinclair (for Queens Park Rangers against Barnsley, 25 January 1997)
Goal 28 Dennis Bergkamp (for Arsenal against Leicester City, 27 August 1997)
Goal 29 Ryan Giggs (for Manchester United against Arsenal, 14 April 1999)
Goal 30 Paolo di Canio (for West Ham United against Wimbledon, 26 march 2000)
Goal 31 Shaun Bartlett (for Charlton Athletic against Leicester City, 1 April 2001)
Goal 32 Dennis Bergkamp (for Arsenal against Newcastle United, 2 March 2002)
Goal 33 Thierry Henry (for Arsenal against Tottenham Hotspur, 16 November 2002)
Goal 34 Dietmar Hamann (for Liverpool against Portsmouth, 17 March 2004)
Goal 35 Wayne Rooney (for Manchester United against Middlesbrough, 29 January 2005)
Goal 36 Steven Gerrard (for Liverpool against West Ham United, 13 May 2006)
Goal 37 Wayne Rooney (for Manchester United against Bolton Wanderers, 17 March 2007)
Goal 38 Emmanuel Adebayor (for Arsenal against Tottenham Hotspur, 15 September 2007)
Goal 39 Glen Johnson (for Portsmouth against Hull City, 22 November 2008)
Goal 40 Maynor Figueroa (for Wigan Athletic against Stoke City, 12 December 2009)
Goal 41 Wayne Rooney (for Manchester United against Manchester City, 12 February 2011)
We welcome another guest writer to The Football Attic as Jonathan Roberts reminds us of some of the great players that never qualified for a major competition...
"A World Cup without me is nothing to watch so it is not worthwhile to wait for the World Cup." Those were the words of the one and only Zlatan Ibrahimovic, following Sweden’s failure to qualify for the 2014 World Cup.
Rather arrogant, yes, and although one of football’s most charismatic and admired stars was denied a place at the tournament in Brazil, it isn’t inconceivable to think that he may not have made it anyway. Football can be a cruel sport and it often doesn’t matter who you are; if your name’s not down, you’re not coming in.
Football history is littered with tales of top players who have never played in international finals. Today, we’re going to look at who we think are the top five players never to have made it to international finals.
5. Ryan Giggs
Manchester United’s rock. More league and European titles than you can count on two hands. In fact, at the time of writing, Giggs is still the most decorated player in the history of the English game but never made it to an international tournament with Wales. If only he’d still been playing in 2015! The highlight of his international career was probably becoming captain for Team GB at the 2012 Olympics.
4. Ian Rush
‘It’s what Ian Rush drinks!’ Remember that advert? Yep, most of us do. Remember Ian Rush at the World Cup? Er... no. Another Welsh legend, despite multiple domestic and European titles, Rush never featured on the biggest stage of all. The current Welsh team have made it to the finals of Euro 2016, but are likely to face some difficult opening fixtures.
3. Alfredo Di Stefano
Diego Maradona once described Di Stefano as the best player to ever have graced a football pitch. Oddly, despite having played for Argentina, Spain and Colombia, a mix of bad luck and injury meant he never reached the ultimate football stage.
2. Eric Cantona
When he wasn’t launching himself into the stands to ‘confront’ angry fans, Cantona was simply a magician on the pitch. Unfortunately, it was that very temper which rendered him ineligible to compete for France at international tournaments. Twelve months after making his international debut in 1987, Cantona made a derogatory remark about the France manager, Henri Michel, and was subsequently banned indefinitely. A brief return in the early 90's saw him narrowly miss out on the 1994 World Cup following defeat at home to Bulgaria in the qualifiers. The infamous karate kick was the final nail in the coffin, preventing him from appearing at France ’98.
1. George Best
Perhaps the greatest international no-show tragedy of all was the inconceivable fact that Manchester United and Northern Ireland genius, George Best, never made it to the World Cup with his beloved home country, despite gaining 37 caps. Northern Ireland did qualify for the World Cup in 1982, but by then Best was 36 and a shadow of the player he used to be.
Back in February 2014, we reviewed Panini’s ‘Soccer Superstars’ collection from 1988. Consisting of an album into which picture cards (not stickers) could be inserted, this was a rare chance to see Panini veer away from the tried and tested sticky-backed formula of yore. It was not, however, the first time they’d attempted something so radical.
Four years earlier, the similarly-named ‘Football Superstars’ made an appearance and on this occasion, the medium of choice was not cardboard, but plastic. Clear plastic. It was an inspired selection and provided a somewhat futuristic slant on the stickers we’d been collecting for many years (not that these were self-adhesive).
As with Soccer Superstars, the pictures of players and national team emblems had to be slotted into diagonal cuts on each page of the accompanying album. The pages were loose and unstapled which meant, in theory, that you could pin each completed double-page spread on your bedroom wall. Five teams were featured - England, Scotland, France, Italy and West Germany - while the last two pages featured ‘All Stars’, a collection of top players from around the world.
Curiously, the double-page format isn't as jam-packed with pictures as in Panini’s regular ‘Football’ series that was available at the time. Instead, only a dozen cards are featured, and in the case of the five mentioned teams, that means one team badge and eleven players. There’s no text giving a potted summary of their careers, just a few paltry details relating to each individual below their card.
The plastic cards themselves, however, look great. Before they’re slotted into the album, they can be held up to the light like a film negative to gain a tantalising glimpse of a picture that isn’t immediately complete. Placed on a white space inside the album, though, they come to life with a distinct vibrancy you won’t find on a regular Panini football sticker.
England’s line-up is a mish-mash of established players, those heading for the end of their international careers and those struggling to get theirs off the ground. The reassuring presence of Peter Shilton in goal is matched by Terry Butcher, Bryan Robson and Ray Wilkins outfield, but beyond them, there are some less familiar faces. Stoke City’s Mark Chamberlain (father of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain) made only eight appearances for England, while Mike Duxbury of Manchester United only managed two more. Tottenham’s Graham Roberts only notched up six appearances.
All of the other teams boast an altogether more convincing array of current and future stars covering everyone from Lothar Matthaus and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge to Paolo Rossi, Michel Platini and Kenny Dalglish. Nearly all of them made an appearance at the 1982 or 1986 World Cups, and a fine bunch they make too. Added to the dozen ‘All Stars’, however, you have an even more rounded view of the top footballing talent of the mid-1980’s.
Here we find South Americans in the form of Passarella, Zico, Maradona and Falcao, plus the best from the rest of Europe. Finally there is a mention of Arconada and Gordillo of Spain and Enzo Scifo of Belgium (both countries capable of having their own double-page spread), plus Poland’s Zbigniew Boniek and Chalana, Portugal’s ace midfielder of Euro 84. Even Ian Rush gets a much-deserved inclusion, alongside another star of Euro 84, Soren Lerby.
It’s all very nice and all very different, but in many ways this collection seems a little tame by comparison to Panini’s regular self-adhesive equivalents. The innovation of making clear cards is excellent and the attempt to show such versatility is very admirable, but the content of the album lacks substance and direction. One could even bring into question the use of the term ‘Superstars’. Diego Maradona, absolutely, but with the greatest of respect, Mike Duxbury? Probably not…
There was, however, one additional reason to buy packets of Football Superstars cards, and that was the inclusion of a scratch card game. It consisted of a series of silver spots located all over a football pitch, and as either the red team or the yellow team, you had to scratch one off at a time to navigate your way from the centre circle to the opposing goal. Revealing a ball symbol enabled you to scratch off another silver spot, failure to do so gave your opponent another turn. Good harmless fun, and further proof that Panini could think outside the box when it came to creativity, but this was very much a sideshow to those clear cards that numbered only 72 in total. Personally I’d have rather had more cards to collect and not had the scratch cards, but there it is. This was, as mentioned before, Panini showing off their many and varied skills, and this album is an interesting part of their history accordingly.
-- Chris Oakley Our huge thanks go to Graham Hannay of Retro Football Stickers for allowing us to use the images featured in this article. To find some of those missing stickers you need to complete your collections of yesteryear, check out Graham's website at www.classicfootballstickers.co.uk.
I was very lucky to have enjoyed Subbuteo when it was surely at its peak. Over a period of five or six years, I built up a small collection of items and played dozens of games, and not once did I fail to be charmed by it. Subbuteo is responsible for some of the happiest times of my childhood. This is what I remember.
Who
It must have been my parents that bought me my first Subbuteo set, not to mention most of the items that made up my eventual collection. Towards the end of the 1970’s, well before I’d reached the age of nine, they got me a Subbuteo Club Edition starter kit. Though basic in its content, it had everything I needed to get started: a pitch, two goals, two teams, two balls and some corner flags (not strictly necessary). Thanks to my mother and father, June and Ron Oakley, Subbuteo quickly became one of my favourite pastimes.
Having attained all manner of teams and accessories over several years, I was then lucky enough to find a regular playing partner. Alan Young, one year my junior, lived only a three-minute walk away and was just as keen on flicking little plastic men as I was. Alan didn't have any Subbuteo equipment of his own, but that didn't matter as I was only too happy to transport all my important bits and pieces to his house every weekend in an old LP carrying case. Together, we’d organise FA Cup and World Cup tournaments, playing them alternately and endlessly on the floor of his bedroom. Happy days indeed.
One of our World Cup tournaments caused considerable embarrassment to me, thanks to my teacher of French, David McKelvey. During one lesson, I decided to relieve a pervading sense of boredom by reading a sheet of paper I’d brought with me to school. It contained all the results from a World Cup competition that Alan and I had played the previous weekend. Highly decorated by my own fair hand (using felt-tip pens and Letraset rub-down lettering), it’s hardly surprising that it caught the eye of Mr McKelvey. Walking around the classroom behind me, he sneaked up, saw me reading my score sheet and snatched it out of my hand. “Ah, what’s this?” he announced to the class. “Subbuteo World Cup 1984? Host nation, Scotland... Group A - Brazil 1, Italy 0... England 2, Sweden 2...” and so he went on, reading out result after result on my piece of paper. It would have been enormously convenient for the ground to open up and swallow me at that moment, but alas it didn’t. Oh the shame…
One final person worthy of mention is a distant aunt of mine whose name I don’t even know. I think she was from my Dad’s side of the family and lived with her family in Kent, miles away from our modest abode in north east London. From what I can recall, she only ever visited our house once and when she did, she arrived carrying three plastic carrier bags stuffed full with something. To my surprise, she handed them to me and said “There you go - these are for you. My son’s too old for these now, so I thought you might like them.” The bags contained a Subbuteo stadium stand awaiting assembly, lots of ‘heavyweight’ teams including Ireland and Scotland, two floodlights and all manner of other paraphernalia. It felt like I’d won the lottery jackpot.
Thank you, ‘mystery aunt’, whoever you were...
What
So what did I end up with in my Subbuteo collection by the time I called it a day at the age of 15? Well let’s start with the accessories. I had one standard pitch, a stadium scoreboard (brilliant), two floodlights (ornamental, but ultimately useless), a TV tower, a Trainers Bench Set (beautifully rendered in clear plastic), a FIFA World Cup trophy, the FA Cup trophy, three FIFA balls (lovely), three Tournament balls (unusable due to the self-adhesive coloured patches that made the ball roll in random directions), a First Aid Set, a Stadium Grandstand (essential for capturing any sense of realism), two Tournament Goals, several packets of number transfers, two Throw-In Figures (crap), two Corner Kick Figures (only slightly better), six Ball Boys (dig those yellow tracksuits, fellas) and a VIP Presentation Set (featuring five people, one of which looks like Her Majesty The Queen holding the FA Cup. Not ideal if you were playing a World Cup tournament, but there it is.)
As for the teams, well first I had ‘The Reds’ (#01) and ‘The Blues’ (#02) that came with my Club Edition set. They were both brilliantly versatile as you could pretend they were many different teams. The Reds could be Denmark, North Korea, Tunisia, Nottingham Forest, Bristol City, Austria (away)... the list goes in. Similarly, The Blues could be Everton, Japan, Leicester City, Birmingham City, Ipswich Town, Cardiff City, Italy… even Scotland and France, at a push. Enough to play an FA Cup and World Cup on their own.
Luckily, I could call upon more variety than that. I also had Liverpool (/Brechin City/Scunthorpe), Spain, Brazil, Manchester United, West Germany (or Ipswich away, Man United away, etc), East Germany (but more usually Tottenham), Crystal Palace (with the classic double diagonal sash), my beloved West Ham United (in late-70’s Admiral attire), Watford, England (which came in a fancy polystyrene-inset box) and West Bromwich Albion away (1983-84).
The latter of these teams I must single out for special mention as it was bought for me by my Dad. My West Brom team, resplendent in yellow shirts and blue shorts, was bought as a ‘get well’ present as I’d been suffering with tonsillitis for some time and my Dad thought it would cheer me up and lift my spirits. It did, and although I now smile at such a random choice of team, I don’t think he could have picked anything better. Horizontal pinstripes were very much the ‘in thing’ at the time, and this team, number 473 in the Subbuteo catalogue, was easily the most modern-looking of all those I owned. Not only that, but I could also use it as Sweden in my World Cup tournaments. Thanks Dad...
Where
As mentioned previously, Alan Young’s bedroom floor was where I had much of my fun as a 13-year-old (stop laughing at the back). Later in life, I discovered that most people played Subbuteo on a table of some sort when they were younger, but this never happened for me. My green cloth pitch was always smoothed out on the carpet wherever I played, and I’d be sat on my knees throughout an entire match, scrabbling around hither and yon to follow the action.
Many was the time I’d visit Alan’s house on a Sunday afternoon to play Subbuteo, especially during the dark Winter months. For the big games, like FA Cup Finals or World Cup Finals, we’d set up the stadium stand and the floodlights (that couldn’t illuminate an ant’s head) along with every accessory in my possession. For regular games, however, we’d make do with the trusty old scoreboard and maybe the TV Tower for a little bit of basic authenticity. As we played, we’d commentate in the way you do when you’re young, writing down the scores for each match along the way. When the opening bars to the Bullseye theme tune could be heard from downstairs, however, I knew it would soon be time to pack everything up and go home.
Apart from Alan’s house in Rowe Gardens, Barking, where most of my Subbuteo playing took place, there were only a couple of other places where flicking and kicking ensued. On a few occasions, I played in the spare room at Martin Lewis’ house. Martin was another good friend of mine and if my poor memory serves, we played Subbuteo on his snooker table, although I could be wrong. One thing I do recall is that he had the Tottenham team in their pale blue away kit. It doubled up as Club Brugge, which no doubt would have been handy for any UEFA Cup tournaments that went on.
Then there was another school friend of mine, Trevor Scannell. I had a brief spell hanging around with him circa 1983, and one time I recall visiting his house during the school summer holidays. I was delighted to discover that he, too, played Subbuteo but when he unveiled his Astropitch, rolled up in its cardboard tube, I felt an envy so strong, it almost bordered on physical violence. I wanted that Astropitch more than anything else for, ooh, the next 20 minutes, and would happily have stolen it if I knew I wouldn’t be the sole suspect for the crime.
When
I was very fortunate in that my early obsession with football coincided with the introduction of Subbuteo’s ‘lightweight’ teams. These were more modern-looking than the previous ones whose players wore baggy shirts and shorts and look like they were designed in the 1950’s (which they probably were). The early-80’s heralded the arrival of this new sleeker version of Subbuteo player along with a wide range of accessories to complete your immersive experience.
I can’t say for certain when I got that first Club Edition set, but my best estimate is 1979. I remember its vivid green box sat on top of the wardrobe in my bedroom, but at the age of only eight, I probably played it rarely. It was only when I attained more teams and a regular playing partner in Alan that the big green box was regularly brought down from its lofty position.
As for the end of my playing days, that would have probably been around 1986. By that point, Alan Young and I had gone our separate ways and my twelve years of school education were coming to an end. I would soon be leaving school to get my first job as a young adult, which meant other seemingly juvenile pastimes like Panini sticker collecting were looked upon as being ‘kids stuff’. But oh, what great pastimes. To have those days back again would be a pleasure beyond compare.
Why
Why should Subbuteo be such an addictive thing to get involved with? Put simply, it offered a make-believe world that couldn’t be penetrated by life’s dissatisfactions. Whether you were building your collection of teams and accessories or playing a game with your mate, Subbuteo was a football world created just for you and enjoyed specifically by you.
Quite why children have a necessity to pretend and envelop themselves in a false reality I don’t know. It makes more sense for adults to keep the real world at arms length, what with all the stresses that come along via marriage, children, families, mortgages, work and heaven knows what else. Maybe that’s why those silly ‘adult colouring books’ have finally made an appearance. By focusing on one seemingly trivial activity, the brain forgets all the bad stuff... and yet as kids, we don’t see certain things as trivial. We see them as valuable - valuable in that they make us smile and be happy. Nothing more, nothing less.
Subbuteo did that for me when I was young. Whether it be the hope of finding a new poster or catalogue at my local toy shop or the turning of a wheel behind the Stadium Scoreboard, Subbuteo was sheer and utter unadulterated bliss. This much I remember.
Over the last half a century, the national football team of West Germany, latterly just Germany, have worn 22 different home kits. Some have been simple in their design while others have been colourful and complicated.
It may not come as much of a surprise to some of you (not least in light of recent events), but you voted the Greatest Germany Home Kit of the last 50 years to be that worn between 1988 and 1991, made by Adidas.
We received a total of 165 votes, and a whopping 47.3% of those were for our winning kit, Kit J. Well behind in second place was Germany's 2014 World Cup kit (Kit V) which received 9.7% of the vote, while Kit B, worn regularly over a 13-year period between 1965 and 1978, came in third with 7.9% of the vote.
Four of the 22 kits, including those worn during Euro 2000 (Kit O) and Euro 2004 (Kit Q) didn't receive a single vote, but perhaps more surprising was the higher-than-predicted ranking for Kit L. The much derided ensemble from the 1994 World Cup actually came fifth, thereby proving that not everyone thinks it's a complete abomination.
Here's how the voting went in full:
Click for larger version
And, there it is - Germany's 1990 World Cup kit is the greatest of the last 50 years. A worthy winner... unless you think otherwise, in which case, please feel free to tell us which kit should have won!
Our sincere thanks to all of you that took the time to vote. We really appreciate it, and once again, our thanks also go out to Terry Duffelen, Rich Nelson and Rick Joshua for all their help in putting together this feature.
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.
Everyone loves a football club badge. They can purvey any number of messages about a team in a million different ways, but while some look near perfect, others look considerably ill-conceived.
Over the years, every single team in the UK has succumbed to that irresistible urge to update their badge at various times. Their constant replacement and abandonment of imagery has created the treasure trove of logos, crests and pictograms that continues to grow in size to this very day. A look back through the archives, however, shows that some clubs have fared better than others when it came to finding the right badge for them.
Of all the designs that have come and gone throughout British football history, the ones I have a soft spot for are those that looked modern when they were first created but within a few years looked hopelessly 'of their time'. These are the badges that ripped up the rule book, dispensed with the intricate detail of the once traditional coats of arms and shouted "I am modern!" from the rooftops... only to be laughed at and pelted with rotten fruit by those who saw it.
A few clubs, such as Nottingham Forest and Derby County, have managed to retain the essence of their 'new' badges to this day, but they are very much in the minority. For most teams that tried a more radical approach, the switch to a new design was altogether more temporary.
The movement towards simpler badges began in earnest at the start of the 1970's. Wolverhampton Wanderers (no strangers to the art of rebranding) were the first of many to take the plunge by showing off their new logo at the start of the 1970-71 season. Consisting of two W's with a wolf leaping overhead, this was and still remains a classic design. Sadly for anyone sharing the same opinion, it only lasted three-and-a-half-years, whereupon the letters were moved to the opposite side of the shirt and the jumping wolf acquired two friends.
In 1972, Crystal Palace followed suit with the creation of a circular badge bearing their nickname of the time, The Glaziers. The most striking element of this one, however, was the stylised 'CP' in the middle. It looked fantastic, if a little corporate, but it was perhaps slightly too simplistic for most people's tastes. Certainly Malcolm Allison thought so. When he arrived as manager of the Selhurst Park club at the start of the 1973-74 season, he rubber-stamped his own new badge and nickname to replace the previous one. And that was that - after a single season, Palace's 'CP' roundel was gone, consigned forever to the big logo scrapheap of football history.
While all this was going on, West Bromwich Albion made their own attempt to usher in a new badge, but theirs lasted little more than four years. Replacing the charming song thrush sitting on a twig that had been brought in for the 1969-70 season was a lower case 'A' in navy blue that looked vaguely like a centurion's helmet. Fortunately the throstle wasn't completely done away with as it reappeared in simplified form inside the 'a', but the overall effect was ever-so-slightly underpolished. With a bit more thought on the part of the designers, this could have been a great logo, but it was not to be.
Somehow, some way, the team that really defined boldness and modernity in club badges was Leeds United. Their 'smiley' vision in yellow and blue came to epitomise all that was simultaneously good and bad about new team logos from that era. Featuring only the club's initials in bulbous form, it simply said "this is us - straight-forward, uncompromising and divisive". Very much born of the 1970's, Leeds' badge actually made it into the next decade (albeit only for a few months) with the help of some additional circles and lettering around the outside. The original version, however, remains the purest and best example of all.
Further south, Luton Town tried their hand at funky logo design around the same time and launched their 'Lt' badge at the start of the 1974-75 season. Comprising of a stylised ball and (again) the club's initials (only one of which was capitalised, strangely), this was a rare example of a 70's badge truly standing the test of time. It was so popular that it wasn't replaced until 1987, at which point the Kennilworth Road club lurched to the historical end of the design spectrum with an old-fashioned coat of arms. Bor-ing!
York City were the next to step up to the plate, and their motif, introduced in 1974, was a brilliantly radical attempt to channel the spirit of mid-80's corporate branding ten years ahead of its time. Combining the Y and C from the club's initials in a loose marker-pen scribble, it was informal, fun, and just the sort of thing a national building society might have favoured to front a 1984 TV advertising campaign. As is often the case with this kind of thing, though, it proved to be a bit too modern and was hastily replaced with another design in 1978 which, ironically, looked even more like a national building society logo from a 1984 TV advertising campaign.
Come the late-70's, even more clubs were joining the 'modern badge' bandwagon, and several even managed to hold onto their new designs for nearly a decade. Notts County's gorgeous magpie logo, introduced on a regular basis in 1977, was a fine example of how not to create something that was likely to look dated within 10 minutes of its inception. It did so by not adding the name of the club, something that probably would have required the use of a font last seen on the closing credits of 'Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads'.
Bradford City's badge, a 1978 creation, was arguably a little more amateurish in its design, but it too had a certain charm that was based entirely around all five initials of the club's name. Were it not for a bit more finesse, it may well have lasted beyond the three seasons it appeared on the team's shirts.
One of my all-time favourite badges from the era is that of Blackpool. Introduced in 1979, it showed Blackpool Tower by the sea, wonderfully pared down and framed perfectly by a circle. For those people less familiar with the landmarks of Lancashire and its environs, it could easily have been an upward-pointing arrow to denote the intended direction of travel for The Tangerines. Either way, I reckon it would work just as well today, especially if the team name was displayed below it.
Even when the Eighties arrived, the trend for trendier badges continued. Some fifteen years after they last wore a crest on their shirts, Reading introduced a new edition in 1981 that evoked an image of pastoral bliss in deepest Berkshire. Featuring (we presume) the trees of Elm Park and the water of the River Thames encased in a curiously shaped black shield, this was a nice attempt at design, even if it did have an air of 'art college assignment' about it. Clearly someone somewhere didn't think much of it, though; it only appeared on the shirts for two seasons before the idea of a shirt badge was abandoned altogether by Reading for five more years.
Whenever I see Leicester City's badge from 1983, I immediately think of my Panini sticker collection of the time. It's sheer simplicity (featuring a whole fox and not just its head) was a breath of fresh air after the fussyness of its predecessor, and I remember welcoming it as such during those great days when football sticker collecting was my entire world. The badge managed to cling on for a good nine years before Leicester switched to the more detailed badge they have to this day, but I think the current one looks like it's trying too hard. Maybe it, too, is ripe for an update...
But if you're talking classic badges that burned brightly but all too quickly, there's undoubtedly an 80's equivalent to Leeds' classic smiley logo of the 70's. Step forward Newcastle United and their 'NUFC' badge from 1983 to 1988. Where Leeds did a grand job of cramming their two main initials into a circle, Newcastle went one better by adding the 'FC' as well.
There are two elements of genius to this badge: firstly, someone had the brilliant idea of rotating the 'C' through 90 degrees, and secondly, they then used it to create the gap at the bottom where a magpie could sit. By including the magpie, the club showed that it hadn't forgotten its identity and also added a pleasing counterpoint to the (let's face it) unavoidable lettering.
Yet as is often the way with all of these badges, it's stark modernity was only ever likely to polarise opinion. The outcome: it was swiftly thrown into the great waste disposal facility of football badge history, left to see out its days as a forgotten view of the future. And that's a shame, because what followed was a movement towards a kind of faux heritage that has seeped its way into many of the team badges we see today. Without bravery and open-mindedness, football clubs are left with the clinical, over-stylised identities we see today. Maybe you're happy with that, but personally I prefer those olden days when football clubs were prepared to do something a little bit different - if only just for a few short years.
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
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.
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!
First, it was England. Then came France. Now, The Football Attic is proud to be begin a new quest - to establish The Greatest Germany Home Kit of the last fifty years.
The white and black of the German team (and that of the West German team before it) are as iconic as the yellow of Brazil or the orange of the Netherlands. Worn by heroes such as Gerd Müller, Franz Beckenbauer, Lothar Matthäus and Jurgen Klinsmann, the home kit of the German team is as identifiable as any, and is inextricably associated with great success across several decades.
More than 600 matches have been researched and 22 kits have been illustrated so you can assess the good and the not-so-good from the last half a century. Your main duty is to simply enjoy the designs for what they are, but also we'll shortly be inviting you to vote for the one you think is the best of all - just to get an idea of which kits are the most popular.
Before we go any further, here's our graphic showing all of the (West) Germany home kits since 1965.
Click for larger version
(You can also download a full-size version of the graphic here.)
The kits
Kit A was worn in West Germany's first match of 1965, a 1-1 draw against Italy in Hamburg, but was also worn throughout almost their entire 1966 World Cup campaign. It was only in the Final against England that West Germany switched to Kit B (different only in the round neckline of the shirt), although this version was well established and had already been worn regularly since April 1965.
Where our fifty-year period of focus is concerned, these two kits were worn in more matches than any other; Kit A for 33 and Kit B for 79, but whereas the former was retired in 1974, the latter went on to be worn right up to the eve of the 1978 World Cup.
It was in West Germany's first match of the '78 tournament that Kit C made its debut, made by German manufacturer Erima, and it was their logo that had appeared on the shirt of Kit B During 1977. However, after 12 years of wearing two kits that were very much a product of the 1960s, West Germany finally had a new outfit that was modern for its time. With a black edged 'flappy' neckline and black piping across the shoulders of the shirt, Helmut Schön's team looked stylish and in no way old-fashioned in their appearance.
Kit C was worn for two years, even making an appearance in West Germany's group games of the 1980 European Championships, but for the Final against Belgium, they changed again. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Uli Stielike and the rest of the German team faced their counterparts wearing Kit D - the first of 19 consecutive Adidas kits that are still worn to this day. The cut of the shirt was much the same, but now there were Adidas stripes on the sleeves as well as the socks, while the neckline was now a solid black. For further contrast, the piping across the shoulders was flipped horizontally too.
Kit D was worn regularly over a four-year period, but it had to share the spotlight With Kit E during that time - especially during the 1982 World Cup when the latter edition was seen throughout. Sporting a black v-neck and no piping on the shirt, this was seen as a refinement of its predecessor but one that was only worn for a dozen matches up to 1983.
Kit F emerged just in time for West Germany's ultimately unsuccessful Euro 84 campaign. Once again, the shorts and socks were left unchanged, leaving the shirt to provide a fresh look with its stylish wrap-over v-neck - the only change to the entire ensemble, but a very noticeable one. Kit F was worn 19 times between 1984 and 1986 and was only absent for one match in June 1985. On that occasion, West Germany wore Kit G against England in a friendly in Mexico City - essentially the same shirt, but this time with a simple black v-neck to replace the wrap-over. Whether the single outing for this kit was down to the 3-0 thumping at the hands of Bobby Robson's men, we shall never know...
Once again, a World Cup Finals tournament ushered in a new West Germany kit, and in 1986 it was the turn of Kit H to make its first appearance. Kit H was the first to use all three colours of the national flag on the shirt, albeit in a minimal fashion on the shallow wrap-over neckline and cuffs. The entire outfit was worn eleven times in all up to the end of 1987, along with Kit I on four occasions - essentially identical to Kit H, but with a round-neck version of the shirt.
At the start of 1988, the West German national team changed to possibly their best known kit of all - Kit J - which made far greater use of the black/red/yellow by incorporating an abstract ribbon motif to the shirt. Made famous by the victorious World Cup campaign of 1990, Kit J has been worn more often than any other kit since the 1970's, and with some justification.
When Euro 92 rolled around, however, it was time for another change and on this occasion, Adidas restyled the shirt to give an approving nod to the previous one. For Kit K, the flag colours were moved to the sleeves, a new black v-neck was added and the ever-present Adidas logo switched to its 'Equipment' variant - even on the socks.
In 1994, Germany wore their most colourful shirt to date - and the one that polarises opinions the most. As part of Kit L, it featured a series of diamond-like geometric shapes in black, red and yellow across the shoulders and upper chest, with a repeat of the pattern occurring on one leg of the shorts. In addition, the three Adidas stripes were also now in the colours of the German flag.
If Kit L looked flamboyant, Kit M went to the opposite extreme. During 1996 and 1997, the Germany shirt had a plain, dignified look - removing the colourful detail of its predecessor to leave a largely white shirt, black shorts and a longer discrete black neckline and cuffs. To add to the vintage-era feel of the kit, the DFB badge appeared on the shirt in white inside a black shield. Bold, but nicely executed.
At the start of 1998, Kit N was launched and immediately brought back a more modern stylistic approach. Once again, the black/red/yellow was in evidence as the colour for the three stripes horizontally crossing the chest and neatly running behind the DFB badge. Continuing the complex theme of the shirt, there were also black panels down the sides and a black v-neck with white insert, while the shorts also had panels to contrast the white Adidas stripes in black. Only the socks appear to have escaped the attentions of the designers.
Kit O arrived at the start of 2000 and was remarkable for having more black on the shirt than at any time in the past. Truth be known, the black that appeared on the shoulders was more like a dark charcoal colour, but even so, the effect remained stark and uncompromising. Two years later, the see-saw swung back again in favour of minimalism as Kit P made use of a popular Adidas shirt template of the era. With the simple black v-neck neckline and black cuffs, this was the more refined look that the German team adopted for the 2002 World Cup Finals.
Kit Q appeared to be an interesting combination of Kit O and Kit J as a return to black shoulders (along with red and yellow flashes) heralded the run-in to Germany's Euro 2004 campaign. As if to leave no-one in any doubt as to the nationality of the players wearing the kit, there were miniature German flags on the shirt sleeves and the front of the socks.
At the end of 2005, however, it was 'new kit' time again as Adidas launched Kit R, an outfit that ultimately would be seen in the World Cup Finals played on German soil the following year. Maintaining the use of the three flag colours, the shirt had long curves across the shoulders, down the sides of the shirt, and even onto the top of the shorts.
A new direction was taken when Germany faced Cyprus in Hannover towards the end of 2007 as Kit S appeared for the first time. It's main feature was a broad black band running from left to right across the upper part of the shirt, ending in a curve that provided a border for the round DFB badge. The black band also contained red and yellow bars to create a stylized version of the Bundesflagge, whereas the socks had a broad black band on the turnovers as a background to the three white Adidas stripes.
Almost exactly two years later, Kit T was introduced and had a striking resemblance to Kit M thirteen years before it. Yet again there was a single black neckline and once again there was a black shield container to house the now gold DFB badge. This time, however, three thin vertical lines in the colours of the German flag ran behind the badge as a subtle counterpoint to the traditional white and the black Adidas stripes.
In November 2011, Adidas went retro again - this time feeding from the styles of the mid-1980's. Kit U had a shirt with diagonal pinstripes in black, red and yellow, echoing shirts like those worn by Portugal during Euro 84. The single wrap-over neckline was also a hark back to the same era as the overall kit adopted a 'less is more' motif in time for Euro 2012.
Finally, in November 2013, Germany wore Kit V, the kit they'll be wearing until November 2015. This was a true original in many respects. The shirt featured a bold, detailed chevron that graduated from dark red to a lighter red with a similar colouring appearing on the shorts and sock turnovers. The shorts themselves were designed to be white rather than black wherever possible as part of a wider switch to single-colour strips by numerous national sides.
With smart black detailing along the sleeves, neckline and shorts, Kit V was as imaginative and daring in its conception as anything we've seen since the mid-1960s... but is it your favourite Germany home kit of the last 50 years?
Acknowledgements
Before you get the chance to register your vote in our online poll, I'd like to express my sincere thanks to Terry Duffelen, Rich Nelson and Rick Joshua for all their help in clarifying many important pieces of information during the research for this feature. Without their help, many of the details shown on the graphic above and in the accompanying text would be incorrect or incomplete. Thanks a lot, guys!
The vote
And so we come to the fun part - the part where you can vote for your favourite Germany Home Kit of the last half-century.
The process is very simple. All you need to do is look at the graphic shown near the top of this article, note the letter associated with your preferred kit, then select it on the form below and press the Vote button. On October 4th, one month from now, we'll count up all your votes and announce the winner of the Greatest Germany Home Kit 1965-2015.
Thank you for your participation!
UPDATE:
The voting period is now over and the winner of our Greatest Germany Home Kit poll has been announced. Did your favourite kit win?
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