The Football Attic Podcast Episode 3 - Retro Football Kit Design

What do you get if you cross someone with chronic insomnia, a bloke on the other side of the world and a geektastic level of enthusiasm for football kits? The answer lies within the next 50 minutes of your listening time, good friends, for we at The Attic have produced (at loooooong last) another episode of The Football Attic podcast! We still haven't managed to get iTunes working (curse you Apple!!!) so to download it, it's the rather retro...

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Panini: Football 80

I’m a big fan of the ‘white album’. Some say it epitomised the peak of popular culture around the time of its release but I have a more balanced point of view. For me, It was experimental in certain areas but also rested heavily on its obvious strengths to provide a combination that’s rarely been bettered. Perhaps we’ll talk about The Beatles later, but for now, let’s stick with Panini. Football 80 was their third domestic sticker album for the...

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Puma ads (Manchester United), circa 1978

What do Joe Jordan, Gordon McQueen, Allan Simonsen, Jimmy Greenhoff, Brian Greenhoff, Andy Gray, Johan Cruyff, Chelsea FC, the Austrian national team and the Argentinian national team have in common? No, they haven't all been signed by Roman Abramovich at one time or another. The correct answer is they all wore Puma football boots in the late 1970's, and to prove the point, here are a couple of ads showing the first two on the list doing just...

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Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever - The Final

Newcastle Brown & Wang!  No, not a night out on Tyneside... well, maybe it is for some, but no, not here my fellows, for this is the Final of the Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever!!! After starting out with 96 sponsors from the annals of English and Scottish football, we're down to the final two. And what a journey... Stone cold classics such as Crown Paints, Sharp, JVC and Granada Bingo (shut up!) have all fallen by the wayside and it's...

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Pelé's Soccer, 1980

At what point does the human brain reject the hopelessly inadequate images of our youth and demand something with more detail and clarity? This question is most apposite when discussing classic video games. Take Pelé's Soccer, for example. Here was an arcade football game created for the Atari 2600 which should have proved that technology had moved on from the days of ‘pong football’. The reality, however, saw you moving players around on your...

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Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever - Semi Finals

So we're down to the final four, and despite it looking like the Final was to be a re-run of the 1986 Milk Cup Final between Oxford and QPR, fate has intervened and made it a semi final encounter instead. In the other semi, that there London meets Oop North so expect bare-chested barrel-shaped supporters and plenty of apples and pears... or something... So, will it be an all-London final? Or will you all go for some full on Wang action (honestly,...

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Great Tracksuits of Our Time: No.6

The sixth installment in our 'Great Tracksuits' series comes courtesy of Sam Swaffield, co-editor of The Seagull Love Review. A devout Brighton fan, Sam's keen to draw our attention to the apparel worn by his team during one of the high points of their history... "As a kid growing up in the 90's, all I'd known was Albion kits manufactured by highly suspicious brands. The likes of Ribiero, Super League and Sports Express all had a shot at...

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Subbuteo poster, 1983

Nothing could be more guaranteed to brighten up a young child’s bedroom wall than a Subbuteo poster. It’s been proven scientifically, probably. By the time this masterpiece came out in 1983, the masters of the flick-to-kick revolution had been annually publishing posters and catalogues for decades, each with its own distinctive graphics and identity. The premise, as ever, was a simple one: to show off the myriad teams and accessories available...

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Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever - Quarter Finals

From the 96 came just 8 - It's The Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever Quarter Finals! Round 4 ended last night and there were several more shock exits.  Both of Liverpool's remaining entries took a bow, falling to the mighty Wang (fnarrr) and a concerted campaign by Ipswich fans to keep Pioneer in. And so we come to the final 8 and what a line up it is! But enough of this...I mean, seriously, I know no-one's reading it...I could just say what I...

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Matthew Wassell's Top 5... Pogs

We're pleased to welcome back Matthew Wassell to The Football Attic with another Top 5 list - this time on a popular collectable game from a couple of decades ago... For a craze that lasted roughly one summer in the middle of the 1990’s, I still have a soft spot for the game of Pogs.  To be truthful though, these days I am more entertained by looking through my varied collection of multicoloured cardboard and plastic discs rather than actually playing the game itself (which wasn’t all that exciting back then, come to think of it).  As...

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Kevin Keegan's Soccer Annual 1977

By the time this annual had been published in 1976, the pastey-looking footballer on the front cover was well on his way to 100 top flight goals in England. Kevin Keegan was already something of a poster boy for young fans as a hot-shot striker for both Liverpool and his country, and this first of three eponymous annuals aimed to provide an insight into a blossoming football career. Beyond the inviting full-colour cover were 96 pages, all printed...

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Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever - Round 4

Yes it's Round 4 - The Round of 16 - of The Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever! Round 3 finished yesterday (Thursday) and as usual the results can be viewed here. Coventry finally bowed out to frankly more deserving sponsors, but the greatest shock of the round was Sharp, stalwart of Man U for 12 years, being ousted by QPR's Guinness. Honestly, is this the point we've reached? ;-) Anyway, this is where it gets really interesting with the...

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Great Tracksuits of Our Time: No.5

Our good friend Rich Nelson from the always excellent 'Escape To Suomi') provides us with this contribution to our 'Great Tracksuits' series: Arsenal (1989/90): ...

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Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever - Round 3

We've reached Round 3 - The Round of 16 - of The Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever! Round 2 ended on Friday and the results can be viewed here. And what a set of results they are! Hitachi defeated by Avco, Panasonic losing out to TDK and the biggest travesty of all, Granada Bingo losing to Blackburn's McEwans!!! ;-) So with the first lot of seeded casualties, the remaining 32 sponsors now fight it out amongst themselves. Once again, our...

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Videoblog 2: Kick-Off (MB Games)

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

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Official Programme of the 1970 World Cup

A cheery red cover invites you to thumb through the 66 pages of this souvenir programme created as a guide to the 1970 World Cup. Priced at just six shillings (or 30p for any Brits harbouring decimal thoughts a year ahead of their time), this was the official handbook guaranteed to help you get the most out of the FIFA’s ninth global tournament...

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Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever - Round 2

It's time for Round 2 of The Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever! Round 1 ended on Friday and the results can be viewed here. But now it's time for the big guns to enter the fray as the 32 seeded sponsors join the tournament!  At last, Crown Paints, Wang, Sharp, etc, get to flex their sponsorship muscles! Not only that, but as you'll see, the sponsors themselves have been granted a makeover courtesy of John Devlin, author of football...

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Match of the Day - Episode 1 (1964)

The first edition of the BBC’s Match of the Day programme was aired on 22 August 1964. Shown on BBC2, it was the first time people in the UK (albeit only in London at first) were able to watch football highlights on their own TV screens. Despite initial fears that it might lead to fewer people going along to watch matches in person, it went on to become an institution of British broadcasting and a go-to programme for British football fans everywhere...

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Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever - Round 1 (Matches 17-32)

It's finally here! The Vote for the Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever! Matches 1-16 kicked off yesterday and now it's time for the Sunday fixtures to take their place. Just to repeat the Rules: 1) You are voting for the SPONSOR, not the team that it adorned. 2) Voting for Round 1 closes at midnight on Friday 23rd November 3) This is a bit of fun... if you don't like the results, take a deep breath, smile and accept that democracy is flawed......

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Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever - Round 1 (Matches 1-16)

It's finally here! The Vote for the Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever! As mentioned previously, this will be a knockout tournament comprising 96 teams. 32 of these have been seeded and will only appear in Round 2.  Therefore, Round 1 will be 32 matches between the 64 non-seeded teams.  NB, the list of seeded teams can be found in the post linked to above, so before I have to explain where Wang or Crown Paints are, take a look!  ;-) I've...

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Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever - 1st Round Draw

The 1st round draw has taken place and here it is in full: NB...Voting instructions will follow soon :) Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever 1st Round Draw (64 non seeded sponsors) Chang (Everton) v Poll Withey (Norwich) NTL (Celtic & Rangers) v NOBO (Brighton) Peugeot (Coventry) v T-Mobile (WBA) Bukta (Hibernian) v Reg Vardy (Sunderland) Solvite (Watford) v Oki (Portsmouth) Candy (Liverpool) v Fly Virgin (Crystal Palace) Ora (Barnsley) v Laver...

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Football Monthly (November 1983)

The perm or the straight-cut?  This was the question perplexing grown-up kids and young adults alike in February 1983 when they bought the latest issue of Football Monthly. The subject, Bryan Robson, was seen on the front cover and on page two, the latter being an advert for New Balance boots. The Manchester United and England star claimed he’d helped the company to “shape, test and refine” their boots under every possible playing condition...

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Coming Soon... The Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever

If you follow us on Twitter, you may have seen us banging on about the Greatest Sponsor Ever tournament we've got lined up. Well, now we've finally decided on the classic sponsors that have made the cut. It's going to run as a knockout tournament, pitting classic sponsor against classic sponsor over several rounds. Think of it as the FA Cup, only ironically about sponsors, not ruined by one... ;-) To make the numbers even, we had to whittle...

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Great Tracksuits of Our Time: No.4 - John Bond special

Towards the end of September 2012, John Bond, a man who possessed great talent as a player and a manager, died aged 79. Though he spent 16 years playing for West Ham United, he will perhaps be best remembered for a long managerial career that took in Manchester City and Norwich City among many other clubs....

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Football Remains

That's what we were going to call this blog site. In the weeks leading up to 14 November 2011, Rich J and myself toyed with lots of different names, but eventually The Football Attic ran out the winner. Though we remain satisfied that we made the right choice, there's no denying that Football Remains also had something going for it. It worked on different levels, making reference to the fact that 'remains' is a way of describing something that's left behind, like the memorabilia washed up on the shore from football's constant tides. It also conjures...

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Neil Cotton: Five shirts from my past

In the latest in a long line of excellent guest posts from writers far and wide, The Football Attic welcomes Neil Cotton from the blogsite Row Z. Neil's unearthed some long-forgotten football shirts from his wardrobe and here tells us how he came to own them and the memories they bring back... The writer and philosopher Walter Benjamin once said that “Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories” and chaotic certainly seems a good word for the football shirt collection which I recently uncovered...

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The Past Is Dead... And It's Not Coming Back

It's with a heavy heart and sore head that I write this post for I had an epiphany at the weekend, realised through the fug of a low level migraine, made worse by the spectacle that unfolded before me. The Football Attic is a nostalgia blog, therefore it would kind of follow logically that we both view olden days football as better than the modern game, but that's not neccessarily true. I can't speak for Chris, but I am a rather optimistic person...

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Charlie George for Christmas No.1!

It's at this time of year that someone launches a half-cocked campaign to get an utterly redundant song to number 1 in the UK charts for Christmas. Pathetic, futile behaviour and the sort of thing that fools no-one as they attempt to find some sort of spiritual meaning from the festive season. But that's not going to stop us launching our own campaign - good god, no!  Yes, it all starts here, folks - it's time to put Charlie George at the...

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Rebadge the badge

You might be surprised to hear this from us, but the world of football nostalgia isn’t as perfect as it might seem. Oh sure, we’ve allowed entire months to pass us by while thumbing through our pile of old Panini albums, but that’s not to say everything in this Elysian netherworld is as cracked up as it ought to be. Take football badges, for instance. At first sight, nothing could be finer than a vast array of club insignias displayed in collective formality, each using colours and motifs to represent a team you probably don’t support...

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Great Tracksuits of Our Time: No.3

Leeds United (1974): Seen here in the Wembley tunnel just before the ill-fated 1974 Charity Shield match, Leeds United's Billy Bremner and David Harvey shift nervously from one foot to another in their resplendent white tracksuit tops. They needn't have been so nervous for Leeds United were in the vanguard of football fashion in 1974. Thanks to Don Revie (who had just left his managerial post to become England team boss), the Elland Road club...

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Corinthian ProStars, 1995

The Football Attic today welcomes Simon Craft from Virile Games to the guest-writing roster as he takes us back to a time when footballers were frequently big-headed. Wait a minute - wasn't this supposed to be a blog site about football nostalgia? I was born too late for Subbuteo. As a child of the Nineties, raised on an instant-thrill diet of American cartoons and Um Bongo, I was reluctant to undertake such chores as ironing the pitch and...

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Top 5 Worst Tournament Mascots Ever

The 1966 World Cup is remembered for many things, from stroppy Argentinians being heckled by grannies to raising England's expectations to unrealistic levels for the best part of half a century. It is also a landmark tournament for one other reason. World Cup Willy. The first ever FIFA endorsed marital aid... ha ha ha ha ha! But seriously, the first ever tournament mascot came into being, thus starting a tradition that has taken us from the very...

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JVC 'Goal Makers' ad, 1981

We've featured adverts before on our blog site, adverts like this one for JVC taken from the back cover of National Geographic magazine in 1981. Usually the main image is something football-related (else we wouldn't bother bringing it to your attention) and here we have an actual match in action, or so it seems. Chances are it's not really an actual match at all - more likely a staged scene at a US stadium (this was a US-syndicated magazine, after...

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The Scoreboard: A display of practicality

I’m embarrassed to say it, but I used to have a bit of a thing about scoreboards when I was younger. Stadium scoreboards, game show scoreboards, cricket scoreboards… you name it, I loved it. There was something about those static signs  with changeable numbers that had me transfixed as a kid. If someone scored a point in a football match or on a TV quiz show, I’d wait with eager anticipation to see the scoreboard update the total, be it manually...

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Matthew Wassell's Top 5 International 'Do you remember when?' Moments of the 1990's

The Football Attic welcomes aboard Matthew Wassell to the guest-writing fraternity as he carefully picks out his favourite monumental football moments from two decades ago...  Last week my boss mentioned that he’d been telling his two young children about “that Colombian keeper who did the scorpion kick” and played them the YouTube footage on his iPhone. “Ah Rene Higuita! I remember that!” I exclaimed a bit too loudly. He went on unabashed. “Remember when Gazza scored that goal against Scotland in Euro '96? I was showing them that too.”  I...

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Great Tracksuits of Our Time: No. 2

Liverpool (1977): Once again we witness the seamster's art in all its glory as Bob Paisley's FA Cup finalists of 1977 wear their name proudly on the back of their tracksuit tops. The garment itself is beautifully styled by Umbro with a striped collar, cuffs and waist band, a style that Umbro resurrected for England's 2012/13 anthem jackets [retch]. On the front (see Emlyn Hughes above), we see a big Umbro diamond opposite a Liverpool FC badge...

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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...

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Goal magazine, 10 August 1968

There is, I suspect, a number of people for whom the phrase ‘incorporating Goal magazine’ is the source of much confusion. Appearing below the main title of Shoot! back in the mid-1970s, those three simple words rattled around inside my own mind until recently. What was Goal magazine and why was its existence being compromised? As ever, the trail of nostalgia generated by decades of football fanaticism was there to provide all the answers...

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Panini Look-a-Likes

Following on from my article on some of Panini's more bizarre stickers, I decided to delve further and see what other horrors or delights it might throw up. Having gone through all the albums from 1970-1982, I can tell you there are some absolute gems in there and I'll deal with some of the strangest ones another time. This article will deal with the sheer number of look-a-likes that can be found in the hallowed pages. Starting in 1970 and it's...

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Great Tracksuits of Our Time: No.1

Slovan Bratislava (1976): Worn before a UEFA Cup tie against QPR at Loftus Road, this blue tracksuit top with white trim features the team name emblazoned across the back in a Basque-style font. Note how the printer failed to leave sufficient room to fit in the A and N - a sign of true quality befitting of a team capable of winning the Czechoslovakian First Division. Seen any fine examples of retro tracksuit design? Tell us all about them by...

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Panini: Got, Got, AAAARGH!

Panini is great, we all know this. What we also know is that Panini, especially in the football sticker world, have produced some truly bizarre moments. I recently purchased the World Cup & Euro Sticker Collections, which bring together all the Panini albums for the World Cup and Euro tournaments since 1970. This has given me a chance to not only relive some of the albums I collected at the time, but also to have an insight into albums I'd...

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Panini: Espana 82

Of all the Panini World Cup albums, this one will always have a special place in my heart because it was the first one I ever collected as a child. Chances are I got my album as a free giveaway with Shoot! magazine (so many Panini albums were back then), after which the lure of the accompanying green sticker packets became too much for me to bear. So what was Panini’s Espana 82 sticker album like? Front cover It was often thought that nothing...

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Match Magazine - August 30th 1997

1997 might not seem all that distant (to some of us anyway), but as you'll see in this excellent guest article from Luke constable of the awesomely named Ruud Gullit Sitting On A Shed (@RGSOAS), going back just 15 years, football still looks very different... p.s. I've just found out where the name comes from...  In August 1997 I was just starting secondary school. I would spend that summer mourning the loss of my junior school life, trying...

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Penny Football

The great thing about football is that it can be played in so many different forms. Purists will always enjoy the traditional approach of physically kicking a ball around while the more technologically-minded among us might prefer moving computerised competitors around on a TV screen. For a truly pared-down version of the game, however, nothing appeals quite like Penny Football. I’d be lying if I said it was the most portable version of football...

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The Football Attic: Post 100

Allow us, if you will, a brief moment of joyousness, for what you are reading is the 100th post here on The Football Attic. We wouldn't ordinarily take up your time in this way with such self-regarding nonsense, but it has to be said we're incredibly proud of the fact that we've done so much in such a short space of time. Creating a blog about football nostalgia was an idea we had towards the end of 2011 and quite honestly we weren't really sure...

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Rich J's Top 5...World Cup Posters

Following on from Chris' Favourite 5 Tournament Logos article, I was going to do my usual thing and follow it up with my own top five, but then I decided to go off at a slight tangent and instead go for my Top 5 Official World Cup Posters. I've often found with World Cups that the official posters tend to disappear into the background and usually ones featuring the mascot or variations on the logo tend to take prominence. An example of this...

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Al Gordon's Top 5 Patrick Kits

Regular Football Attic contributor Al Gordon of God, Charlton & Punk Rock has come up with another cracking article on French kit manufacturers...this time it's Patrick in the spotlight... Those purveyors of nostalgic footballing memories, Got Not Got, posted an article recently about another French kit manufacturer from the 1980’s, Patrick. With imported French kit design still at the forefront of my mind after my Le Coq Sportif piece, I thought I’d ‘treat’ you all to my five favourite Patrick kits. I’ve avoided one common template used...

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Chris O's Favourite 5... Football Tournament Logos

There’s nothing like a good logo to encapsulate the overwhelming excitement of a football tournament, so here’s my favourite five of all time... 1.  Argentina 78 I don’t know what it is that makes this so pleasing on the eye to me. Perhaps it’s those simple stripes in a shade of light blue so evocative of Argentina (OK, Uruguay too, if you must) or the way they curve sinuously around the ball like a pair of hands. Maybe it’s that clear depiction...

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The Golden Age of World Cup Advertising Boards

Way back in 2007 while working on my first football blogsite, Some People Are On The Pitch, I created a weekly feature called ‘The Friday List of Little or No Consequence.’ It took the form of a trivia list featuring silly and irrelevant facts on a given subject you wouldn’t find in an ordinary football reference book. In order to get the Friday List off and running, I started with a list of 11 names that used to be seen on pitchside advertising boards in the late-1970’s, and therein the rather daft tone was set for the 200 or more lists that...

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Striker: Raging Against The Machine

Today we welcome Terry Duffelen from The Sound of Football podcast and Bundesliga Lounge who today brings us a wonderful guest post all about his favourite footy video game... Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road, Socialist Worker, Ernest Hemmingway’s Men Without Women, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lethal Weapon Pinball, Selhurst Park, Guinness and Super Nintendo (SNES). If you were to evacuate my conscious mind in the early Nineties and reassemble its elements as some grotesque Mental Pinterest then those fragments of ephemera are what would be displayed....

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Rich J's 5 Worst Subbuteo Items

At the recent Socrates meet up, an interesting discussion arose, inspired by our original five top Subbuteo articles (here and here). What were the worst five? There was an almost unanimous verdict that the worst of the lot was number one on this list, but what would the other four be? Subbuteo produced a raft of accessories so it should be pretty easy to find five terrible ones surely? Well, not as easy as you'd think. Using the wealth of...

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Le Coq Sportif

We love football kits here at the Attic and it's with great pleasure we present another fantastic guest post from Al Gordon of God, Charlton & Punk Rock charting the French manufacturer's assorted attire down the years.  As each new football season starts, the topic of kit design is high up on the agenda for supporters worldwide. Every fan has, as a minimum, a passing interest in their club's attire. Many of course will be parting...

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The Esso Collection of Football Club Badges, 1972

Football club badges somehow seemed to matter more in previous decades. Pick up any book or magazine and they were everywhere, as if it was your duty as a young child to memorise and appreciate the graphic identity of every team. This was never more apparent than in The Esso Collection of Football Club Badges from 1972. Esso had already achieved incredible success with the now-famous England World Cup Coin Collection of 1970 but were keen to reinforce...

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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,...

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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....

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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...

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