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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