Subbuteo catalogue, 1969

Chances are if you lay your hands on any Subbuteo catalogue or poster, its main feature will be the ever-satisfying gallery of team kits for you to ponder over. This booklet, however, took a broader view - to promote Subbuteo as a phenomenon and to inform the public on how Subbuteo football is played.Inside, the text is as finely honed by marketing experts as anything you'll find today. "Why are Subbuteo Sports Games so successful and popular? The...

Read More

Retro Round-Up: 28 June 2013

What better way to end the week than to rummage around in the bran tub we call 'Football Nostalgia' and pull out a few choice items we've found on the web during the last seven days? It's what we call The Football Attic 'Retro Round-Up' and it's a service we provide free of charge just because we love you in a very special way. Two English teams playing each other on foreign soil. These days, we'd call it a 'Game 39' scenario, but Spirit of Mirko...

Read More

The Big Match - Opening Titles (Part 1)

Time for another guest post now as David Poza, creator of the epic 'On This Day' series on YouTube that showcases historical football matches for every day of the year, takes us through the ever-changing opening titles from ITV's classic football highlights programme. Here's Part 1...The Big Match was the famous rival of Match of The Day and during 15 years it featured some of the best opening titles that I have ever seen. The...

Read More

The Worst of Modern Football - The Final!

Modern Football? It's terrible, isn't it? Like, really bad! OK, it's not all wrong, but there's a hell of a lot NOT right with it!  But just exactly which part of modern football is the worst, the absolute barrel scraper, the Justin Bieber of football? The Andy Townsend... And as comedy legend Harry Hill would say, there's only one way to find out!!! At this point, he'd shout 'Fiiiiiiiiight!' and some low paid TV monkeys would come in dressed...

Read More

Football and Comedy: The Goodies (1982)

Football and comedy: two worlds that only usually collide whenever someone employs Joe Kinnear, yet hidden away in the depths of our psyche are images and memories we've harvested from decades spent watching the television. Though we may have forgotten by now, the world of football has featured in many of our favourite comedy TV programmes. Sometimes a mere passing reference (no pun intended) is all we've needed while at other times nothing less...

Read More

Retro Round-Up: 21 June 2013

Whether your week's been good or bad, it always ends well in the world of football nostalgia thanks to The Football Attic's Retro Round-Up! As ever, we've scoured as much of the web as the 15-minute window in our schedules will allow to bring you the best football nostalgia from the last week. Let's crack on, shall we? It's been around on the web for a little while now, but Who Ate All The Pies bring us the long-forgotten version of the Match...

Read More

Great Tracksuits of Our Time: No.15

Manchester City and Wolverhampton Wanderers (1974): In the world of international fashion, bright citrus-coloured pants have rarely, if ever, been considered as acceptable. The same can be said of sky blue two-piece outfits with red trimmings. Luckily the world of football doesn't concern itself with international fashion, and this undoubtedly allowed the 1974 League Cup Final to be one of the most colourful occasions ever seen at Wembley....

Read More

What's the Worst Thing About Modern Football? Semi Finals

It's that crucial moment in any competition - the semi-finals, a time when glory is tantalisingly within reach of those competing entities, a time when fortune favours the brave and losers are forgotten. Well, something like that in any case. Yes, we're finally down to the last four in our search for The Worst of Modern Football, and thanks to your voting in the last round, they're a fine four to choose from. You can see the results from Round...

Read More

Goal Frames We Have Known and Loved: No.1

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

Read More

Peter Pan Pocket Pop-o-matic Football Game, 1979

Back in the days when a 'handheld device' meant nothing more than a few bits of plastic in a cardboard box, there was the chance to play football on the move - wherever you happened to be. That is, of course, if you had either (a) a healthy imagination or (b) very low expectations. Following not very hotly on the heels of Pocketeers 'World Cup' in 1975, Peter Pan Playthings, that maker of games such as 'Test Match' and 'Frustration', came up with...

Read More

Retro Round-Up: 14 June 2013

Greetings, retro football lovers, and welcome to another collection of the best football nostalgia stuff we could find on the web this last week. You can thank us later... Coventry City's future may look a little uncertain at the moment, but the only thing uncertain about its past are some of the players' facial hair, as shown at Old School Panini... Great players, a great team and a great kit - Netherlands 1974 in all their orange glory...

Read More

ITV Saturday Soccer Special Annual, 1980

If, as a child, you saw this slim tome in your local bookshop back in 1980, you might have expected it to contain articles about football and ITV’s presentation of it. Sadly for anyone interested in The Big Match or On The Ball, this book featured only one such article, and at no point did it even mention Jim Rosenthal. Devastating as this is, I beg you to read on. This was, in real terms, a football annual much like those produced by Shoot or...

Read More

Pirelli slippers ad, 1981

There are times in life when nothing seems to make sense. Here's an example. What would you get if you combined Pirelli, the renowned maker of Formula 1 car tyres (and all the excitement that motor racing brings) with Kevin Keegan, the ultimate football superstar of the late-1970's and early 1980's? Something epitomising the excitement, glamour and exhilaration of international sport? No. You'd get a pair of children's slippers, that's what. ...

Read More

Retro Round-Up: 7 June 2013

What a week it's been in the world of football nostalgia, but then again, when is it never a bad week in the world of football nostalgia? To prove the point, here's our selection of the best retro football stuff we could find on the web from the past week or so, starting with something that we just missed out on when we published last week's round-up... Just what does it take to refresh a team's club badge? Dotmund has the answer in fabulous...

Read More

What's the Worst Thing About Modern Football? - Round 3

Yes folks, our quest to establish the worst thing about modern football finds itself with just eight candidates remaining, and once again we're asking you to cast your vote to determine our final four. As we do so, we'd once again like to say a HUGE thank you to all of you that have taken part in the first two rounds of the competition so far. We received well over 7,000 votes which just goes to show how emotive the whole topic of 'modern football'...

Read More

League of Blogs Sticker Album Order Form

The League of Blogs Sticker Albums have been ordered so here's how to get one! Please fill in the form below and we will contact you to confirm. There's 19 available so we'll contact you if there's been more requests than we have stock available. I've got until the end of this week to order more if needed. The Sticker Album is 30 pages and comes with all the stickers pre-printed in the book. Anyone ordering one who was part of the League of Blogs...

Read More

Football League v Football League of Ireland programme (1965)

There was once a time when the term ‘international football’ meant one of two things. More often than not, it applied to matches where eleven men representing the peak of their country’s footballing ability were pitted against eleven more from a rival country. Sometimes, however, it could be applied to the long forgotten concept of inter-league football. When national teams had such a wealth of talent that it couldn't all be picked for the same...

Read More

League of Blogs Top 3s + Sticker Update

The League of Blogs Sticker Album is complete!!! Having spent all weekend putting it together, it's finally finished and is now uploading to the photo site to be ordered :) As with last year, once all the entries were in, we chose our favourite three designs. This year we have split this into Badges and Kits... But before we present those, a side note regarding the album, a word about stickers.....

Read More

Badge Focus: Wolverhampton Wanderers

As mentioned on our recent podcast, we've been toying with the idea of bringing back Badge Focus, a feature that originally ran briefly on the blogsite Football Fairground. Well the good news is that Badge Focus is back, and we begin with Wolverhampton Wanderers as our subject... The story starts in the 1970/71 season when Wolves first wore a proper badge on their old gold shirts for the first time. They'd worn the Wolverhampton coat of arms...

Read More