Preserve of any nostalgic bloke chat, footy show, or stand-up, Panini’s ubiquity for boys of a certain age almost certainly kept kids interested through the dark days of English football and were arguably the bedrock for Murdoch’s empire.

The got-got-got-got-got-got-neeeeeeed aspect of Panini is well documented and mused over. However, the books themselves are quite a document of the evolution of how the game was perceived and covered. A fairly small sample of books shows the rise of football as an industry, a performance and how it evolved into marketeers wet dream.

From the fairly amateur and bland efforts of the late 70s, these books evolved swiftly in to a more professional beast by the mid 80s. The single driving factor of this appears to be ‘Big’ Ron Atkinson. I’m exaggerating of course but if you look at these historical documents over the course of five years, Ron is an obvious figurehead of the glamourisation and commodification of English football.

I’ve got five Panini sticker books here, 1980 through to 1984, some complete, some not quite. There’s also an interloper of Soccer ’79, which is such a wreck I have no idea who produced it.

The books themselves had always featured an action shot on the front cover, an ad somewhere on the back pages but throughout the early 80s there was, increasingly, a section that wasn’t just a factual document of who played for whom but an acknowledgement of football as culture and commmodity. In ’81 there was focus on the previous season’s ‘Cockney Cup Final’, in ’83 it was the laws of the game with illustrative stickers and by ’84 it was art.

The ’79 interloper and the ’80 Panini books are pretty bland. The pages are a faded white and the pictures on the ’79 stickers look brilliantly dated – simple busts of players in mostly regulation plain or collared shirts. The Panini one has a great ad for the Simon Sturridge official league football, the one with the orange hexagons. Cool now but these days the ads are probably for Haribo.

There were a few cutting edge ’79 kits but the 1980 ones are really in a style flux. Coventry City exemplified the stylised new kit, the vertical parallel navy and white stripes down each side, while Arsenal’s plain red with white sleeves kept to tradition. By ’81 footy kit was en vogue, much like facial hair and perms, and, like Starksy & Hutch’s iconic car, the focus was very much on the very cool stripe.

As well as Coventry, Palace had the red and blue diagonal, Leeds, Spurs and Norwich had the Admiral sleeve stripe, Southampton had the two fat red verticals with thinner side verticals, Cardiff had yellow and white bar stripe down the left side, Luton had a similar fat orange/thin black affair, Orient had a thin version of Southampton’s and West Ham had a series of claret and blue stripes in a shallow ‘V’ shape across the chest. Stripes ruled.

In 1980, Ron was an ebullient, slightly orange-faced tracksuit manager. By 81 he was suited and by 83 it was the sophistication of cream slip-ons and a silver suit. The irony, of course, is that during this time he’d evolved from track suit success at WBA into the more glamorous but troubled Man Utd years of style over substance.

The ’81 book upped the style ante, the plain team pages embellished with some trendy colour fades creating margins between players. A bigger 2-sticker team photo was introduced so it wasn’t just a tiny blur of players. There was a new section celebrating the marketable footballer of the year, along with a massive 4-sticker West Ham Cup winning celebration photo.

The beard was creeping in to consciousness in 81, favoured by Villa’s Dennis Mortimer, Brom’s Regis and Coventry’s Dutchman Roger Van Gool. But the muzzy was still king, Souness and Terry Mac’s were bigger and more extrovert than the previous year. Stripes were still de rigeur but the brand new style creeping in was the plainer appearance combined with a shiny fabric, almost mirroring Atkinson’s suits.

Ipswich and Birmingham had plain navy, shiny, Adidas 3-stripes, Man C had light blue Umbro shiny and Spurs ditched the Admiral sleeve stripes and went for a plain white shiny top. An aesthete might suggest it was the style of the era but the cynical will point to shirt sponsorship and the need for a plainer shirt to be the canvas for whatever product was to be emblazoned on the front. Sponsorship was a thorny issue, the bigger clubs had dabbled but they were boycotted by the TV companies.

The focus of the sticker books was changing too. By ’81 gone were the half size Div 2 players, the lower league players marginalised to make more space for the big boys. This year the English 3rd Division and Scottish 2nd tier did put in an appearance with single sticker team shots but it appeared either a sop or a cynical plan to have more stickers so kids would have to buy more to get the golden superstars. It was also probably the only time Sterling Albion ever graced a Panini book.

My ’82 book is a little worse for wear, it’s dog eared and awash with integral sellotape. It is, however, the first one where you can see the effect of sponsorship. Around half the team shots feature their new sponsored kit, several are now iconic shirts. Ipswich’s Pioneer, Arsenal’s JVC and Stoke’s Ricoh to name but three.

By ’83 though, things had really changed. Shirt sponsorship was now allowed and the sticker book had a revamp, got all corporate and switched to a different sticker size, which was long and thin rather than squarish. This meant out with the bust shots and in with full length individual photos so you could see the full shirt and sponsor’s name, rather than just the badge. Very wide angle team shots came in and a wide foil sticker was introduced that included the badge and a cartoon interpretation of the team’s nickname. It created a personality for the teams, which was mostly either hackneyed or ludicrous and here lied amusement.

Along with first influx of external money that sponsorship bought came the new full length glamorous Big Ron, resplendent in silver suit and cream shoes. This guy was schmooooove. And rich. However, someone at the FA was clearly threatened by the influence this new money might have.

The first page of the ’83 book was now stamped with the foil stickers of the badges of the FA, SFA, PFA and SPFA. Another new feature in the ’83 book was a HUGE 7 page section at the back dedicated to THE LAWS OF THE GAME. It was as if someone at the FA or PFA was saying ‘we still run this show’. The laws were illustrated by cartoons that were also stickers and they had motion lines and cartoon stars for collision impacts. It could only have been more Grange Hill if a forked sausage had entered shot and smashed the goalie in the face.

This ’83 book showed who Ron was taking with him. It was the first to make clear who were the tracksuit managers and the photos differentiated them from the sharp suits of United’s Ron, Spurs’ Keith Burkinshaw and Forest’s Clough, the latter perhaps surprisingly, given his penchant for the green sweatshirt that was to appear in just a few years time.

These three were 1983′s vanguard of glamour. But they were managing the big teams, the rich teams, the successful teams. Liverpool were the big boys of course but their manager would have none of that flash stuff, even though the team itself were the first top flight side to usher in this new monied era of sponsored kit.

Sure, there were well turned out players and managers before Big Ron and there were obvious glamour players like Best & Marsh much earlier. But these guys were the exception, they were not indicative of a sea change in English football. They were one off mavericks, Ron and his peers were blazing the trail that the rest would follow.

In 1984 the Panini book, as well as the League itself, joined in with the teams’ headlong plunge into the corporate world. People say Sky changed football but the advent of sponsorship was the start of it. The teams knew they could get more revenue for sponsorship and they fought the FA and the TV companies to get it on telly.

Like the league’s, the ’84 sticker book’s sponsor was Canon. But there is anathema here. The framing for the players went back to the bust shot, the sponsor was wiped from every player photo. The sponsors were in the team photos of course and had some presence in the new iconification of the top scorers. Big Ron was still suave but he was now joined by El Tel. Notice a matey nickname theme here? Most of the English top flight managers held back but the Scottish Premier League went mad for the suit. Half of all managers north of the border were suited, several in very funny shiny suits. They didn’t quite get it, maybe.

While the ’84 book appeared to be an FA tool to fight off modernity in the game’s powerbase, it kept going with the modernity of it’s style and design. The gaps where the stickers were to go were at a new jaunty angle, the team pages now featured big sepia tint pictures of the team’s stadium. It arguably began to acknowledge the optimism and capitalism of the wider society. It was building on this by starting to commodify the history of football and showcase the art, yes the art, in the football of yesteryear. This book more than any other epitomised the struggle between old and new football.

I’m out of books now but the ’84 centre spread was the shape of things to come, for me. These two pages featured reproductions of iconic, historic game programmes and posters. It really was a thing of beauty. World Cup, FA Cup, Home Internationals, foreign programmes and also foil stickers of cups that English clubs could win.

Panini were evolving football’s oeuvre and dragging it into the 20th century and Big Ron was the poster boy. They were laying the ground work for Sky TV to run with in just a few years time. They documented the rise of football into a mainstream event and maybe even influenced it’s evolution. The kids of the 80s grew up into the ad executives and TV producers of the 90s. Now, of course, you can’t move for sponsored stuff and the Premier League has more sharp suits than you can shake a sticker at.

OK, this is another half-conceived, semi-serious realfacup piece but Panini did not just create sticker books, they moved football on. Hmmm … Nah mate they’re just stickers, it is just a sticker book.
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Head over to our Picasa page to see more images from the books.

The BBC are reporting that the Premier League have offered to increase parachute payments to relegated teams and to nearly triple the ‘solidarity payment’ to each Championship club to over £2million. Benevolent or what!? However, the deal for the League 1 & 2 clubs increases by a derisory £75k which, although an increase of around 30%, is a noticeably lower and devisive increase. It’s easy to be cynical about the PL’s intentions anyway but their threat to then pull all payments to all Coca Cola League clubs if the new deal is not accepted within their three week deadline makes it blatantly obvious what the Premier League’s game is.

But is this all? What’s next? Is this a slash at the tenuous thread by which the FA holds power in England football? Is this part of a move to take control of the operation and regulation of professional football and Team England? With a greater gap between Championship and League 1, will the teams down there be able to remain professional? Will this mean that even more of the clubs under the jurisdiction of the FA are actually bound to the Premier League for their financial wellbeing? Not the best turn of phrase given the plight of clubs like Portsmouth and Hull but you get my drift, revenues, revenues. With such a split will those top 40 teams pay any heed to the FA?

The Football League, for their own sake, have a difficult decision to make. If they accept this offer then the clubs become more enthral to the Premier league and, if not in name certainly in reality, they lose some of the control they have over their member clubs. If they say no to the offer it would be easy for the Premier League to simply just go ahead and create Premier League 2, invite the ‘big’ clubs they want in and the process moves on a-pace.

Depressing state of affairs.

“Typical Germans” said Lord Stopwatch last week after the imaginery-card wielding Frenchman asked for Rafael to be given red. Although Suralex’s ejecta was jingoistic, ironic and geographically challenged his point appeared to be that trying to get a fellow pro sent off was just not cricket. You know, he couldn’t condone such uncorinthian ethics.

BIg Alex is a gobshite but it would be nice if players could set a better example to kids. FOR GOD’S SAKE, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!! Which is why my dander was raised today when I saw the ad for the NEW Sony Internet telly. It’s a telly, it’s the internet, it’s tellynet. To promote this landmark in technology they have superimposed some exuberant, childhood jumpers for goalposts action onto a massive stadium with loads of fans. The strapline “Imagine reliving the greatest games” seems to suggest the premise is that you can watch the real World Cup footy AND uploaded phone clips of your kids’ games ON THE SAME DEVICE!!!!

Ignoring the fact a small cable at 1/1000 of the cost of TELLYNET can connect your phone to the TV, or indeed your PC to the TV, the kids portrayed were acting like adults on the pitch. Doesn’t sound a great crime does it?

However, ads work, they do, and although the point is that you should buy tellynet, this ad says to kids that it is acceptable to cynically trip your opponent, crowd the ref, spit (no, OK, that’s not a huge deal, we aren’t pensioners) and at one point it appears that one of the kids is brandishing an imaginary card. Wholesome stuff.

Add to all that a scuffed shot, a glance up into the crowd where a parent is glaring in disappointment at the crestfallen child and you have an image of what Sony think our kids should spire to on a football pitch. Magical, isn’t it.

The best bit though, as this ad has a World Cup theme, is that one of the brands supporting this campaign, logo on-screen at the end, is FIFA. Yes, FIFA. Football’s governing body, FIFA. Fair Play FIFA. Stamp out stuff, FIFA. We always knew their initiatives were hollow, didn’t we? Superb.

On second viewing I’m not actually so sure about the card-brandishing urchin but it does look like it. We might have to change that headline though.

Ad

A big sorry to optajoe on Twitter, top, top Tweeter that he is (and we are still big suckers for piles of beautifully thought-out stats) but we think the likes of OPTA and Prozone are killing football. These analytical tools are strangling the life out of a game that is, in part, beautiful because of its unpredictable artistry and invention. Passages of play are analysed, particularly by Prozone, so that at the press of ‘RETURN’, any Tom, Dick or Big Sam can get a full mapping of the average game plan of any decent team. Every pass, run, move, dribble, shot is logged, analysed and then nullified by a program that, by usage rather than design, is set out to stop rather than create. OK, quality defending can be beautiful but this data could be used to create, couldn’t it, but how often is it? This method of analysis essentially mechanises a player’s reactive thought process and demystifies the artistry of genuinely more gifted players. Only the most supremely gifted footballers can overcome the negativity.

When enough teams use the method you end up with a very turgid league, what you end up with is 12-14 similarly talented teams where the difference between them is decided by how well they interpret and use the data available. This is, arguably, why the Premier League can be so very, very dull. You may have an above average midfielder, able to play a cut-throat ball 75% of the time but who the opposition have analysed so they prevent that ball by positioning the central defender, at the point of release, 5 yards off the forward and closer to his centre back partner. No hole, no pass, no attack, no shot. A sideways pass. Another probe. Same result. That is but one examplke, of course, and by no means exhaustive.

This is perhaps why, along with financial and ethical reasons, the lower leagues are getting a bit more attention and are becoming more popular, relatively speaking. There is no Prozone there, you may have an idea that a particular player is handy and can do certain things well but perhaps not in any great detail, because you have only watched him a couple of times. This might be why you can see some cracking passes in the non-league. There are, for example, without intending to be unkind, some slightly overweight central midfielders who can barely move but stick the ball on their toe and you’ll witness a mesmeric 40 yard pass curled perfectly round the back of or through a defence and on to a speedy forward’s toe. OK, the striker might well then blast into row Z or scuff it to the keeper but you can’t have everything. It is, however, something, positive, not something destructive. Similarly you could see a winger who is unknown to the defender, they don’t know he’s better cutting inside so give him too much space. The defender might get wise to this but there is that element of surprise that wouldn’t be there if the winger had been reduced to a stat on a user friendly laptop screen.

Of course, it doesn’t always work, there is human error or good fortune but more often than not a stalemate or narrow, error-induced victory is the result. The by product of this is, of course, there are more very close calls and more delicate decisions a referee has to make and those mistakes are magnified because they stand out. If a game of football chess with this negative outlook and narrow window for error is what you like, fine, it’s not all bad, but I’d rather be entertained a bit more and not make a scapegoat out of the guy (ref or player) who committed the one error that decided a game.

This ill-conceived lunchtime rant is nearly over but let’s put the joy back into football and get rid of these stultifying devices. Or let’s all go and watch some non-league football and have a pie and a pint by the pitch. I know that’s technically not allowed but you go and see if you can’t get away with it.

Of the likely Arsenal match day squad tonight, none of the players started their careers below the Championship, most of them started at Arsenal and those that didn’t were poached young from either big foreign clubs or foreign academies. Indeed, of the squad, only Theo Walcott will have played a game for a team outside of England’s top flight. That is, of course, with the exception of Sol Campbell’s one game Notts. County aberration, which I am not sure counts.

Even when you dip down to the young fringe players, the Carling Cup squad, very few have even been loaned out to anywhere below the Championship. Wojcieck Szczesny has played for Brentford and Luke Freeman for Gillingham … errr … and that’s about it. OK, I am sure the average footballer doesn’t expect to play for one of the big four but I am damn sure they dream but the chances of those dreams coming true are precisely nil.

It’s a shame but it is illustrative of the all encompassing eye of the big four club. They never miss a kid, they hoover up all the quality and then spit the majority of it back down the pyramid when it doesn’t work out. This may well improve the chances of a young player of making the grade at another Prem or Championship club but it can just as much taint their future and lead to their hopes and expectations being dashed and their spirit being crushed. The only way is down. It also means that the big clubs almost never have to pay a smaller club a massive fee, thus restricting, if not cutting off, the oxygen from the lower leagues.

This is a simplistic argument but none the more wrong for it. We think. This is not a pop at Arsenal, it’s an observation, a sign of the times, the ethos isn’t exactly mellowed over at Chelsea, Liverpool or Man Utd either. Even the regular Premier League also-rans have little truck with foraging below the Championship, there are examples that just go to prove the rule but they are few and far between.

After a gruelling 6 months following the business end of the FA Cup, we needed a break so we removed ourselves from football and headed half way round the world. Actually, it was just a holiday. But never being able to switch off, we fancied a bit of a game in New Zealand anyway.

With a 28 year absence from the World Cup, the fever must surely have gripped the country’s ‘soccer’ fans. Innit? So, watching a game here could be fun, we would bathe in the locals’ heightened anticipation of a great summer (actually, winter in their case). Camper van route mapped, we figured that we could get to see Waikatere .v. Waikato on Sunday 14th March. Top at home to bottom at the business end of the season. With Waiketere including former Wolves and Norwich journeyman Neil Emblen as player coach, we had to root for WAIKATO!

We didn’t hit too many towns on tour but we first popped into the local All Blacks/Sports store in Christchurch to see if we could pick up an NZ All Whites world cup shirt. Hmmm, scarce, this is so big the whole place has sold the fuck out!

After a sodden but spectacular trip through Arthur’s Pass we tried the smaller township of Greymouth. Same story. The sporty Queenstown? Nope. Wellington … didn’t have time so didn’t bother looking … Auckland? Nope. Intriguing. Asked some locals. Not interested. So, this is World Cup fever?

At one time, Neil Emblen was £2million worth of average when he moved from Wolves to Palace. His last FA Cup action was a 2-1 defeat at the hands of Slough while he was playing for Walsall. Ouch. So, Waikatere .v. Waikato. We missed the game on account of a miscalculation brought about by the draconian Kiwi speed limit of 60mph. The leaders won 4-2.

We did watch a park kickabout though. If anyone is in any doubt of the pernicious nature of the Premier League, there were two Chelsea shirts on show in the 15 a-side jumpers for goalposts fest, one Liverpool and a Man United. Not to be outdone, the Italians weighed in with a Milanese and an Old Lady. Some Greek ones, some Japanese ones, some South American ones … and a lot of skins courtesy of the local Maori contingent. Otherwise, zip.

So, World Cup fever is a little lite. Football fever is there among the non-indiginous population so why do some countries not ‘get it’? Dear New Zealand, your national sport might be rugby or maybe cricket but this is the WORLD CUP, now get with the programme.

Canterbury .v. Otago on 28th Feb
Hawkes Bay v Auckland on 14th March.

New Zealand Football Championship here we come!!  We were hoping to bump into Paul Ifill along the way at Wellington Phoenix but they’ve desserted to the poncy A-League so who the hell knows, mate, cobber, sheila (that was because it’s the Australian league …. etc ) Boo.

This season therealfacup has tried to ‘big up’ the FA Cup, the early rounds, the ties, the teams and the players of the teams we’ve been destined to see. We were doing this because we thought all smaller football clubs were better, or at least more wholesome, than larger clubs. And we thought that the masses should see more of it and that the smaller clubs would want to be seen.

It’s been an eye opener for sure, we’ve encountered some good folk and watched some good football. We hadn’t set out to learn anything from this we just wanted to get back in touch with a world of football not dominated by money and player power and maybe give the good stuff we saw a small helping hand along the way. But we did learn something and bits of that something baffled us slightly.

We know small clubs are very poorly supported and that is partly because ‘fans’ are only interested in the big clubs. It is also true that national media isn’t that interested in lower league football. However, it’s also clear that part of the problem is that lower league clubs have absolutely no understanding of how to market themselves.

We have been to 18 games, we have seen 31 different teams, 26 of which have been outside the top four divisions. We have been greeted warmly by the vast majority of teams but few actively embraced the fact we were trying to help them and bring them to a bigger audience. OK, that sounds ludicrously patronising and we aren’t exactly the BBC but you get our drift, we do get a few hits!

We couldn’t understand why many clubs seemed not to want the extra coverage they might get from us interviewing their star player or manager or writing about their game. We couldn’t understand why these clubs weren’t obeying the natural and insatiable rules of football and the media.

But, hey, big news, some of them didn’t want the coverage, they didn’t want the money, they didn’t want big shot players, they didn’t want bells, whistles or gold teeth. It turned out they just wanted to play football! That is not bizarre, it is perfectly normal. That is what we were looking for and we found it. And we got annoyed with it. And we wanted to turn it into the very thing we wanted to get away from. The thing we were disillusioned with.

Doh!

WE ARE SORRY.

Having said that … Not all clubs were happy being sleepy backwaters, some are very ambitious and we came across several who were. And, to be brutally honest, they weren’t ogres desperate to sup from Murdoch’s golden cup, they just wanted better, or more. Are we hypocrites to like those teams too? Probably but bring it on. With disillusionment still in place but a few scales removed from our eyes, expect more erratic blogging and even more erratic opinion.

aLL uR fOotBalL R BEloNg tO Us.

Statistically, averagely, it is certainly the case at 3rd round stage but is it simply that the cup has lost its lustre? We would argue not. For a start, attendances in the previous 3 or 4 rounds do not show a large absence of fans and neither do they show it in the later stages.

In the 3rd and 4th qualifying rounds the very small non-league teams have their cup finals against the bigger non-league sides and fans turn out in their droves. We do not mean that disparagingly but it is self-evident that a very small club does not expect to get much further than this stage so are likely to make the most of it. Similarly, at 1st and 2nd round games, the higher non-league teams find themselves up against pro league teams and the supporters turn out in droves to witness their cup final. The same will go for League 1/Championship teams if they get to the 5th round.

With a few exceptions, the third round sees the remaining lower league sides outnumbered by the top two flights and few get plum ties, while there are a lot of ties featuring clubs from the same division at a stage of the competition that means little in the short-term.

And herein lies the likely reason, short-termism. You can see it in managerial tenures, in pundits lauding the success of players over the course of just 1 or 2 games (see Michael Owen for England after his recent hatrick) and you can see it in attendances for 3rd round games. There is no tangible short term reward for fans of teams who almost expect to be in the next round or where there is a tedious game fans can see on any given Premier/Championship Saturday.

The same dwindling attendances happen when a team’s season peters out in to mid table mediocrity or when they are doomed to relegation. Does this show a malaise in league attendances? Yes and No. It shows you that supporters see no short term benefit in going. This is perhaps a malaise but it is not perceived as such when a season peters out, it is a natural consequence. Similarly, we at therealfacup think the lower attendances at certain FA Cup 3rd round games can be seen as a natural consequence.

Also, media and pundits alike seem to assume a club’s average gate for league games is the norm. It is not, it is an average. For some league games there may be 15000, for more glamorous ones it might be 20000. No one suggests league attendances are falling when Bolton get 15000 against Portsmouth, it is simply that fewer fans select to go to that game than, say, against Man Utd. One can see from cup final and semi final ticket allocations that a club’s average attendance is NOT the actual number of fans they have. Even for FA Vase finals, seemingly entire towns travel to Wembley when usual attendances scarcely scrape 100.

In short. We don’t think that FA Cup 3rd round gates are unduly alarming, we think that folk are simply selective about what they go and see and at round 3 stage there is very little to get exccited about if you are a fair to middling Premier League or Championsip side drawn against a fair to middling Premier League or Championship side.

Shit happens folks, please let it lie. I didn’t notice any pundits banging on about the huge attendances in some of the 1st and 2nd round ties. Oh hang on, that’s because they didn’t even cover them. Unlike us, of course. So, the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, The Sun, Guardian and Times, do please SHUT THE FUCK UP and go and deliberate falling Premier League attendances.

These are just a few off-the-cuff examples of how ITV could have played this, they could have promoted the romance, the history, the pure unexpected joy of the oldest club cup competition in the World.  But no, they choose Northwich .v. Charlton, Oldham .v. Leeds and Paulton Rovers .v. Norwich. The latter is perhaps one we would have chosen but this is not rose-tinted nostalgia, this is practical and creative planning for a better future and to help the vibrancy of a whole competition not a set wedge of clubs.  This decision is a stunning, witless, cash-pandering piece of scheduling from ITV. Choose the most interesting ties?  No, choose the three biggest clubs in it except Southampton.

This behemoth of banality can only follow their Champions League blueprint and it can only help send the FA Cup the way of the League Cup and the UEFA Cup. TV audiences homogenised to only watch 4 clubs. Well, it keeps costs down and maximises revenue + profit = $$$$$$$$$$  What next? The Premier League? One can perhaps only hope?