You can't post Feyenoord's goalnets without showing these curvy beauties from the 1970's.
The distortion of perspective in this clip, or one very similar, shown on On the Ball in the mid-70's convinced these writers (then 6 or 7) that 'Continental' goals were square, and not rectangular, like at home.
Might this explain our rusted-on belief that goalnets everywhere can be different?
Two clips from Rotterdam in the 1980's illustrate perfectly what this blog's all about.
Chasing a Feyenoord thread through Youtube, we discovered the favoured on-field architecture of the early 90's were Latin American L-supports:
We followed the thread all the way back to a Holland v Belgium game in 1985. We didn't know where the game was played, and there's nothing about the venue in the description. But as soon as you see the goalnets, you know the game's being played in Rotterdam.
While Nicolas Anelka's 'pass' past the Spartak Moscow keeper nestles nicely in the corner of the net -
the trampolines at the Nou Camp are now sprung so tight that even a simple 'pass' into the corner, like Iniesta's last weekend, is rebounding back out again.
When I started this blog, I began by writing about what a stadium's goalnets said about the character of that stadium or its home club (eg Arsenal) or what part the goalnets played in the club's history (eg Manchester United). I also ran a series on the World Cups, demonstrating how the evolution of goalnet fashion and technology has been every bit as interesting as tactics, or rules (or strips).
More recently I've simply celebrated great goalnets, by which I hope to remind readers that goal design doesn't happen by accident. Somebody somewhere - either within the club or, if the posts, stanchions and nets are bought 'off the shelf,' at the manufacturers - designed the architecture. Did a drawing. Turned the drawing into reality. Ensured reality entered history.
Such great designs didn't just follow what went before, nor were they obviously fashionable at the time. But in the second decade of the new century, when everybody's got box goalnets and everything looks the same, I'd like readers to remember that football can look different to how it looks today, and difference can be beauty in itself.
