Budapest Honved FC

To stand out from the crowd, some clubs go for brightly coloured nets.



While other clubs choose fancy-schmancy stanchions.



But nobody - NOBODY - ever painted the crossbar and goal posts.

Except Budapest Honved.

Total Goalnets - PEC Zwolle

The result of a merger between two local rivals PEC and the excellently named Zwolche Boys - think the Montague and Capulet families in Romeo and Juliet hooking up - PEC Zwolle's biggest rivals are the nearby Go Ahead Eagles (dig those names!).

But whereas the Eagle's net suspension preference was for Continental D's (like Ajax)


PEC installed classic Dutch skinny A-frames. This is a clip of their goalie scoring against Ajax.

UEFA Champions League - FC Schalke 04

You may have read references on this site comparing the goal nets of today to trampolines, but it's a metaphor to describe nets stretched square and so taut they cannot retain the ball. No club actually installed trampolines for goal nets. Except Schalke...

In the mid 70's they rigged a system to suspend the goal nets at the Parkstadion by installing a full goal-sized frame behind the goals and attaching the nets to the frame with trampoline springs.

You can guess at the aesthetic affect...

UEFA Champions League - Arsenal FC

A club with great traditions, it's heartening to see Arsenal's embrace of the sturdy English A-frame dates back to at least the end of the Great War, as the Highbury clip below demonstrates.

UEFA Champions League - Olympiacos FC

Of all this year's Champions League participants, Olympiacos provides one of the most colourful recent History of Goal Nets.

Their nets were suspended from A-frames like Arsenal's in the mid 60's -



 Then they went all Argentina 78 by painting the bottom of the posts black


Then, keeping the black bands, they ditched the A-frames for Continental D's.

Off the stanchions at Wembley - Gordon McQueen

Celebrating the end of International week while looking back at happier times for Scotland (but not the Wembley goals which were infamously broken after the game), here's Gordon McQueen's header off the stanchions at Wembley.


Winning this game won Scotland the 1977 Home International tournament and dialled up the country's World Cup aspirations to fever pitch. In October of the same year qualification for FIFA World Cup 1978 was won against Wales.



Gordon McQueen however would play no part in he Argentina finals after being ruled out by injury.

UEFA Champions League - Paris Saint-Germain FC

In this era of the homogeneous free-hanging boxnet, full credit to PSG for having identifiable goal nets.

The white tape at the seams of the nets don't specifically identify the Parc des Princes, but you get one glance at Ibra's penalty and you know you're in France...




The white seams were much in evidence at FIFA World Cup 1998 in France, as in Lyon.




Some instantly identifiable French music to finish, courtesy of Saint-Germain...

Off the stanchions at Wembley - Dennis Tueart

Resuming our Friday series with Dennis Tueart's famous goal in the 1976 League Cup final.


A Newcastle fan as a boy, Tueart's overhead kick rebounded off  the stanchions at Wembley and won the cup for City.

UEFA Champions League - FC Dynamo Kyiv

As noted in the FC Porto post, Kyiv lost home and away to the Portistas in the semis of the 1987 European Cup, their 2012 Group A rivals scoring twice into the big boxes that look like Barcelona's Big Ones with stanchions.









Did you notice how the field has been extended behind the goal to accommodate the stanchions?

Have another look, at this clip of Kyiv beating Rangers.

UEFA Champions League - GNK Dinamo Zagreb

While the Blues currently boast one of Europe's more elaborate systems for suspending the goal nets - the nets are on the field while the stanchions are behind the boards on the blue-covered running track -




The nets at the Maksimir used to be suspended by compact D's, as when Dinamo became the first Yugoslav side to win a European title in 1967.




For a better look at the Maksimir Stadion's Continental D's, check out the thrilling semi-final of the 1976 European Championships.



Don't these D's look like the old ones at Hillsborough?

UEFA Champions League - FC Porto

Continuing this season's Champions League participants' History of Goal Nets with the 1987 champions, FC Porto.

On their way to that 1987 title, The Dragons edged out their 2012 Group A opponents Dynamo Kyiv, firing a double into the Continental D's at the old Estadio das Antas.




Three years earlier Porto won the Cup Winners Cup, coming from 0-2 behind to sweep past Shakhtar Donetsk in the quarter-finals.

But these are incidentals, a mere introduction to the 1984 Antas architecure, these stellar L-supports on steroids.

UEFA Champions League - FC Barcelona

The fourth club in this season's Group G is Barcelona.

What more to say about Barcelona's History of Goal Nets?

Previous posts have highlighted the huge, late-80's tents at Nou Camp, and identified a striking similarity between the previous A-frames and those at Sutton United.

Perhaps what's new is the longevity of those A-frames.

The same way Tito Vilanova has replaced Pep Guardiola and nothing's really changed, so Barca moved from Camp de Les Corts to the Camp Nou, and the A-frames somehow stayed the same.

UEFA Champions League - Celtic FC

Through the 70's and early 80's big European nights at Celtic Park would be played out between an all too distinctive pair of Continental D's:





But the on-field architecture for the glory glory nights of the late 60's was a long forgotten pair of A-frames:

UEFA Champions League - FC Spartak Moscow

Tanked up on oil money, The Meat are moving out of the Luzhniki to a new stadium for the 2018 World Cup and there should be little doubt what the chosen method of goal net suspension at the Spartak Stadion will be.

But Back in the USSR Spartak Moscow were winning their last Soviet era title with a free-kick as curvy as Luzhniki's old stanchions that look a little like Chelsea's...

Off the stanchions at Wembley - Glyn Pardoe

Not the most dramatic of rebounds off the Wembley stanchions - you'll see Glyn Pardoe's toe-poke rolls juuuuust far enough to trouble the architecture:




But really, the Pardoe goal is just a good excuse to show the highlights from the 1970 League Cup final in full.

The snow piled up behind the goals and along the sidelines.

The Wembley turf churned up like Aintree on Grand National day.

The stanchions and the nets, never looked better.

Will we ever see the likes again?

A-list A-frames - Derby County FC

Those who've seen the movie, The Damned United, will be aware the Rams lost to Juventus in the semi-final of the 1972-73 European Cup.

Not many may know Derby hammered Benfica - Eusebio et al - earlier in that competition, firing three goals into the marvellous A-frames at  the old Baseball ground.




Two years later, Derby were back in Europe and beat Real Madrid. By then, the A-frames had given way to Continental D's (though the pitch hadn't yet become a beach).

UEFA Champions League - S.L Benfica

This season's Champions League participants' History of Goalnets.

First up - SL Benfica.

Benfica are the most successful side in Portuguese history, and in their "Golden Era" they were early adopters of the boxnet at Estadio da Luz (though note the nets are not free-hanging, and are in fact attached to the stanchions and would probably be deemed unsafe today).



In their later "Silver Era" they installed wonderfully distinctive stanchions.