UEFA Europa League - SS Lazio

SS Lazio and Rome's Stadio Olimpico have a colourful History of Goal Nets.

At the time of the King of the Bidoni and "This is Rome, right, but where's Lazio," it was all about box nets that billowed like tents.




A generation earlier, huge Iron Man stanchions somehow fixed to the pink of the running track framed nets that never strayed off the edge of the field.




A decade earlier, Olimpico was home to skinny A-frames that wouldn't have looked out of place in the Total Goalnets era of the Eredivisie.



You can get a better look at these A-frames in this Roma clip from the mid-sixties.

Cagliari Calcio

Did Manchester United only start winning the league again when they replaced the Old Trafford A-frames with Continental D's?

For years Cagliari laboured between a pair of A-frames that wouldn't have looked out of place in the Eredivisie.




Then, with the peerless Gigi Riva in transcendent form, the Rossoblu's ditched the Dutch goals for a pair of Iron Man Specials and won their first and only Scudetto.

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.

Total Goalnets - FC Twente

Most fans in the UK were too busy sniggering at Shteeve McClaren's Dutch accent to fully appreciate FC Twente's - and McClaren's - achievement in seeing of perennial heavyweights PSV and a free-scoring Ajax and Luis Suarez to win their first ever Eredivisie title in 2010.



35 years earlier FC Twente had their first brush with major success. However they were crushed in their home leg of the UEFA Cup final to an excellent Borussia Monchengladbach side, who netted five into the Twente A-frames.