UEFA Europa League - Chornomorets Odesa

The original football team in Odessa played in a hole that was dug out of the ground to form a lake. Though the lake was never built - hey, this was the Soviet Union - it was noticed that the hole was a similar shape to the Black Sea so the team that played there was nicknamed Chornomorets, or Black Sea Men.

So if the team was named after the hole, what if we were to name the stadium after the shape of the on-field architecture?

What would we call it?

Wembley?

Heysel?

Stadionul Dinamo?

(check out the ball wrapping itself round the stanchions in the Bremen goal towards the end; magic)

UEFA Europa League - Vitoria S.C.

Vitoria de Guimaraes are one of Portugal's representatives in this season's tournament and you wonder, what's with these sides called Vitoria? They've all got cracking nets!

Recently - OK, a couple of months back; apologies everybody, life's been crazy - we looked at ES Vitoria in Brazil and their boxy A-frames.

Now check out the hardware at Vitoria SC's D Afonso Henriques stadium - classics!

Argentina - Atletico de Rafaela

Like many sides in the Argentine Primera Division, La Crema are to be congratulated for sticking with their L-supports.

However, if prizes were being handed out for the worst ball retention seen anywhere, would any other club or stadium even get a look in?

Goal Nets and the Gaffer's influence

Previously I've suggested Manchester United's modern-day success was down to changing the goals at Old Trafford from A-frames to Continental D's.

I went as far as to suggest that Sir Alex Ferguson - who'd enjoyed so much success at Aberdeen between a pair of Continental D's - was behind the change.

I've also written about how the decline of Liverpool could be dated back to their changing the Anfield A-frames for Continental D's, and the likelihood of Graeme Souness being the new broom behind such a sweeping move.

You may think it unlikely that a manager would get involved with choosing the goal nets but the re-appearance of red nets at Anfield this season is entirely due to the intervention of the Liverpool manager, Brendan Rodgers. As posted on Liverpool's website -

When Fabio Borini hammered home his debut Liverpool goal against FC Gomel last Thursday, the Italian became the first to put the ball in the back of Anfield's newly reinstated red goal nets.

Last sighted in L4 in the mid-90s, the distinctive red nets have been restored on the orders of Brendan Rodgers in the same way as the original 1974 'This is Anfield' sign was re-fitted in the tunnel a month ago.

Liverpool FC museum curator Stephen Done explained: "Brendan and his family were given their first glimpse of Anfield the day after he was unveiled as manager as part of a private tour of the stadium.

"At the end of the tour, we stood on the Kop and Brendan commented that he always remembered the goals at Anfield having red nets.

"The 1980s were formative years for him, in terms of him starting to watch and play football, and he seemed to recall the red nets quite vividly. He suggested we bring them back."

"Kevin O'Shea (of the Liverpool museum) and I agreed. It wouldn't win us a game as such, but if it gave us that tiny extra advantage by making the crowd and the team feel better, then why not?"

John Brodie, a Liverpool civil engineer, invented goal nets in 1889 and from that point on, all nets were required to be of a dark colour, as was the case at Anfield up until they changed to red at some point in the 1960s.

A picture taken during a clash with league champions-to-be Manchester City (above), shows the red nets were in place by at least 1968.

York City FC

A member of our goal nets community advised we take a look at the Minstermen, who even today defy the trend towards the homogenous box net with their Continental D's (though those D's do share the box net's ground supports, which transform the net into a pinball machine).




Though the goals our friend advised we look at were the A-frames which stood at either end of Bootham Crescent through the late 70's and 1980's.



If you think the goals look like a mix between an A-frame and a Continental D, you'd be right.

Here's a photo of those A-frames from about that time.

Further back, the Minstermen were early adopters of the Continental D.

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.

FA Cup Special - Manchester City v Leeds Utd

This weekend's fifth round of the Cup has Man City and Leeds squaring up to one another at Etihad.

In respect of the aesthetic value-add goal nets can bring to the game, Etihad's black, almost invisible nets are among the worst around.



This wasn't always the case at City. They used to LOVE their goal nets.

Nearly 40 years ago the sides met at Maine Road in the old First Division. Similar to the way City responded to Euro 76 by installing Continental D's, so after the West Germany World Cup they found a way to follow the free-hanging fashion while keeping their A-frames, and went for the hybrid design.

UEFA Europa League - Liverpool FC

Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal - Albert Einstein

Though only a select few such as Gheorghe Rotariu would call Graeme Souness a pathological criminal, his throwing the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater approach when taking over at Liverpool in 1991 saw him taking an axe to such fine Anfield institutions as the Boot Room, Steve McMahon and the old red A-frames.

1991-92 was the curtain call for the A-frames.



The Continental D's installed for the 1992-93 season heralded an unprecedented downturn in the club's fortune. Indeed, after that season's 6th place finish in the League, Liverpool failed to qualify for Europe for the first time in nearly 30 years.



That the A-frames were there for the first European campaign in 1964-65 shows the old red stanchions were as integral to the modern history of the club and its glory years as Shankly-Paisley-Fagan-Dalglish.



But not Souness.

A-list A-frames - Nottingham Forest

Looking at Forest's History of Goal Nets it was hoped the installation of the Continental D's would coincide with Cloughie's arrival in 1975, or winning the League in 1978, or winning the European Cup in 1979 and further demonstrate the talismanic importance of changing the goals (see Manchester United).




But Forest didn't install the Continental D's until the 1980-81 season, AFTER their second European Cup win against Hamburg. Indeed, the Continental D's could be seen as a herald for a downturn in fortune for Forest, much as they were for Liverpool some ten years later.

Prior to the D's a proud set of A-listers stood at either end of the City Ground, bearing witness to Cloughie and his glory years.

UEFA Europa League - SSC Napoli

European competition resumes this week and the History of Goal Nets is going to look at those clubs playing in the last 32 of the Europa League, kicking off with SSC Napoli.

Still the fourth best supported side in Italy, the Napoli of today boasts stars such as Edinson Cavani, and a stadium with modern box nets. Dig those blue ground supports...




25 years ago the San Paolo boasted the King of Naples and A-frames straight off the A-list.



Twenty years prior to that, you knew you were watching Napoli when you saw their Iron Man set of stanchions.

Millwall FC

The Lions moved to what was known as the New Den in 1993, where modern box nets inevitably followed a fairly standard set of Continental D's.



But dig into Millwall's history of goal nets at the (old) Den and a rich seam of diversity is revealed.

The early 90's groove was a highly distinctive set of Continental D's.



While just a couple of years earlier black A-frames (similar to Hibernian's?) stood at either end of Cold Blow Lane.



The same stanchions can be seen up close about a minute into this beautiful clip from 1979.



But in the fine tradition of saving the best for last, back in the fierce Mid-70's the architecture were white A-list A-frames, separated at birth from the A-frames at Leeds Utd.

Brazil 2014: It's Not Over Yet

In the New Year the History of Goal Nets will begin focusing on our campaign to have FIFA install Brazilian-style L-supports for the games of the Brazil World Cup finals in 2014.

We don't doubt the scale of our task. Of the 12 host stadia, five are being upgraded, five are being rebuilt and two are brand new. We expect all will celebrate their revamped, state of the art status by installing state of the art boxnets and, if unchecked, you won't be able to differentiate a game from the 2014 finals with the finals of 2010 (or 2006, or 2002, or 1998).

But it's not over yet. We take heart that the goals in the Selecao's last home game of 2012 were scored into Brazilian L-supports, at Atletico GO.




We believe that with hard work we can ensure the goals at the 2014 finals are also scored into L-supports.

If you haven't already done so, please sign our Petition.

The History of Goal Nets wishes you and yours the very best for Christmas and the New Year.

Cue Grace.

UEFA Champions League - S.C. Braga

Continuing our series looking at this season's Champions League participants' History of Goalnets with Portugal's SC Braga.

Known as the Arsenalistas because of their Arsenal strips, in the mid-80's Braga's goal nets hung from A-frames that on first glance look not dissimilar from those at Highbury.





On closer inspection you'll notice the additional and unique L-support protruding from the middle of the cross bar.

A couple of years later Braga did away the legs of the A-frames and left three L-supports from which to suspend the nets.

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 - 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 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.

Total Goalnets - Feyenoord Rotterdam

It's Total Hot Tub Time Machine at The Tub.

Feyenoord scored the goals which won the 1974 Eredivisie into A-frames.

 

Then celebrated that title win by going all Real Madrid.


Five years later skinny A-frames greeted the same PSV.



(And hosted Aston Villa v Bayern Munich two years after that)

 

Then just for something different, the stadium guys at de Kuip installed L-supports from the mid-80's onwards.

Total Goalnets - Eredivisie

Explaining the unique Dutch perspective that created total football, "Brilliant Orange"author David Winner writes that the Netherlands is the most densely populated country in Europe and that, "The Dutch think innovatively, creatively and  abstractly about space in their football because for centuries they had to think about space in every other area of their lives."

And in "The Ball is Round,"  David Goldblatt waxes long on the roots of total football, and finds them in total architecture - where Dan Roodenburgh, architect of Ajax' De Meer stadium proposed that the many separate elements in a building or project must be functionally and stylistically integrated into a whole vision - and the fine arts. Goldblatt argues eloquently that the "stripped down modern form (of Vermeer) can be seen in the abstract paintings of Mondrian who progressively reduced landscape and the natural world to the simplest elements of the visual arts - lines and blocks, horizontals and verticals, primary colours, black and white."

Both ideas can be seen to have come together in the Dutch on-field architecture of the 1970's, where simple, stripped down A-frames were designed to fit within the tight spaces of the cramped stadia that were such a feature of the Eredivisie at that time.

Total Goalnets - Eredivisie is a club-by-club review of Holland's history of goal nets of the era when the Dutch played the game in a way no-one had done before, and when Johan Cruyff was "Pythagoras in boots."

Hot Tub Time Machine - Brighton and Hove Albion FC

Tracing the Seagulls recent history of goalnets is like jumping into the same Hot Tub Time Machine as Liverpool, Everton, Manchester United and so many others.

In 2012 they're scoring against Chelsea into an identkit set of box goal nets at the Amex.



But jump in the Hot Tub Time Machine and in 1997 we see Stuart Storer lashing the last ever goal at the Goldstone ground into a set of Continental D's



In 1982 we see Jimmy Case and Andy Ritchie scoring into a classy set of hybrids (probably inspired by the goalnets at the World Cup in Spain the previous summer)



Then, climbing out the Hot Tub Time Machine in 80/81, Michael Robinson scores against Liverpool into a magnificent set of A-frames.



Digging the totally awesome goalnets from the past, does anybody honestly want to come back to 2012?

Does anyone want to be the Hero?