Match of the Day - Week 3

Match of the Day will preview a fixture from the coming weekend by looking back at that same fixture in a previous year.

This week's Match of the Day is Watford v Arsenal from September 1984, played out between the old out-sized Continental D's at Vicarage Road.



Pick of the goals for me is Charlie Nicholas' opener (at 2:30 in the clip). Just love the way the net kills the ball, leaving a long walk for Steve Sherwood, the Watford goalkeeper, to retrieve.

Which is your favourite goal, and why?

A-list A-frames - Olympiastadion München

A curiosity from 1972 - A-frames in Munich!

(Gerd Muller's hat-trick goal can be seen at 1.23.20)



Sadly, the rhyme or reason for their installation would appear to be lost to time.

They weren't installed when Bayern Munich won the Bundesliga on the last day of the 1971-72 season, and the standard Olympiastadion box nets were back for the Olympics later that summer.

Ajax were in the middle of their European Cup three-in-a-row at that time so perhaps we see the influence of Dutch football in the shape of the stanchions - check out PSV Eindhoven, for example.

They're awesome A-frames.

Just, what were they doing there?

Leicester City FC

In their 111 years at Filbert Street, the Foxes switched from Continental D's (1960), to off-the-shoulder A-frames (till 1977) then back to Continental D's again (till Filbert Street closed in 2002).

1960

1976

2000

Stoke City FC

The Potters boast a proud history of goal nets at their old Victoria Ground.

Pre-war, Stoke and a very young Stanley Matthews were A-frames adherents.



30 years later, the Potters and a 46-year old Stanley Matthews were shooting into Continental D's.


Continental D's then supported the nets at the Victoria Ground until the move to the new Britannia Stadium (and box nets) in 1997.

1976 (and "the boy Crooks")

1983

1993

Goias Esporte Clube - Brasileiro 2014

Goias play at the splendid Estadio Serra Dourada, the hardware at which, to this day, is native Brazilian L-supports.



Sadly passed over for World Cup 2014, Serra Dourada nonetheless hosted the Selecao in last week's warm up match versus Panama.




I believe most football fans - be they goal nets aficionados or not - would identify the L-supports at Serra Dourada with Brazil as surely as anyone in the street would identify the yellow shirts and blue shorts as the Selecao.

Eric Cantona was in the papers last week arguing global commoditised football would damage the game, and aren't FIFA's homogenous box nets one of the most visual examples of global commoditised football?

I believe it's therefore a simple argument to make that the loss of identity suffered as a result of FIFA replacing the native L-supports as per those at Serra Dourada for the generic box nets installed at the 12 stadia for World Cup 2014 is damaging to the game.

Arena Pantanal - World Cup 2014 Venue

Arena Pantanal in Cuiaba - a city in the exact centre of South America - is a new stadium which will host four matches during FIFA World Cup 2014. The stadium is complete and opened recently, with the obligatory boxnets at either end.




Arena Pantanal replaces Estadio Governador Jose Fragelli, nicknamed Verdao (and home to three clubs, including Mixto Esporte Clube).

In an effort to maintain links with the past, FIFA have nicknamed the new stadium Verdao, while championing its green (Verdao) credentials.

A better link to Cuiaba and Brazil's footballing past would have been for FIFA to maintain the traditional L-supports that once graced either end of the old stadium.

Sao Paulo FC - Brasileiro 2014

The Tricolor have played two home games this season, one at Morumbi, the other at Pacaembu.

The goal nets at either could easily be transplanted back in time to Mexico 86 and nobody would notice the difference.

Morumbi

Pacaembu



The goal nets at both were once classic Brazilian L-supports.

Morumbi

Pacaembu

Esporte Clube Bahia - Brasileiro 2014

Bahia play at the utterly charmless FIFA World Cup 2014 venue, Arena Fonte Nova.



Arena Fonte Nova replaced the old Estadio Fonte Nova, which had a great deal more character and, during the 1980's and 90's a tremendous set of A-frames at either end of the field.




Further back in Bahia's History of Goal Nets, native Brazilian L-supports were the method of choice for supporting the nets at Fonte Nova.

Fluminense FC - Brasileiro 2014

With FIFA World Cup 2014 almost upon us, The History of Goalnets celebrates the start of the new Brazilian Serie A season by visiting the Serie A stadia and checking out the on-field architecture at each.

Until recently, Brazil was one of the only countries left in world football which rebelled against this era of uniform and homogenous box-nets,  and where the native system deployed to support the nets - L-supports, in Brazil's case - could still be seen.

As the World Cup has crept closer, and the focus of the game's global policeman FIFA has sharpened, so the native L-supports have largely been replaced. But not all...

When the World Cup final is played at Estadio do Maracana on 13 July, you can be sure the nets will be firmly tied back and hang like square tents that can't be differentiated from those in Munich 1974, Mexico City 1986, and the last four, utterly uniform, World Cup finals.

However, when Fluminense kicked off their 2014 season at Maracana last weekend, the nets were hanging in the shape of L-supports. OK, the hardware has been shorn of the actual L-supports, so the nets are still tied to stanchions, like box nets. Interestingly the ground staff have chosen to tie the nets so they're shaped like classic L-supports.




Might this be because of complaints during last year's Confederations Cup that the nets at the renovated Maracana had been changed and the spirit of the old stadium lost?

101 Great Goals - Trevor Brooking

Brian Moore: Look at the ball, caught up in the corner there.

How Trevor Brooking's top-corner strike was transformed from the merely terrific into the unforgettable.

A-list A-frames - Plymouth Argyle FC

The Pilgrims have a long history of distinctive on-field hardware.

Standard A-frames suited the early 60's



While something more boxy (or more Manchester City) were thought to be required for the 70's and the visit of Pele




The boxy white stanchions were eventually replaced by distinctive black hardware that served Home Park from the mid-90's to stadium redevelopment (and boxnets) in 2002.



Check out the old film clip below, where the ground staff are filmed erecting the cross bar, beautiful.

101 Great Goals - Paul Breitner

Welcome to the launch of a new series of posts - 101 Great Goals - and I'd like to invite all readers of the blog to nominate their Great Goals on the Facebook page or, better still, post a link and your reasons for liking the goal so much.

What constitutes a Great Goal? As this is The History of Goal Nets, simply any goal can be considered Great if we enjoyed the aesthetics of ball striking net so much that we are moved to nominate that goal.

Your Great Goals can be nominated or posted in any order; Paul Breitner's isn't necessarily the greatest goal.  The point of 101 Great Goals is not to rank the goals, but enjoy them (as they hit the net).

So to my first choice - Paul Breitner v Chile at the 1974 World Cup.



He's scoring into the hated box nets, I hear you cry. That's certainly true, but in the mid 1970's - when everyone at home had stanchions or D's - the free-hanging nets at the 1974 finals were paradoxically the epitome of sophistication. And some - like those in the West Berlin Olimpiastadion above - actually had pretty good ball retention.

I always loved Paul Breitner's goal for the way the ball seemed to stop and hang in the air after it hit the very top corner of the net, before gently bouncing to the ground.

Beşiktaş J.K.

Besiktas old ground, the BJK Inonu Stadi was unique in being the only stadium in the world from which a fan could view two Continents, Europe and Asia.

For a while in the early-90's BJK fans could view two methods of goalnets supports.

First, BJK installed L-supports at the end of their Continental D's.



Then BJK tied the nets back box-nets-style, while maintaining their Continental  D's.

UEFA Europa League - Standard Liège

Who: Standard Liege

Where: Liege, Belgium

What: Classic Continental D's

Why: Classic Continental D's make for classic nights in Europe (and pretty good ball retention for all 4 goals)

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!

UEFA Champions League - F.C. Paços de Ferreira

This year's surprise package in the play-off round of the ECL is Portugal's Pacos de Ferreira. Their home stadium holds only 5,000 spectators so their Zenit St Petersburg tie will be played elsewhere which is a shame, since the Mata Real has hosted some spectacular goal nets in the past.

Unwilling to give up their Continental D's in the box nets era, they tied the nets back in hybrid fashion.




Some years earlier the Castores played between a genre-defying method of supporting their goal nets.


What do we call these?

UEFA Europa League - Club Brugge KV

FCB have a glorious history of goal nets and, like NK Maribor, went to extreme lengths to keep their stanchions when box nets were deemed a necessary requirement.

In the mid-60's Brugge sported stanchions of a curve that suggested the Latin influence of Madrid and Santiago and would lead to similar at Feyenoord.



By the late 70's FCB were a force in European football and played between skinny A-frames that were classically Low Country.




The A-frames were still there in the mid-90's and the era of box net homogeneity. Exactly like those at  NK Maribor, Brugge maintained their identity by draping the box nets over the stanchions.

UEFA Champions League - NK Maribor

Slovenia's most successful side NK Maribor have a very interesting history of goal nets.

They love their stanchions soooo much that soon after Slovenian independence in the early 90's, they eschewed convention and suspended their nets by, not 2, but 3 stanchions.





Later, when obviously instructed they needed box nets to compete in Europe, Maribor couldn't bear to give up their stanchions so basically draped the box nets over the (now only 2) stanchions.

UEFA Champions League - ŠK Slovan Bratislava

In an era when Central and Eastern European sides played between Continental D's, Slovan Bratislava borrowed from Feyenoord and installed cosmopolitan L-supports.