FIFA World Cup - West Germany 1974

Before the violence and negativity of the 1986 and 1990 tournaments plunged the game to new depths of despair, the 1974 World Cup with its miserly 2.55 goals per game was considered the nadir of football history.

At a distance of 44 years it can now be seen as the apotheosis of European football.

 Holland destroyed Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. West Germany became champions and the pace and tempo demonstrated by each became the new standard in world football

Matches were played at 9 different stadia but for the first time the on-field architecture was standardised.

So be they in Berlin


or Stuttgart


The goalnets all looked the same. 

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?

Spain 1982 - FIFA World Cup revisited

The forthcoming World Cup tournament in Brazil is not the first time FIFA has ripped out the existing on-field architecture and replaced it with anonymous and homogenous boxnets.

The 1982 finals in Spain are a prime example of FIFA insisting on non-native hardware for a World Cup tournament. As I posted some time ago - and re-posted in full below - the hybrid format of the 24 team tournament was matched by hybrid goal nets that added no flavour of Spain to the Spanish World Cup (exactly the result the global brand managers at FIFA had in mind).

Barcelona played out season 1981/82 between their classic Chelsea-style A-frames at the Nou Camp.



But by the time the opening game between Argentina and Belgium kicked off, the stanchions - the style of which had followed Barcelona from their previous stadium, Camp de Les Corts - were gone.




Similarly, the instantly recognisable curved stanchions of Real Madrid greeted teams to the Bernabeufor season 1981/82.




Yet Marco Tardelli's unforgettable goal in the World Cup final was scored into completely forgettable goal nets.

World Cups - Spain 1982

A hybrid 24-team format, neither the 16 team tournament of old nor the monstrous 32-team affair promised by FIFA.

With hybrid goalnets -



Neither the L-supports of '78 nor the monstrous box goalnets monopoly promised since 1974.

Cue Sil doing Pacino doing Michael from Godfather 3

101 Great Goals - Gerd Muller

In the same way the Italian narrative of the 1970 World Cup final has been lost to the Brazilian fairytale, so has Gerd Muller's second goal in the Game of the Century played 4 days earlier, been lost to the story of Gianni Rivera.

Famously, Rivera - nicknamed Abatino for his clean and proper attacking style - couldn't be trusted by coach Valcareggi to track back, so played only 45 minutes in each game as part of a Staffeta, or relay, in tandem with Sandro Mazzola.

Valcareggi's worst fears were realised at the Muller goal, which was West Germany's equaliser for 3-3. Finding himself minding the near post at the set piece, Rivera let Muller's soft, if well directed, header pass between himself and the post, and into the net.  Rivera's reasoning to the screaming Italian goalkeeper Enrico Albertosi? He didn't know how to defend the post, so did nothing.

The narrative of this goal was quickly erased as Rivera scored Italy's 4-3 winner less than 60 seconds later, but I've always loved this goal, the way the ball rolls crazily up and round the seam of the Azteca net while Albertosi rolls his eyes in despair at the same Gianni Rivera.

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.

UEFA Champions League Final Special - Wankdorf Stadium

In 1961 Benfica broke Real Madrid's monopoly on the Big Cup, beating Barcelona 3-2 at the Wankdorf Stadium in Berne, Switzerland.




Again, the method deployed to suspend the goal nets makes the Wankdorf instantly recognisable. But what to make of those ground supports? The picture below, from the 1954 World Cup final, shows the ground supports are solid and fixed to the posts and that the stanchions are effectively screwed in.

UEFA European Championships - West Germany 1988

After the second Mexico World Cup and FIFA decreeing goal nets everywhere would look the same, where better to hold the next major finals than West Germany, the home of the original Terminator?

The 1988 finals featured eight stadia, 15 games and Ronald Koeman wiping his arse with a German football shirt...

But the goal nets all looked the same.

UEFA European Championships - Belgium 1972

In the '72 final at the doomed Heysel stadium, West Germany swept three past the Soviet Union into the Wembley look-a-likes.




Of more interest to us devotees of the goalnets, check out the semis' sexy curves at -

Antwerp (Bosuil Stadium)



Brussels (Stade Emile Verse)

Goalnets and Ball Retention #5 - Two diving headers

Two remarkably similar goals which show box goalnets have been ruining great goals long before the present era.




Though the goals John Hewitt heads into look like they've been carried in from the training pitch, is it Wimmer's header for West Germany that looks like it's bounced off a wall in training?

Do the highly-strung nets in Dusseldorf ruin an awesome goal?

Goalnets, Ball Retention and the Aesthetic of Scoring Goals - Two Penalties

Two famous, decisive, near-identical penalties, 34 years apart.

One penalty is retained by the goalnets, while the other is repelled.



Is the Abreu penalty, which rebounds out before the goalkeeper has even got back to his feet, somehow lacking in the aesthetic of the decisive?

Does Panenka's kick, which floats past Sepp Maier and stays past Sepp Maier, better serve the occasion?

Which do you prefer?

World Cups - West Germany 1974

Before the violence and negativity of the 1986 and 1990 tournaments plunged the game to new depths of despair, the 1974 World Cup with its miserly 2.55 goals per game was considered the nadir of football history. At a distance of 35 years it can now be seen as the apotheosis of European football. Holland destroyed Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. West Germany became champions and the pace and tempo demonstrated by each became the new standard in world football

Matches were played at 9 different stadia but for the first time the on-field architecture was standardised.

So be they in Berlin

or Hamburg


the new box goalnets were the same - and would themselves go on to become the first class standard in world football.