Panini: Football 83

In 1983, Panini did for football players what Morecambe & Wise did for Angela Rippon. Where before there was a tidal wave of heads and faces, now there were legs everywhere - hundreds of them adorning virtually every sticker on every page. This was a new approach: out went the head-shots of previous collections and in came full-length shots of every player in full team kit. Amazing.

It's difficult to know what people thought of this change back in the day. Speaking personally, I remember being a little confused but ultimately rather pleased with the sight of whole players, rather than just their heads and shoulders. Now we could see a complete team kit, and though we might have seen glimpses of it on TV, it was now possible to gaze eternally at the entire ensemble in all its detailed glory.

The shift to tall, thin stickers from the squarer, more squat shape was a seismic event in the history of Panini's UK domestic football collections. It's never been repeated (not to my knowledge, at least) and people still talk about it to this day. The obvious nod towards the old cigarette cards of the early-20th Century would have pleased the nostalgia lovers no end, but younger collectors may have missed the chance to see what a player looked like close up. As it is, they weren't missing much. Who wants to see sensible haircuts and dead-behind-the-eyes facial expressions in fine detail anyway?

The change in shape of the stickers could have posed one or two problems where the foil badges were concerned. Your average club crest tends not to be tall and slim by its very nature (Birmingham City's being one of the few exceptions), so how could you fill up all the empty space going spare? One idea was provided on the first page of the album with the shiny versions of the logos for the Football League and Professional Footballers' Associations in England and Scotland.

What Panini did for the team badges, however, was rotate them 90 degrees and add a cartoon illustration of the team's nickname. My 12-year-old self thought this was magnificent; an informal adjunct to the ruthlessly slick content found elsewhere in the album. More often than not, the cartoons were literal (Ipswich had pennants sporting the word 'Blues') while others were common knowledge to the regular football fan anyway. It was when I got to the Scottish teams that I struggled, though. My knowledge of football north of the border was considerably patchier, so why were Dundee United represented by a bunch of fans being noisy?

The illustrations, despite not having the nicknames provided, were good fun and very nicely drawn. In fact the whole presentation of the foil badges was very well done indeed, from the scarf-like team name banner to the inclusion of the year the club was formed.

But back to those player pictures. Despite Panini's usual meticulous efforts to get all the required photographs in a single shoot, their high standards were sometimes compromised by the players themselves - or specifically their attempts to dress appropriately.

The classic example of this was found on pages 38 and 39 of the Football 83 album where you'd find several of Swansea City's fine band of men devoid of any decent footwear. First there was Colin Irwin, captain of the side and a former Liverpool defender and yet, despite having been given a football to hold onto, didn't have any boots to wear. The same can be said of Bob Latchford, one-time Everton great yet now, at the ripe old age of 32, forced to pose for a picture with only socks on his feet.

Alan Curtis notched up the embarrassment levels even further by wearing a full kit and carpet slippers on his feet. Little is known about the Great Swansea Shoe Shortage of 1983, but this album will give historians a valuable insight into those austere times.

Over on the West Ham pages, Phil Parkes only just avoided humiliation of a similar nature by donning what appeared to be a pair of desert boot/football trainer hybrids, but even with the right footwear, other perils were abound. Take, for instance, the gentleman in the dark jacket and grey flannels walking accidentally into shot behind Birmingham City' Pat Van Den Hauwe. All very unfortunate...

At least Football 83 had its fair share of curiosities throughout. There was Arsenal in their first ever modern, shiny kit complete with Dennis the Menace socks; Dave Sexton wearing that rarest of things - a Coventry 'Talbot' tracksuit top; and a host of future Premier League managers from Martin Jol to Alan Curbishley all looking fresh-faced and free of the stress that was to blight their post-playing careers.

After the previous year's collection, Panini decided not to bother with a section on Division Three and stayed with the tried-and-trusted 'badge and team pic' format for the Division Two teams. As for the Scottish Premier Division teams, there were no full-length pictures for their players. Yet again, they were two to a sticker (head shots only), but as with the English First Division teams, there was room for an extra player on the page thanks to some skilful rejigging of the layout.

Finally, on the last seven pages of the album, we were treated to one of the more inventive and interesting features from Panini's rich canon. 'Laws of the Game' made great use of the longer-shaped stickers by giving us pictures explaining each of the laws of Football. Accompanied by full text descriptions of everything from the correct way players should be dressed to the offside rule, this was a genuinely useful and satisfying addition to the album - not least because of the 'Boys Own' style of illustration used on each of the pictures.

And that was that - a great end to a very good collection filled with new ideas that kept our love for Panini well and truly alive. But could it last, and what would the thousands of loyal Panini sticker collectors expect in 1984? All would soon be revealed...

-- Chris Oakley

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Heads Up (Soccer Football), Vectrex, 1983

Once upon a time, arcade games ruled the Earth. Space Invaders, PacMan, Frogger - these titles and many more cropped up everywhere from your local pub to the fish-and-chip shop at the end of your road. Bright colours, synthesised music and quirky sound effects were the alluring qualities that invited you to insert a 10p coin and immerse yourself in an alternative reality.

The explosion in the popularity of video games was extraordinary. New home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the CBS ColecoVision quickly appeared and merely had to be hooked up to a TV to enjoy an arcade experience of sorts, but one system went even further with a portable all-in-one system that had its own TV built in.

The Vectrex console was originally launched by American company GCE in 1982, but Milton Bradley (makers of children's games such as Operation, Guess Who? and Twister) soon took over the running of GCE and consequently made the games system its own.

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New Kits for '83/'84

A new football season is almost upon us once again, but as the world fawns and coos at the sight of kits being launched for 2013/14, let's go back 30 years to see what English football fans had to look forward to in 1983/84...

As Canon make history by becoming the first sponsors of the Football League, many First Division teams have a wide range of new kit designs ready to burst onto the scene during the coming season. First of all, Arsenal's much disliked green-and-navy-blue away kit has been ditched, the Highbury club returning to a familiar yellow and blue combination. The kit is made by Umbro and features pale yellow shadow stripes and navy blue shorts with red trim.

Aston Villa, meanwhile have two new kits for home and away, manufactured by Le Coq Sportif. Gone are Villa's traditional light blue sleeves and white shorts - they're replaced by two light blue side panels on the shirt and claret shorts. The away kit is now all white and the shirt features thin claret and warm yellow horizontal stripes.

Birmingham City have added a third kit to their range. In addition to the blue and white home strip and the reversed away strip, Patrick have applied the same styling to an all red version. Twenty-five miles due east, Coventry City have finally abandoned their infamous 'Talbot' kits (along with the alternatives to be worn on TV only) having formed a new partnership with Umbro. The new home and away outfits have two-tone shadow stripes flanked by dark blue pinstripes, the home version being in sky blue as usual while yellow is now Coventry's away colour rather than red. Tallon replace Talbot as the club's main shirt sponsor.

Heading away from Umbro are Everton. They've teamed up with Le Coq Sportif for the coming season and have three kits all using the same design as that employed for Aston Villa's home outfit. Featuring a triangular inset below the neck and a pair of double stripes on the socks, Everton have elected for grey and blue away kit and a more familiar yellow and blue colour scheme on their third kit.

Leicester City and Notts County have not only both switched to Admiral as their new kit manufacturer but have also chosen near identical away kits. The home and away outfits for both clubs use the same 'double pinstripe' motif but it's the dark green and amber versions that Leicester and Notts County will wear for away games. The only difference between the two is in the socks - Leicester's will be green, County's will be amber.

At home, Leicester retain their familiar blue shirts and white shorts, but Notts County fans are in for a surprise. For the first time in 30 years, the black and white stripes have been replaced with a predominantly white shirt - something that will no doubt prove controversial among County's die hard supporters.

Less controversial are the new QPR home and away kits for this season. At Loftus Road, Rangers continue to wear their famous blue and white hoops, but the new Adidas shirts now have a subtle red horizontal pinstripe dividing the two colours. Away from home, QPR welcome some matching hooped shirts in red and black but without the pinstripes. Guinness also now featured as QPRs first shirt sponsors.

Like Notts County, Stoke City may also be expecting a few letters of complaint as they, too, have done away with their traditional stripes. Umbro's new home shirts for The Potters have a white body and red sleeves with red pinstripes replacing the old thick red stripes on the chest. For away games, Stoke have a new two-tone blue strip that follows the same template as their home equivalent.

Sunderland, however, have returned to their roots after two years wearing a controversial kit of their own. Le Coq Sportif's 'double pinstripe' kits lasted two years but have now been replaced with a set of three provided by American sportswear company Nike. This is Nike's first official contract with an English team and Sunderland fans will be pleased with their decision to reinstate the thick red and white stripes for home matches. Away from home, the Roker Park club can choose between a sky blue kit with dark blue sleeves and horizontal pinstripes or a pale yellow outfit with navy blue trim.

Finally to West Ham where Adidas have added a white collar, white cuffs and a sky blue horizontal band to the home shirt, while The Hammers' white away shirt now includes sky blue pinstripes. Both shirts have a simple badge of crossed hammers instead of the original club crest and local company Avco Trust now appear as West Ham's first shirt sponsors.

We look forward to seeing them all during the coming season.

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Retro Random Video: Man United NOT appearing on Top of the Pops

We've seen it so often before, the sight of a football team appearing on Top of the Pops, singing (or rather 'miming') badly to their latest chart hit (if indeed 'hit' is the word we're looking for there).

But in 1983 there was one occasion when a football team were due to appear in the BBC studios to perform their song but didn't. This was because Manchester United, the team in question, were rendered unavailable on account of their participation in the 1983 FA Cup Final replay at Wembley against Brighton & Hove Albion.

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The News of the World Football Annual 1983/84

The arrival of the 1983/84 season prompted many to wonder how far football had fallen in recent times. The game had lost its allure and was in something of a tailspin but The News of the World Football Annual, through its anecdotal ponderings, acknowledged this for the ages and tried to offer some cause for hope at the start of a landmark campaign.

The season began with a new name for an old competition. The Football League was now known as the Canon League. According to the Annual, an announcement was made on May 5 1983 that a deal had been struck with the Japanese camera and business equipment maker to the tune of £3.2 million, lasting three years.

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Great Tracksuits of Our Time: No.6

The sixth installment in our 'Great Tracksuits' series comes courtesy of Sam Swaffield, co-editor of The Seagull Love Review. A devout Brighton fan, Sam's keen to draw our attention to the apparel worn by his team during one of the high points of their history...

"As a kid growing up in the 90's, all I'd known was Albion kits manufactured by highly suspicious brands. The likes of Ribiero, Super League and Sports Express all had a shot at the stripes, and none of them are in business today.

The 80's though, as we all know, was a golden era. Our Adidas days, between '79 and '86, are viewed by my generation as some sort of kit utopia, where the historic stripes were dropped for an all royal blue dream, the West Germans no doubt unequivical over the phone to Hove; "For you Brighton und Hove Albion, ze stripes are over".

Pictures of the kits are easy to find. The British Caledonian emblazoned sheen of the '80 shirt is a classic, and the red Nobo away shirt of '86 is definitely worth a look. For what I like to call 'Leisure Wear' though, it is a different story.

Official team snaps from '82 show a classic Adidas 2-piece tracky; coaching staff in royal blue trousers and body with white sleeves and customary box fresh Copa Mundials.

For the FA Cup Final in '83 however, Adidas went into overdrive. First a new kit just for the Final (a cotton number with red and white pinstripes, danke schön), and then a new tracksuit for the journey to the team hotel and subsequent round of golf. This classic Albion apparel, a set of which I've never seen apart from in the video below, scrapped the white sleeves for dashing white and red go-faster stripes across the chest and embroidered FA Cup Finallist detail under the badge.


As Albion kit goes, this is the pinnacle. If I had one, I, too, would wear it with royal blue suede Sambas, and saunter around Brighton, king of sports casual, seagull savant, pride of Sussex.

It's worth noting in the video Chris Ramsey looking like Marvin Gaye, Jimmy Case rejecting Adidias and dressing like a crap Scouse Bruce Springsteen, and David Icke, dodging the lizard people, to actually present the piece. Happy days indeed."

Our grateful thanks go to Sam Swaffield for telling us about his 'Great Tracksuit', and don't forget, we'd love you to do the same by dropping us a line. Email us at admin [at] thefootballadmin [dot] com with all your details, and you, too, could see your words appearing in a future 'Great Tracksuits of Our Time' article!

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Subbuteo poster, 1983

Nothing could be more guaranteed to brighten up a young child’s bedroom wall than a Subbuteo poster. It’s been proven scientifically, probably. By the time this masterpiece came out in 1983, the masters of the flick-to-kick revolution had been annually publishing posters and catalogues for decades, each with its own distinctive graphics and identity.

The premise, as ever, was a simple one: to show off the myriad teams and accessories available to buy for the avid collector. Here, those same teams could be seen surrounding the big football motif; row upon row of colourful sporting soldiers, marching (as best they could when their feet were glued to a hemisphere) across this parade of printed perfection.

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Football Monthly (November 1983)

The perm or the straight-cut?  This was the question perplexing grown-up kids and young adults alike in February 1983 when they bought the latest issue of Football Monthly.

The subject, Bryan Robson, was seen on the front cover and on page two, the latter being an advert for New Balance boots. The Manchester United and England star claimed he’d helped the company to “shape, test and refine” their boots under every possible playing condition - “including World Cup competition.” Judging by the picture on page one, he’d had also had a similar involvement with the production of hair-straightening equipment too.

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World Soccer: June 1983

SV Hamburg: champions of Europe. That statement might jar your sense of reality unless you transport yourself back to June 1983 when World Soccer reported on the European Cup Final.

The reigning Bundesliga titleholders had out-thought and outplayed their opponents, Juventus, to win 1-0 in Athens, the only goal of the game scored by current Wolfsburg manager Felix Magath. Keir Radnedge described in detail how the Italian outfit had been found wanting in the grand finale, not helped by the new signings brought in to improve the Turin club.

“One year ago, their midfield was the best organised in Calcio” said Radnedge, yet Liam Brady had been ousted from the team in favour of Michel Platini and Zbigniew Boniek -  initially to little effect. The two stars of the 1982 World Cup struggled to adapt to life at the Stadio Comunale and were soon campaigning for a change in team tactics. Though that would ultimately reap its rewards, the 1983 European Cup Final arrived too soon for them to play at their best as Juventus were silenced by the managerial brain of Hamburg boss Ernst Happel.

Happel, leader of the Dutch side that almost reached the 1978 World Cup semi-finals, overcame the absence of one or two key players to create a masterplan which frustrated the Turin side. Players such as Jürgen Milewski, Horst Hrubesch and Wolfgang Rolff were allowed the space and freedom to switch positions, run at the Juventus defence and generally cause panic while their opponents stuck rigidly to their positional setup.



Radnedge summed up the Italians’ enforced tactical inferiority concisely: “Magath’s early goal meant that for Juventus the age-old Italian tactic of defend and strike on the counter-attack was useless. They had to come forward, and they didn’t seem to know how.”

The Road to Mexico

Sharing the opening page of World Soccer in June 1983 was the news that FIFA had unanimously chosen Mexico as hosts of the 1986 World Cup Finals. FIFA had originally given the hosting rights to Colombia as far back as 1974, but the South American country had stepped down in 1982, admitting they couldn't afford to stage the event.

Mexico ultimately won the bid to be the 1986 hosts when the world governing body’s executive committee met in Stockholm. Canada and the United States had also submitted bids, the latter ruffling a few feathers by enlisting Pele, Henry Kissinger and Franz Beckenbauer for their presentation.

As it is, FIFA president Joao Havelange needed little persuasion in awarding Mexico its second World Cup Finals, but some were surprised. The Brazilian had seen fit to only send an investigative commission to Mexico, dismissing the other two bids without further consideration. “Canada and the United States failed to reply to some important questions” said Havelange. “We could not keep on postponing the decision.”

Brian Glanville, writing in his column on page 20, was outraged for different reasons. He believed the 1986 World Cup should have gone to Brazil. Glanville felt that a Brazilian bid was doomed to fail because of the inharmonious relationship between Havelange and Giulite Coutinho, president of the Brazilian Soccer Confederation. He cited Don Balon who claimed the FIFA president had allegedly made a trip to Mexico City in the private jet of Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, millionaire chief executive of the TV chain Televisa. Hardly conclusive proof of underhandedness, but worth thinking about, claimed Glanville.

Club clash

Elsewhere in his column, Brian Glanville commented on Robert Maxwell’s on-going attempts to merge Oxford United and Reading into a new club, Thames Valley Royals. Glanville stood with both feet firmly in the anti-merger camp, saying “At the time of writing, it appeared the opposition to the merger had but modest chance of success, but I must say I wish it no success at all.”

Assessing Maxwell’s motives for combining the two clubs at a new location in Didcot, he went on to say: “When did families, per se, ever go to watch a game en masse in Britain? And why should they start now, just because Robert Maxwell dumps a leisure centre in the middle of the Thames Valley, with its egregious population of 1.8 million?”

Both sets of fans made their opinions known in the form of protests, while Maxwell threatened to close down Oxford United if the merger didn’t go ahead. It’s just as well he didn’t: Oxford United won the Division Three championship the following season, reached Division One in 1985 and would have played in the UEFA Cup in the 1986/87 season were it not for the ‘Heysel’ ban on English clubs in European competition.

Finals galore

As well as the European Cup, the finals of the European Cup-Winners’ Cup, the UEFA Cup and the FA Cup also featured heavily in this issue. For Alex Ferguson, there was the chance to bask in the glory of a 2-1 extra time win over Real Madrid in the Cup-Winners’ Cup Final.

On a bleak, rain-soaked night in Gothenburg, Eric Black and John Hewitt scored the goals to maintain a seventh consecutive season in which a British team had won a European trophy. “This is the greatest moment of my life” said Ferguson. “It was a magnificent performance in the conditions and I thought we thoroughly deserved victory.”

The two-legged UEFA Cup Final was won by Anderlecht, 2-1 on aggregate over Sven-Göran Eriksson’s Benfica. The Belgian side had become a force to be reckoned with in European football, appearing in the European Cup-Winners’ Cup Finals of 1976, 1977 and 1978, winning the first and last of those. Here, under the managerial leadership of legendary Belgian midfielder Paul Van Himst, they travelled to the second leg in Lisbon with a 1-0 lead from the first match in Brussels.

Though Benfica scored first through a 32nd-minute goal by Han Shéu, they relaxed too much, allowing Anderlecht to score a valuable equaliser six minutes later through Juan Lozano. The goal appeared to knock the wind out of Benfica’s sails, thus allowing the Belgians to comfortably stay on top in the second half and finally win the trophy.

On the domestic front, Manchester United needed a replay to overcome Brighton and Hove Albion in the FA Cup Final having drawn 2-2 at the first time of asking.

In the second match five days later, Brighton played well for the first 25 minutes before United struck four times – twice through Bryan Robson – to seal the victory. It was Man United’s first major success for six years and, as Paul Parish reported, spectators “would have fonder memories of Wembley’s excitement than the slide-rule boredom produced in Athens [in the European Cup Final].”



England hosts UEFA U-18 tournament

Staying on English soil, Keir Radnedge reported on a French victory over Czechoslovakia in the UEFA European Youth Championship Final held at White Hart Lane. World Soccer’s Associate Editor explained how the FA had made a bad job of organising the event, attracting only 30,000 spectators in total across the 28 matches. “In West Germany and Switzerland in the past” said Radnedge, “large crowds have been roped in by the simple expedient of giving away thousands of free tickets in local schools.” Not here and not back then, as it turned out, although the FA would soon catch on in a bid to fill Wembley Stadium more often in future.

Graham Taylor’s England side eventually finished third in the tournament, beating Italy 4-2 on penalties at Watford’s Vicarage Road ground. Taylor felt that the Italians were the best side in the tournament, but Keir Radnedge reserved a more critical view:

“The big disappointment was centre forward Roberto Mancini, the 18-year-old who cost Sampdoria £1.2 million a year ago. Apart from looking a little heavy for his height, he gave a distinct impression of a man who found this tournament too far beneath him after the hurly-burly of calcio.” Whatever happened to him, I wonder?

Transfer talk

With the domestic season over, World Soccer considered the rising stardom of Celtic’s 21-year-old striker Charlie Nicholas. The Glasgow-born footballer joined the Parkhead club in 1980 and had averaged better than one goal every two games by the time this issue had been published.

Reporter Alex Gordon was quick to praise the goal-scoring talents of Nicholas, giving a timely forecast about where his immediate future may lie. “All the speculation of his joining Liverpool/Spurs/Manchester United/Aston Villa/Real Madrid/SV Hamburg/Uncle Tom Cobbley United hasn’t sidetracked this amazingly mature and extremely popular young man.”

As it is, Charlie Nicholas left Celtic only days after this article reached the news-stands, but the fact that he was heading for Arsenal had not been so well predicted. The Scotland international apparently had a free choice of contracts from many of Europe’s top clubs. Liverpool, however, were probably the least likely club to snap up the future Sky Sports pundit. It was rumoured they were about to table a ‘measly’ £1 million bid for Nicholas AND Celtic’s star midfielder, Paul McStay. Hardly a surprise, then, that ‘Champagne Charlie’ never got to grace the pitch at Anfield…

Back page

Finally, with all the talk of Anderlecht doing so well throughout World Soccer’s pages, it was apt that the back cover depicted Ludo Coeck, the skilful Belgian midfielder who in 1983 moved from Les Mauves et Blancs to Internazionale.

Coeck made nearly 300 appearances for Anderlecht and enjoyed a 10-year-spell in the Belgian national team, scoring once in his side’s 10-1 win over El Salvador in the 1982 World Cup.

Unfortunately the move to Inter wasn’t a successful one for him and after a brief switch to Ascoli he returned to Belgium by signing for Molenbeek in 1985. Tragically, Ludo Coeck’s life was cut short when, at the age of only 30, his car crashed through roadside barriers near the Belgian town of Rumst. He died in hospital two days later, only two years after this edition of World Soccer was published.

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Evening Standard London 5-a-Sides, 1983

You don't see much indoor football on TV these days, and when you do, it's usually the Masters series in which one-time great players shake off their walking frames and career-threatening injuries to entertain a provincial crowd of a few hundred people.

Once upon a time, however, people in the Thames TV area could look forward to the annual treat of the Evening Standard London 5-a-Side tournament at Wembley Arena. Here, the other end of the football spectrum fell under the spotlight, namely those players trying to break into the first team at any number of clubs around the capital.

Here's a chance to see some of the action from the 1983 tournament featuring eventual winners Millwall. Keep your eye open for a future England team physio in goal for Arsenal, a legendary England striker in the making for The Lions and the scorer of the opening goal for The Gunners who, little did we know it, had a glittering future in club management ahead of him...

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