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While searching for the first night game in Football League history, I came across this interesting website:

While this website offers an interesting description of the game, there are a few notes I should make.

First of all, the match wasn’t exactly all that heavily hyped. I was able to find a few small references to it in passing on the day of the match:

Of course, with the Football League back to normal, the erstwhile popularity of women’s football seems to have come to an end.

The other thing is that the details of the match really aren’t clear. Some papers claimed the crowd was as large as 20,000:

Others claimed there were only 10,000 attendees:

In fact, even the most detailed article I could find was a bit light on the details:

The technology wasn’t quite there yet, but it’s interesting to see that they were trying.

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It’s hard to believe, but there was a time when football was not played with goal nets.

I imagine that it was similar to the way American football used to be played. The ball would be kicked into the stands, the crowd would have to throw or punch the ball back to the field, and referees would have to guess as to whether a goal was actually scored or not.

The big question, though, is when the nets first came about.

I was under the impression that they were first used for a North-South trial match on January 17, 1891:

The problem, though, is that the date of this friendly is clearly wrong. January 17, 1891 was a Saturday, and newspapers confirm that regular league matches were played that day.

Actually, that North - South trial match was held on January 12, a Monday:

It seems that the goal nets were an instant hit:

And it turns out that Simon Inglis’ book Football Grounds of Britain confirms that January 12, 1891 is the correct date:

While it took 13 more months for full Football Association sanction for the goal nets, it’s clear that they were used in other matches in early 1891. For example:

I’m not certain about the “earlier trials in Liverpool” mentioned in the book. That might take a bit more digging.

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As you might already know, plans are underway in Manchester to build a new 100,000 seat stadium to replace Old Trafford.

This got me curious. What was it that caused Manchester United to move to Old Trafford in the first place?

Well, the history books will tell you that it came as a result of the 1909 FA Cup victory.

This was United’s first FA Cup — and it came in the glory days of pre-war football reporting. Here’s a quick glimpse at some of the original coverage:

Journalism has never been the same since the war.

Old Trafford, of course, was originally the sight of a cricket ground that dates back to 1857. Most vintage newspaper searches for Old Trafford result in cricket articles:

I haven’t been able to find any articles about the new football grounds that predate this one from July 1, 1909:

But, of course, this article insinuates that the reader already knows about plans to build a new stadium in Old Trafford. My guess is that the newspaper database I have access to is incomplete.

The other part that we forget about these days is that the construction was beset by delays. Not only was the stadium not ready for October, but it was still facing delays in November:

Of course, it wasn’t until February 19, 1910 that Old Trafford was officially opened:

The result, however, was a 4-3 victory for Liverpool:

And so it was.

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As an ignorant American, I find myself oddly fascinated with the history of the defunct North American Soccer League.

If you don’t know, the NASL was kind of the predecessor of today’s MLS. I should add an emphasis on “kind of.” The NASL was totally crazy, marked by owners who were willing to spend silly amounts of money on top European, Central American, and South American stars — largely money that they didn’t actually have.

In addition to the rules modifications that made the NASL famous, another “innovation” was broadcasting games live. Some (though not all) NASL teams had local television broadcasting deals that allowed for certain games to be broadcast live. In fact, if you have time you can go back and watch classic matches on YouTube — or you can watch summaries, such as this one I made a few months back:

The thing here that puzzles me the most, though, is that The Football League in England didn’t offer live broadcasts at the time. In fact, my understanding is that the only live matches were international matches and certain cup finals. As many of you already know, it wasn’t until 1983 that The Football League finally offered live broadcasts — and even then it was only a handful of games a year.

Part of me wonders if the lack of popularity that the NASL faced wasn’t at least in part due to the nature of those live broadcasts. If you compare a live NASL broadcast from, say, 1977 with an old recording of Match of the Day or something similar, you’ll notice right away that the more polished highlight broadcast had better replays, an emphasis on the action, and was missing anything that was even remotely boring.

In fact, the real problem with those old NASL broadcasts is that they kept cutting to commercials. American television had at the time a fascination with pushing out commercial breaks once every 7 or 8 minutes or so, and the concept of 45 minutes of a single program without interruptions was heresay. It’s pretty easy to find NASL broadcasts where the game cut away right before a big save, or even an important goal.

I wonder what might have happened if the NASL had restricted live broadcasts in those early years, sticking instead with the small documentary style seen in Match of the Day or the NFL’s Game of the Week. At the very least, it would have made for a much more compelling package. Fun as it might be, there’s only so much live footage from awkward angles and cameras that don’t move in time that I can stand.

What do you think?

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The trouble started on April 2, 1921.

Stockport County were on their way out of the second division. They were last in the division and had no prospects for the future:

Stockport County hosted Sheffield Wednesday that day, and managed to lose 1-0:

What the figures don’t tell you, however, is the story behind the match. I had to look a few days ahead to find a description:

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any other contemporary reports of the match. However, the long term impacts were pretty severe. The Football Association decided to perform an inquiry, which it did pretty frequently back in those days, and ruled that all matches at Edgeley Park would be suspended until September 12:

Now, if you’re an ignorant foreigner like me and are unfamiliar with the geography of England, you probably don’t know that Stockport is relatively close to Manchester — only about 8 miles southeast of the city, and considered part of Greater Manchester.

As a result, it probably didn’t cause a lot of people to bat their eyes when Stockport’s final Division 2 match in 1921 was moved to Old Trafford. In fact, the game was scheduled for an unusually late 6:30 PM kickoff on Saturday evening, scheduled for after the conclusion of the Derby County - Manchester United match:

The late kickoff, of course, came because Manchester United’s final home game started at 3 PM, the traditional starting time.

In the end, only about 8,000 people were present in cavernous Old Trafford to see lackluster Manchester United finish off its season:

Stockport County, meanwhile, sealed their fate by drawing 0-0 with Leicester City:

Though the official paid attendance was famously only 13 — a fact repeated in every history of Old Trafford — the truth is that a number of United fans stayed on to watch the second game for free. Some sources say there were about a thousand:

Others say 2,000, which is the figure you’re more likely to see in articles about this game:

Either way, that’s the inside story of a rare multi-team doubleheader at Old Trafford — a match famous for only attracting 13 paid customers.

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This is one of my favorite sports books:

It’s a bit dated. The paperback copy I have has a copyright date of 1985, and I also have access to a scanned version from 1996.

Of course, anything that predates the Taylor Report is a bit more interesting to me.

I grew up a typical baseball fan in the United States. As a result, I’ve always had a sort of romantic fascination with old ballparks — the structures, the odd ways that they fit into the neighborhood, and the history.

I’m not sure if the same fascination exists in the United Kingdom. To find out, I’m going to go through this book one section at a time, and will create posts about each of the old stadiums.

We’ll dive into old newspapers. We’ll look at websites, and we’ll look for video footage on YouTube. We’ll see what we can find, and we’ll see if we can’t turn this into an interesting series.

So stick around! It should be fun.

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I’ve spent a bit of time talking about the wild and crazy world of MLS salary caps. It’s a bit technical, I know. However, if we keep in mind the reason why those salary caps exist in the first place, we probably have a better gauge of just how effective those rules really are.

The NASL had a big problem in the 1970s. It tried to grow too fast.

It’s obvious when you look back. In 1977, the league looked like this:

There were 18 teams in all, located mostly in coastal cities.

Travel was obviously a concern, especially for teams in the Midwest and Southeast. The NASL had a strong following in the Pacific Northwest, and the cities of Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland remain strongholds of American soccer to this day. However, southern California was always indifferent to the league, and teams like the Washington Diplomats had to rely heavily on gimmicks just to get fans to the park.

The average attendance was a little over 13,500. That’s not bad — but, then again, a good percentage of these teams played in stadiums that seated over 50,000.

Now take a look at the league in 1978:

That’s right. In addition to continuing to pay large salaries to European stars in their twilight years, the NASL actually expanded in 1978. The league added a whopping 6 teams that year to get to 24.

Attendance dropped to just over 13,000 per game. It turns out that California really wasn’t ready to support 5 teams, and that Tulsa and Houston were lukewarm to the league at best.

The next major change came in 1981, by which time three teams had folded. This included the Washington Diplomats. The inability of the league to maintain a competitive team in the nation’s capital was certainly a symbol of the decline to come.

This is what things looked like in 1981:

And it went downhill from there.

Despite drawing more fans per game in 1981, the league was in freefall. Salaries were out of control, and teams started having a hard time making payroll.

By 1983, things had gotten ridiculous:

Now, what you’ll notice in this article is that the problem wasn’t just expensive player salaries. It was a combination the following factors:

• Teams that never made a profit

• Recognizable teams folding

• Lack of a national television contract

• Direct competition from the Major Indoor Soccer League (which prompted the NASL to form its own indoor league — a move that looks insane in hindsight)

• Extremely uneven team salaries, leading to a lack of competitive balance

• The ridiculous Team America experiment

• The Unitd States missing out on the 1986 World Cup (not 1984, as stated in the article)

And then you look at the actual payroll.

So how is the MLS doing on these fronts?

Well, we know that the MLS has stringent rules in place to keep salaries under control. As we’ve discussed, however, the teams can’t seem to help themselves, and have a tendency to spend much more money than they have.

This leads to interesting observations:

• According to this slightly dated chart, most teams still are not making a profit. Real Salt Lake, for example, only broke even in 2022 — about a decade and a half after it was founded.

• Three teams have folded, one of which was a charter member of the league

• A television deal with Apple TV, which might be risky considering one has to buy into the Apple ecosystem to have access

• No major competition from other American soccer leagues, thanks in large part to the aggressive way the MLS maintains its monopoly

• Competitive balance issues, most notably involving Inter Miami — issues that arise because of the fundamentally broken Designated Player system

However, there is no awful Team America experiment (yet, at least), and the United States will host the 2026 World Cup — albeit together with Canada and Mexico. This, of course, presupposes that politics in the United States don’t derail all cooperation with Canada and Mexico, which is still a real possibility. At the moment, it seems that President Trump is in favor of the World Cup arrangement, though this might change.

Though the MLS has outlived the NASL, I don’t see a lot of evidence that its aggressive policies have actually absolved it from the sins of its ancestor organization. If you ask me, it looks like more of the same.

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Have you ever wondered why Major League Soccer stadiums are so small?

It seems kind of odd if you look back at history. Back in the late 1970s, attendance at NASL matches was actually pretty high. Take 1978, for example:

With an average home attendance of over 47,000, the New York Cosmos were one of the biggest drawing clubs in the world. And the Minnesota Kicks drew quite a few people at old Metropolitan Stadium.

In contrast, look at the current list of the largest MLS stadiums:

Note, though that 3 of the top 6 are multipurpose stadiums. If we look at only the “soccer-specific stadiums” we get a different picture:

So what’s going on? Was the NASL just that much more popular than the MLS? Or is something else happening?

Well, we’ve got to start with the difference between stadium culture in the United States and in England (as well as the rest of Europe).

Most professional level stadiums in the United States were baseball stadiums. For years, professional football teams played in local major league baseball stadiums during the winter.

There were stadiums designed specifically for American football, though these tended to be college football stadiums. Some of them, such as the Los Angeles Coliseum, are absolutely huge, and are still in use today.

Now, the beginnings of the NASL coincided with an era of building multipurpose stadiums. We tend to think of those as “cookie cutter” stadiums. Many of them were round in shape, and were designed to be less than perfect places to watch either baseball or American football.

Most of these stadiums were built by local governments, not by individual teams. The idea was to have a central location where most major local professional sports could be watched. In theory, the cities would benefit from a percentage of the gate receipts, though this was not always the case in practice.

This is a pretty big contrast to the history of stadiums in England, most of which were owned by local clubs. While the classic baseball stadiums rotted and fell into disrepair at a rate similar to the English stadiums, they were for the most part abandoned in the 1950s.

In fact — the abandonment of those old stadiums for new municipality-built arenas came about precisely because of the monopolistic nature of American sports leagues.

Teams could — and did — threaten their cities to move if they weren’t given new stadiums and sweetheart deals. Some teams did move to greener pastures in the end, such as the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. Once the cities realized that the teams (and leagues) were serious, these publicly financed cookie cutter stadiums became reality.

The vast majority of NASL teams played in multipurpose facilities.

A lot of those stadiums had artificial turf. Many of them had tremendous maximum capacities for soccer. And most of them wound up being empty.

Even Giants Stadium, home to the famous New York Cosmos, often wasn’t sold out. In fact, with a maximum capacity of over 80,000, those impressive crowds of 47,000 or more meant that over 2/3 of the stadium was empty.

And it’s not like the Cosmos were raking in the cash, either. A lower bowl seat to an October 1 exhibition game against Santos — Pele’s last game — sold for $6:

Interestingly a mezzanine seat to the same match was more expensive:

This might be because the mezzanine view was better than the lower bowl view.

Meanwhile, third deck seating was likely even less expensive. This stub is from 1980, but it gives you an idea:

It’s also not exactly clear how much of the attendance at these matches came from free tickets. If you remember my brief article on the extremely obscure Utah Golden Strikers of the ASL, reports had it that their large first match attendance was mostly because the team gave away a ton of tickets:

Now, most soccer fans will tell you that MLS stadiums offer nice sight lines and an intimate atmosphere. They do, as a matter of fact — at least they are superior to watching a game in a converted American football stadium.

However, the truth is that the current stadiums are smaller because that is precisely where the demand for the sport seems to be at.

If that demand rises — and I’m sure it will — we may eventually see the day when MLS stadiums start hitting capacities of 50,000 or more.

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I’ve had money on the mind lately.

We looked a few days ago at how the structure of Major League Soccer works. I naturally was interested in looking at how the financial structure of its precursor, the North American Soccer League, worked.

The NASL was a mess, as many of you know. However, its underlying structure was based on the same National League (baseball) principles that the MLS is based on.

When you’ve got a system that is monopolistic and favors the owners by its very nature, of course, you wind up with trouble when the players try to unionize.

And that is precisely what happened in the summer of 1977:

Why unionize? Well, it turns out that the major foreign players were making huge salaries at the time, while domestic players were making very small salaries.

Now, the biggest problem that the union had with the NASL was not salary discrepancies — not at first, at least. The biggest problem was a lack of union recognition on the part of the owners.

No recognition meant no collective bargaining agreement — and that meant that there was absolutely nothing the players could do about the salary inequities.

And that lack of recognition led in the end to a player’s strike, which began on April 13, 1979.

The players weren’t exactly in solidarity with each other, by the way. You can see that in this Washington Post article:

Now, as you can imagine, the threat of domestic players striking did not exactly fill the owners with fear. And that lack of solidarity led to a disaster.

From The Philly Soccer Page comes this account — the best one I’ve seen:

In the end, the issue was never resolved. The NASL went out of business before it could reach a resolution with the players:

Now, the truth is that the NASL did not fold because of the players strike. Rather, it folded because ownership was unable to resist the temptation to spend money it did not have on big name players from abroad — many of whom were already past their primes. The constant roster turnovers meant that fans couldn’t identify with local teams, and, in retrospect, it’s clear that the NASL was in freefall as early as 1981.

But it’s interesting to see just how little power the players had in the NASL. And it makes for an interesting comparison with the current MLS.

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After looking at some of the A&BC Gum sets, I was curious about what the most expensive football card of all time is.

It’s actually not all that surprising.

I suppose this technically counts as a Pele “rookie card,” though the truth is that rookie cards don’t seem to make a huge difference in the limited football card market.

And, as you can see, this card is printed in Swedish.

Alifabolaget produced numerous card sets throughout the years, ranging from a set of cards promoting the 1936 Berlin Olympics to numerous cards commemorating Disney movies and the like.

This set of 35 international footballers was printed in 1958, and commemorated Sweden hosting the World Cup that year. The cards were numbered between 615 and 650, and are extremely scarce. Word has it that only 167 copies of this Pele card have been identified.

More information is available on this excellent page.

Word has it that a copy of this card recently sold for about $1.2 million. That might seem high to you, but it’s not all that high in the world of high end sports cards — especially for a card that has under 200 known copies worldwide.

In other words — that $1.2 million price tag might be a bargain.

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This set really is a treat to look at. I’d argue that this is one of the most pleasing designs in the entire history of sports cards.

Just take a look at some of these cards:

As was the case with the two earlier A&BC sets, these cards are relatively inexpensive. You just don’t see deals like this for American sports cards anymore:

The 1960-61 set is actually smaller than the two earlier releases, at only 84 total cards. As was the case in 1958-59 and 1959-60, the sets were sold in two varieties of packs: a single card for 1d or 4 cards for 3d (bubble gum included).

I’m still amazed at how inexpensive these sets are.

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As I’ve spent time watching old NASL games, I’ve always been curious about the phenomenon of football on artificial turf.

I grew up watching sports on artificial turf, of course. Most of the baseball and American football I grew up watching on television in the late 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s was played on artificial turf. Since I was just a kid, I was largely sheltered from the debates that took place at the time over whether the hard stuff contributed to injuries or, worse yet, completely changed the nature of the sports.

In hindsight, I can see the issues. NASL matches, for example, were characterized in large part by a lack of sliding tackles. The artificial pitch played a lot more true and predictable than the bumps and mud common on English pitches at the time, sure. However, the game looked sterile and somewhat foreign, as if the players were on a different planet.

Anyway, as you may know, QPR decided in early 1981 to abandon its muddy pitch in favor of an artificial solution.

The earliest mention of this I could find comes from March 1981:

The idea of synthetic turf made in 1981 providing “an identical feel to playing on natural grass” is hilarious. I suppose that it was probably more forgiving than, say, the infamous concrete artificial turf at Giants Stadium. However, there is simply no way that the turf felt anything like real grass, no matter what the salesmen said.

And, as it turns out, permission did come from the Football League just a few weeks later.

Now, the idea that QPR was somehow ahead of the curve is hilarious in hindsight. In fact, less than 15 years following this announcement, the artificial turf of United States stadiums was forcibly replaced by all grass turfs for the World Cup.

In other words — not all of those new fangled ideas are likely to stick in the long run.

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This set apparently marks the beginning of A&BC’s direct relationship with Topps.

You can see that on the wrapper, apparently. Sadly, the fine print is not legible in this scan:

I unfortunately have not been able to find any high resolution scans of the wrappers, nor have I found any unopened packs. As is the case with other old football sets, it seems that most collectors ignore this one.

Now, if you’re an ignorant American like I am and wonder what in the world “3D” and “1D” stand for, read up on the old £sd system.

Basically, “d” stood for pence (which is the plural of “penny”). “S” was a shilling, and “£” stood for pounds, as it does today. You had 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound, which meant you had 240 pence to a pound.

At the time these cards were sold, there were also farthings; those continued until December 31, 1960. There were 4 farthings to a pence, or a whopping 960 farthings to a pound.

The days before decimilisation were a math teacher’s dream. Prices would be written something like “19/11 3⁄4,” the equivalent of the modern £0.99 — and somewhat similar to the $0.99 we Americans are familiar with. The 3/4 in that price meant 3 farthings; basically, this product was 1 farthing short of a pound.

I can only imagine how frustratingly complicated this was for visitors to the United Kingdom.

Sadly, the quirkiness of the British system eventually gave way to pressure from the continent on Decimal Day in February 1971. What was once common sense to anybody living in the country now became an odd historic relic of the way things once were.

Anyway, at 1d for 1 card and 3d for 4 cards, these packs were basically dirt cheap. Since it was 240 pence to a pound, a 1d pack cost less than £0.01 — and a 3d pack would have barely been £0.01.

Now, in my opinion these cards are actually quite attractive. They are colorful and feature paintings of the players in action poses.

And, as you can see from the photos, the ones that show up on eBay generally are well used.

The backs consisted of some trivia and a scratch off quiz:

As was the case in 1958-59, the 1959-60 set was limited — this time with 98 cards as opposed to the 92 cards the year before. A&BC create checklist cards for the first time, featuring attractive team photos on one side and the checklist on the reverse — similar to what Upper Deck would eventually do in 1989:

And, as was the case in 1958-59, the 1959-60 cards aer actually pretty cheap:

I still think the day will eventually come when demand for these old and somewhat scarce sets increases. Until then, happy collecting!

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After writing about the 1975-76 Topps set the other day, I thought it might be interesting to look back at some of the classic A&BC sets.

Based on this helpful website, it seems that A&BC Chewing Gum’s first bubble gum set was for the 1958-59 season.

Even the wrappers add to the confusion. As Nigel reports, there appear to be three distinct sizes for Series 1 cards (numbers 1 through 46):

The tab shows up at the top for some cards, but not for all cards — and the sizes of the portraits differ among cards of the same series.

It’s not clear whether cards of all sizes used the same distribution wrapper.

It also seems that a single pack contained only a single card, along with a stick of gum. If that’s true, it was a pretty archaic practice by that time: both Topps and Bowman were selling multiple baseball cards in single packs as early as the early 1950s.

Just as was the case with Topps 1975-76, these 1958-59 cards are not in particularly high demand. You can still find them for surprisingly cheap.

Searching on eBay will show you pie-in-the-sky auction prices like this one:

However, before you pay a small fortune for Finney, keep in mind that there aren’t a lot of sold listings out there anywhere near that price.

Note as well that the card people are willing to pay for tends to be Bobby Charlton.

The back of that Bobby Charlton “rookie” card is also a tad strange:

The second paragraph makes no sense. At age 20, Charlton was the second youngest member of that squad, behind only Peter Brabrook. Charlton already had 3 caps by the time he was named to the squad, having accumulated them shortly after he survived the famous Munich air disaster.

How in the world “both England and Bobby” would “benefit” from Charlton sitting on the bench for all three England draws is an absolute mystery to me.

Anyway, if you’re not particular about getting cards graded by PSA, you can find some good deals. Here’s a collection of 22 that sold for 6 pounds a few months ago:

And this collection of 39 cards, including the overpriced Finney listed above, came out to only 26 pounds after a small bidding war:

I’m not sure how many A&BC cards from this set survive, though I doubt the numbers are high. It seems that the speculators and aggressive investors have not yet discovered England’s football cards of the late 1950s.

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If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m an American.

I grew up in the heyday of the baseball card bubble. I spent most of my allowance as an elementary school student on baseball cards. None of them ever turned out to be worth anything, sadly.

I also spent hours upon hours reading about the baseball card industry, which is affectionately referred to by collectors as The Hobby. The history of the industry is surprisingly well documented, and the lore and stories of rare cards are simply fascinating.

It wasn’t until very recently that I learned about the world of association football cards in England. And one thing that struck me as odd was that Topps, the famous baseball card company, came out with major sets for a few years starting with 1975-76.

Those of you who didn’t grow up in the United States probably don’t know the reputation that the Topps brand has. Topps rose quickly from an upstart bubble gum card company around 1951 to possessing a monopoly on sports cards starting in 1956. For most of the Baby Boom generation, Topps is the only “legitimate” baseball card company, and Topps cards were worth a slight premium over competitor brands for years.

But, of course, I never knew that Topps had a release in England.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Topps came out with a set of NASL logo stickers in 1979. That was the only Topps soccer release in the United States — and it really wasn’t a release.

But there’s something exciting and fun about the UK-only 1975-76 release.

Part of the draw for me comes from the set design, which mimicks the famous 1975 Topps baseball set almost exactly.

And part, of course, is the fact that this is a big set — a full 220 card set, much larger than most of the small scale local football sets you see.

Interestingly, the set also appears to be relatively inexpensive. I found this eBay listing fairly quickly:

A set like this for under $300 strikes me as a bargain — and also tells me that the market for these cards has never really been all that well established.

But where do the cards come from?

Well, it turns out that the A&BC Chewing Gum Company was the original major creator of bubble gum football cards. A&BC wound up rising quickly, largely because of the company’s ability to sign the Beatles to a trading card contract in 1963.

A&BC apparently entered into a contract with Topps for these photos to be used in an American set, which is the famous 1964 Beatles set:

And these sets were popular. In fact, they were so popular that the few articles about Topps that exist in the 1960s usually cited that 1964 set as evidence of the demand for Topps’ products. You can read more about that on my baseball blog:

The Baseball Replay Journal

The Early Days Of Collecting

The Early Days Of Collecting…

Read more

a year ago · 3 likes · Daniel Evensen

Now, at some point in time the partnership between the two companies turned into a falling out. Nigel’s Webspace News contains what little information we know about the fallout:

Whatever the reason, Topps took A&BC to court in the UK in the early 1970s, and succeeded in putting the company completely out of business in 1974. And that’s what led to the 1975-76 Topps set.

Now, the market for all of these card sets is pretty unclear. Beatles cards from the 1960s are readily available on eBay at more than reasonable prices. The complete 1975-76 Topps set doesn’t appear to be quite as common, but also doesn’t command particularly high prices.

And there are a ton of questions.

I’m not sure if there are any rare or short printed cards, for example. I also don’t know if there are any variations to look out for — the sort of thing that most serious card collectors pay a lot of attention to.

Oddly enough, I haven’t even been able to locate an image of an unopened wax pack, let alone a wax box. I know nothing about the distribution of cards, including precisely how many cards appeared in each pack, whether there were different varieties of packs (i.e. wax pack, cello pack, rack pack, etc. — all variants that were common in the baseball world in those days), and whether the cards were actually distributed evenly throughout the UK.

The funny thing, of course, is that Topps’ 2021-22 retro cards appears to be more valuable than the old set that their design is based on:

Please let me know if you have any more information on this release, or if you can point me in the right direction.

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Would anybody happen to have any insights on this game?

I haven’t played Eleven: Football Manager Board Game yet, nor had I heard about it before stumbling across it a few days ago.

It doesn’t seem to be horribly complex, and the 1 to 2 hour playing time is similar to other tabletop sport sims I’ve played. The interesting thing, of course, is that you’re basically completing an entire career in that timeframe, which is pretty interesting stuff.

It looks good — but, of course, any board game will look good if you just look at the advertising pieces.

The Board Game Geek ratings seem somewhat mixed — and, as usual, most of the comments seem to be placeholder remarks rather than actual reviews of the game.

Anybody have experience with this or any insights?

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When I was in elementary school in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was fascinated with baseball cards.

These were heady times. The baseball card industry took off in the 1970s when certain high volume collectors started buying up any and every card they could find on the secondary market. The industry hit its height sometime around 1989 or 1990, when people foolishly thought that their rookie cards might someday finance their children’s college education.

I wasn’t impervious from the financial aspects — I had a price guide like everybody else — but the truth is that I also really liked the cards themselves.

However, I don’t remember seeing many soccer cards. I do know there was a set for the short lived Major Soccer League around 1990, since I recognize these cards and am pretty sure I had a pack at one point in time. The truth, though, is that most card collectors in America didn’t care much for soccer cards.

But that doesn’t mean that the companies didn’t try.

If you browse through The Trading Card Database’s soccer section, you’ll come across a number of interesting NASL related releases in the United States in the 1970s. Topps was the dominant force in baseball in those days (and apparently also issued full sets in England, such as in 1975-76), but there were also a number of interesting local sets released in certain U.S. cities.

The first nationwide major set in the United States, however, seems to be 1979 Topps:

Unfortunately, it thinks that NASL Marketing Inc didn’t bother to create cards for individual players. From what I can tell, the set contains only logos:

It also seems that these were stickers, as evidenced by this eBay listing for unopened packs:

As you can tell by the price, this isn’t exactly a set in high demand.

It seems that the back of the cards could also be combined to form player pictures, though I haven’t seen any further descriptions of this.

It doesn’t seem that there was a single nationwide NASL set after this Topps issue. I’m not sure if the league figured there was no demand or what exactly happened. I do know, though, that it is not easy to get kids interested in your sport’s superstars if they don’t have posters or cards or magazines to help with familiarity.

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As you might already know, Wanderers won the first two FA Cup competitions.

The 1872 victory came after only two wins due to an odd rule at the time allowing both clubs to advance after a draw. And, in 1873, Wanderers were given a bye straight to the final round, where they defeated Oxford University 2-0.

Wanderers wound up skipping straight to the 3rd round of the 1873-74 FA Cup after two forfeited “walkover” matches. And that led them straight to a rematch of the 1873 Final.

First of all, though, I have to state my admiration for those who do extensive research into old UK newspapers. Articles like this simply make my head spin:

The first Oxford - Wanderers match on December 7 resulted in a draw:

Now, the replay appears to have been played on January 31, 1874, though I wasn’t able to find a mention of it anywhere until February:

Incidentally, one reason why it’s so difficult to find coverage is because rugby and football were both called “football” in those days. See this blurb for an example:

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This was arguably the most iconic football headline in the 1990s:

The reason for the ire of The Sun, of course, was England’s exit from Euro ‘92 at the hands of Sweden. England managed to score only a single goal during its 3 group matches, and blew a 1-0 lead that would have otherwise seen it to the next round.

So what was Taylor’s problem?

Well, the fact that Taylor never settled on a proper English squad was certainly problematic.

Sure, injuries played a role — but, seriously, England in the run up to Euro ‘92 used something like 60 different players. In hindsight, I really wonder if Taylor knew what he was doing.

And, of course, Taylor should never have said what he said about possibly winning the 1994 World Cup.

I wonder if there aren’t still England fans out there who wonder if Brian Clough would have done a better job.

In the end, of course, the FA made no change, leading eventually to the second version of that famous turnip cover:

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You might remember this clipping I shared yesterday:

The interesting part here is that “Thumbs Down” segment.

I haven’t been able to find the alleged New York Post article anywhere. None of the other New York newspapers apparently covered this alleged list. That doesn’t just cover November 13 and 14, 1991, either. I can’t find this claim anywhere for the month of November, or even for all of 1991.

In fact, if anything, the newspaper coverage of soccer in the United States indicated the opposite of what this blurb claimed.

Take this from Maine, for example:

Maine wasn’t exactly the soccer stronghold of the United States.

If that doesn’t convince you, however, take a look at this from Kansas City, right in the heartland of American football:

What was the Major Soccer League? This was actually the Major Indoor Soccer League, a league that rivaled the NASL, forced the NASL to play indoor games in the winter, and likely did more damage to outdoor association football in the United States than any other organization or factor.

The thing that amazes me, though, is that nobody questioned the popularity of the sport. The problems with soccer in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s were commercial problems — not a lack of popularity.

Don’t believe everything you read.

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