I'm pretty sure I told this one before, but it really helps to illustrate the pointlessness of some of the '90's football magazines.
Back in the mid 90's, the UK Official Nintendo Magazine was a pretty standard magazine of its type. Big shot of the staff all gurning together, lots of little boxes scattered around with "news" with tiny screenshots. Paragraphs much shorter than the one I'm writing now and that unbridled optimism which comes with being the official anything of anything.
I'm going somewhere with this.
So, mid 90's. Shoot relaunches as a monthly. The entire Official Nintendo Magazine staff has been transferred over to it. The Mario loving editor, the Pokemon geek head reviewer, everyone. The magazine is exactly the same as their previous one. News sections laid out the same, gurning staff shots included (although now they were all wearing replica shirts, of course) and references to how great "Ninty" was compared to Sony and Sega became mentions of how great "footie" was compared to rugby and cricket.
As cynical and distasteful as a lot of the 90's start-up mags could be, I never met something as stupid as telling your entire staff for one (video game) magazine that you now work on a completely different (football) magazine and then let them simply CTRL-F "video games" and CTRL-V "footie" and call it a day.
This incarnation of Shoot did not last long at all. Thankfully.
I used to read the MOTD. I thought it was great, but it seemed to have a slightly erratic release schedule. They had some decent quality articles on world football and lower league stuff which you wouldn't expect from something named after a premier league highlights show.
I remember their article about travelling around and going to as many matches at France '98 as possible was pretty exciting to my 14 year old self, and probably something which wouldn't be possible nowadays sadly. They also had a segment each week where they spoke to a group of fans, presumably to get the downlow on their local clubs, etc. One issue it was Irish fans, who made a show of themselves by missing the point entirely and dismissing the LOI as a distraction from their true love of Man Yoo and Selltick.
To pick up on a few of these publications mentioned... I was the York City contact for Total Football, which entailed writing a few lines or trying to carry out the odd little survey on their behalf when they had a feature getting the opinions of fans of all clubs, pre-season previews etc. Felt quite exciting at the time as I was only a young 'un, but yes I do recall even back then being less than impressed with the overall quality of the mag.
Somewhere in the depths of the wardrobe of my old room at my mum's house I believe I still have a cassette that was given away free with The Onion Bag, which featured if I remember correctly the (alleged) Watford Pithead Choir singing a range of football songs. Utterly shit, but obviously that was the point!
Seem to recall Standing Room Only had as co-presenter Shelley Webb, wife of Neil and 1990s prototype Gabby Logan.
Weren't the two different Standing Room Only's, I remember there being a short and very decent first iteration, then a second one a couple of years later that was a bit more dumbed down. Maybe I'm imagining it.
Everyone always mentions Standing Room Only but I'm sure there was another football programme of a similar ilk called Sick As A Parrot back in the early 90's. Or am I imagining things?
I had a shitload of Total Football (including the first edition), Four Four Two and Goal from the second half of the 90's up in the attic, but was sick of the sight of them so took them to the council dump.
TF was founded during Loaded's height in 1995 and from the start set it's stall out early with that Aberdeen pub where you could piss on TV's showing Rangers videos featuring inside. I stopped buying it around 98 but persisted with Goal (not a bad read) until it's demise sometime around the end of the decade. FFT was actually passable at one time but had became unreadable by the early part of the 00's.
MOTD must have been resurrected on a number of occasions over the years but it was never that interesting plus the awful front covers made it look far less appealing than it's competitors.
The Roy Of The Rovers cartoon inside existed in some kind of Orwellian future where Roy - now permanently wearing a cast on one leg and with an increasing fondness for drink - and the gang go up against an Oligarch's expensively assembled team of superstars, with TV pay-per-view intake being the primary concern. It was eerily prophetic, in a shit way.
Do they still make official club magazines? They were always what I imagined the Pyongyang times to be like. Even if the club was in the depths of crisis they'd still carry on like everything was fine...
Due to my hoarding tendencies I've still got a big stack of 90 minutes somewhere, I remember that there were quite a few references to music in it. They also gave away good calendars.
The calendars were great. I still have most of the last four years of 90 Minutes knocking around somewhere.
rockford wrote:
90 Minutes was fairly decent in that it gave reasonable coverage to lower league players, although I have a hazy recollection they unaccountably loved Grimsby Town.
It wasn't so much Grimsby Town, as their fullback Gary Croft, who they interviewed once, and seemed to really impress either the team, or the interviewer to the point they kept talking about him.
The league ladders were issued with The Victor comic, I think it was a part sport/war heroics compilation.
Did The Victor have any football stories? I only bought it a few times but from what I remember it was like one of those Victorian 'Boys Own' annuals, so I assume they must have had some sport in there.
Everyone always mentions Standing Room Only but I'm sure there was another football programme of a similar ilk called Sick As A Parrot back in the early 90's. Or am I imagining things?
You're thinking of Under The Moon?
Somewhat chaotic but generally entertaining stuff (as always when DK is involved) if I recall.
I rememebr Lisa Rogers being an added, if unecessary, attraction.
Good account of it here
Yes, it was to this game. The guy printed a kind of open invitation that he was going in one issue, so I tootled off to Kent one Friday night and thence to the Parkstadion. Pretty good fun.
What's the general consensus about the current relevance of World Soccer? I was tempted to subscribe a few years back but never got around to it. Whenever I thumb through the magazine when I'm at a newsstand or book store, I don't see much in it that hasn't already circulated via other sources on the Web. Unlike WSC, Champions, or what we might find in The Blizzard, which tends to be some blend of the timely and the timeless, most of the material in World Soccer tends to focus on the timely which isn't so timely by the time each issue is published. Am I missing something--choosing the wrong months to wander into the newsstand?
I remember Kick it City, think it lasted about 8 editions. There was also another London one called Tales from the Riverbank. Does anyone remember 'What's the Score'?
Does anyone remember "Top Soccer"? It was an IPC comic, in the style of "Shoot", and ran for about 6 months over 79/80?
It was aimed as a football comic for younger readers, which surprised me as I was reading "Shoot" (every week from 80 to 85), and never thought it was for older readers.
Also, as far as the team-tabs go, both "Match" and "Match Of The Day" still produce them.
I also remember "Football Monthly" from around '79. It was made A5, as there was a binder for it.
On the whole, the late 70's/early 80's seemed to be a golden age for football/sport magazines: Shoot, Top Soccer, Scoop, Tiger, Roy Of The Rovers, Speed.
90 Minutes started during Italia 90 and had some decent tactical analysis of the games. It stayed quite serious for about a year but then rebranded itself for a market that was about five years younger than its original one.
You can see from the cover of this early issue that it tried to be grown-up early on:
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