If you don't remember it, do you care?

[tee rex]

There's been a lot of "20 years ago today" lately. Wenger's anniversary, Euro 96, Keegan's Newcastle, etc.

Because I was around then, I naturally assume that everyone else was. As do the journos and ex-players who talk about "what we were all doing when ...". But then I stop and think 20 years is a bloody long time. And I remember being a football-mad teenager, and not having the slightest interest in what some old duffer was prattling on about. In 1980, if somebody on telly went back 20 years for a nostalgia piece, I switched off, mentally or literally. Walter Winterbottom could have been Herbert Chapman, it was the White Horse final or the Matthews final, it was all in black and white and it didn't matter when.

Of course there are obvious differences between nostalgia then and now: the access to footage, the aging of the crowds, and the general growth in heritage/retro. But I wonder how much the average twenty-something cares, and how much shared knowledge is just taken for granted, as if there's something wrong with you if you don't have anything to say about what happened when you were a toddler or embryo. Is it just old(ish) people assuming everyone else is?

Feel free to speak for the young, they're all on TinderTweet, and won't read this. It's already too long.

[Sits]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

You have a very good point. Nostalgia is indeed a much bigger thing than it was.... in the old days.

As a kid in the 70s, if I thought about twenty years ago it was a bald Stanley Matthews in baggy shorts and great big boots, kicking a brown ball. Seemed like the dark ages. I'm a dreadful nostalgist myself but maybe it's a bit unfair on today's "younsgsters".

Oh, and Bert Trautmann's flat cap and broken neck.

[Patrick Thistle]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

On a related note I got asked on the weekend if I remembered the Miner's Strike.

Looking at stuff from the 80s and even the 90s makes me realise just how much has changed. Those big shorts in the 90s, man! I'd forgotten how young Arsene looked when he took over.

But yeah, generally to someone born in say 1997, Italia 90 or Euro 96 is about as 'real' as the 1966 world cup is to me, born 10 years later. The world before we were in it is an inaccessible mystery.

[Arturo]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

This is a topic that continually fascinates me (as much with music and history as well as football) yet I can never get my head around. I try and quiz some of the 90s born footy lads at work and find it incredible - though it's perfectly normal - that events such as Heysel and Hillsborough don't register.

I found any football that was pre-colour TV rather dull when I was growing up in the 80s. Early footage only caught my eye if it was from around 69-70 onwards.

[Sits]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

Each if us can get their frame of reference from the first cup final and World Cup they remember. (Sunderland 1973; Mexico 70 Panini only).

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

Remember that Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse sketch about 1930s Arsenal (in black and white) taking on 1980s Liverpool (in colour), with inevitable results? I'd dread to think what would happen if 1980s Liverpool were to play a modern day side. Just imagine Steve McMahon in a modern team's midfield. Go on. Imagine it.

[blameless]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

I was in Shoreditch on Saturday (don't judge, I was on my way through to visit friends in Bethnal Green) when I saw a young chap in a France jersey of Euro 92 vintage.

Which makes me think that today's yoofs do care about football that took place before they were born, as long as there's some hipster value in it for them.

[Jah Womble]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

I guess we're now rather spoiled with HD and 4Q, etc, but what always strikes me about watching footage - especially Sky footage - from the nineties or noughties, is just how crap and low-res it all looks now. I mean, even BBC/ITV archive from the seventies and eighties (which is more my 'nostalgia' era, anyway) looks much better; warmer, clearer and better-preserved.

I do feel a fascination for pre-sixties football archive, but that isn't nostalgia so much as a historical interest.

[Jobi1]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

blameless wrote: I was in Shoreditch on Saturday (don't judge, I was on my way through to visit friends in Bethnal Green) when I saw a young chap in a France jersey of Euro 92 vintage.

Which makes me think that today's yoofs do care about football that took place before they were born, as long as there's some hipster value in it for them.

Couldn't possibly judge you for that - I did the Crystal Maze on Sunday, if we want to compete in the retro/hipster stakes!

But proving that youngsters do indeed see hipster value in that era of football, on the way back to Kings Cross afterwards I spotted a lad I'd guess in his late teens wearing a plain version of this shirt just as a fashion item:



The fact that I immediately thought "Theo Snelders" when I saw it shows how imprinted that era is on our generation!

[Squarewheelbike]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

blameless wrote: I was in Shoreditch on Saturday (don't judge, I was on my way through to visit friends in Bethnal Green) when I saw a young chap in a France jersey of Euro 92 vintage.

Which makes me think that today's yoofs do care about football that took place before they were born, as long as there's some hipster value in it for them.

See also Ramones T-shirts!

[Capybara]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

I've seen the following all too often:

Poster A: Team X have no history.

Poster B: Apart from n League Championships and m FA Cups.

Poster A: But that was before I was born.

[pebblethefish]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

In a way, and I recognise that I am completely on my own on this board in feeling this way, but I quite like the way most stats only include the Premier League era. This is purely an age thing, as it basically means that that the stat is "Highest goalscorer since Pebblethefish started going to football regularly". I remember eighties football, but I didn't have the same opinions and discernment then, so I find it quite a useful watershed, much as an older generation would have seen all the post-war records

[Giggler]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

I was four when Bury were promoted in 1985, so I do care. Very much, in fact. I think that because there's so little literature out there about Bury that other youngsters have taken the story of the Forgotten Fifteen and run with it too.

[ale]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

when I first started attending SJP in the early 1970s at the age of 10 it was compulsory to be aware of the Wembley triumphs 20 years earlier...Joe Harvey being the club manager obviously played a part while Supermac being the resident centre forward & very fast was invariably compared to Jackie Milburn ...

[1974ddr]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

Maybe I'm abnormal, but even as a small boy I was always fascinated by football of the past, particularly if it involved the Villa (so, definitely abnormal). I can't say it's done me much good in later life, but I did get to impress one of my colleagues the other day by knowing which two FA Cup final winners* were managed by former Villa and England forward Billy Walker. And the correct years. Perhaps 'impress' isn't the word, but it elicited a certain pity, which is quite similar in some ways.
(Sheff Wed in 1935 and Forest in 1959)

[Gangster Octopus]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

Despite what I say here, I never actually saw Jack Taylor's cheating, but I've hated him ever since I knew about it...

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

If you don't remember it, do you care?

It has been scientifically established than time goes by much faster now than it used to in the old days, so 1996 is literally closer to 2016 than it is to 1976.