Monday, February 01, 2010
My next exhibit: The Football Atlas, 1997-1999 edition
Thank heavens for the internet. Where else can I file my youthful creativity for safe-keeping? Our exhibit today is my football atlas, which has lived for the past few years in a carrier bag under my bed. Several hundred A4 pages of hand-drawn maps, club badges and football shirts with hand-written histories of the game in almost every FIFA member between 1997 and 1999 can be found here. While it all looks like a waste of youth now, my current geographical knowledge, interest in travelling and foreign languages and opinions on self-appointed experts, patriotism and chauvanistic nationalism formed throughout this period, slap bang in the middle of my angsty teenage years.
The atlas (and yes, I will continue to call it that) is divided into continents, and then into countries. Some countries contain profiles of prominent teams, stadiums and historical annecdotes that I would generally have read about rather than seen. Being a teenage boy the countries were arranged in the order of the strength of their football leagues, because ranking things was important. Important enough to get angry with those of lesser knowledge. Italy's Serie A came first, followed by La Liga in Spain, which is on the left here. Well, the map sort of looks like Spain. All the points correspond to cities where the more significant teams played.
Below are maps of Russia and Greece. Not only two of the more accurate maps but also two of my favourite international sides. A fantastic snob I was back then, and very passionate about footballing nations that I felt were good but did not get the attention they deserved, usually because they repeatedly let themselves down.
My opinions on global affairs hadn't crystalised just yet. Here we see a map of Israel with both the West Bank and Gaza incorporated into it. This would have made me eligible for membership of Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud party, but would have seen me chased out of many of the social circles I hang out in nowadays. I didn't bother with a Palestine entry, even though Palestine became a member of FIFA in 1998.
Spain, Russia, Greece and Israel are all handy European footballing powers, to varying degrees. Things got a little more obsessive further on in the atlas. Below are country profiles for Liechtenstein and San Marino, and a profile of the Ta' Qali National Stadium in Malta. Does this sound like the work of a nerd? We're just getting started...
On the right is a profile of Soviet goalkeeper Lev Yashin. I profiled players the greatest players from each continent too. These are arranged alphabetically rather than in order of who was best. What do you take me for, some kind of geek? Yashin was the greatest goalkeeper in the history of the game, though.
The maps of South America are ridiculously small and generally pretty awful in terms of accuracy, so let's skip to Africa. Here we have Eritrea, the Gambia and Sierra Leone. Putting things in order of bestedness permitted me to bunch three geographically distant nations onto one page. There are fewer arrows pointing to these more obscure footballing nations, largely because sources were scarce. Back then the internet meant nothing to me beyond some mythical device paedophiles utilised to masquerade as young children (not exactly joking here, but be considerate and bear in mind which alarmist newspaper I grew up with). Instead I used World Soccer magazine, some esoteric football books and late night football shows from Channel 5 (remember, in its infancy C5 offered a cornucopia of sport, softcore pornography, Nazi documentaries and little else).
On to Asia now, with a wonky photo of Iran celebrating qualification for the 1998 World Cup. The leading Asian footballing powers were all pretty easy to research. The J League received good international coverage, while Channel 4 went through a strange period where it broadcast Chinese football highlights very early in the morning (at seriously antisocial hours. And on school nights too, the bastards). But I didn't just stick with the big Asian nations. Below, on the right, are 'maps' of Guam, Maldives and Singapore. Green blobs with arrows pointing to the capital cities rather than maps, if we're being honest. Channel 5 sometimes showed The Asian Football Show, so I got my fill of S-League action.
The final two football conderations were CONCACAF (comprising North and Central America, along with the Caribbean) and the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC). Apart from Australia and New Zealand the OFC was a real pain in the ass to research. Here are maps of Tonga and French Caledonia, complete with a picture of Christian Karembeau, who was born in French Caledonia but who played with relatively little distinction for France. Tenuous. Tonga doesn't appear to have any teams listed next to it. I probably just wanted to draw the map.
Thank heavens for the internet. Where else can I file my youthful creativity for safe-keeping? Our exhibit today is my football atlas, which has lived for the past few years in a carrier bag under my bed. Several hundred A4 pages of hand-drawn maps, club badges and football shirts with hand-written histories of the game in almost every FIFA member between 1997 and 1999 can be found here. While it all looks like a waste of youth now, my current geographical knowledge, interest in travelling and foreign languages and opinions on self-appointed experts, patriotism and chauvanistic nationalism formed throughout this period, slap bang in the middle of my angsty teenage years.
The atlas (and yes, I will continue to call it that) is divided into continents, and then into countries. Some countries contain profiles of prominent teams, stadiums and historical annecdotes that I would generally have read about rather than seen. Being a teenage boy the countries were arranged in the order of the strength of their football leagues, because ranking things was important. Important enough to get angry with those of lesser knowledge. Italy's Serie A came first, followed by La Liga in Spain, which is on the left here. Well, the map sort of looks like Spain. All the points correspond to cities where the more significant teams played.Below are maps of Russia and Greece. Not only two of the more accurate maps but also two of my favourite international sides. A fantastic snob I was back then, and very passionate about footballing nations that I felt were good but did not get the attention they deserved, usually because they repeatedly let themselves down.
My opinions on global affairs hadn't crystalised just yet. Here we see a map of Israel with both the West Bank and Gaza incorporated into it. This would have made me eligible for membership of Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud party, but would have seen me chased out of many of the social circles I hang out in nowadays. I didn't bother with a Palestine entry, even though Palestine became a member of FIFA in 1998.
Spain, Russia, Greece and Israel are all handy European footballing powers, to varying degrees. Things got a little more obsessive further on in the atlas. Below are country profiles for Liechtenstein and San Marino, and a profile of the Ta' Qali National Stadium in Malta. Does this sound like the work of a nerd? We're just getting started...
On the right is a profile of Soviet goalkeeper Lev Yashin. I profiled players the greatest players from each continent too. These are arranged alphabetically rather than in order of who was best. What do you take me for, some kind of geek? Yashin was the greatest goalkeeper in the history of the game, though.
The maps of South America are ridiculously small and generally pretty awful in terms of accuracy, so let's skip to Africa. Here we have Eritrea, the Gambia and Sierra Leone. Putting things in order of bestedness permitted me to bunch three geographically distant nations onto one page. There are fewer arrows pointing to these more obscure footballing nations, largely because sources were scarce. Back then the internet meant nothing to me beyond some mythical device paedophiles utilised to masquerade as young children (not exactly joking here, but be considerate and bear in mind which alarmist newspaper I grew up with). Instead I used World Soccer magazine, some esoteric football books and late night football shows from Channel 5 (remember, in its infancy C5 offered a cornucopia of sport, softcore pornography, Nazi documentaries and little else).
On to Asia now, with a wonky photo of Iran celebrating qualification for the 1998 World Cup. The leading Asian footballing powers were all pretty easy to research. The J League received good international coverage, while Channel 4 went through a strange period where it broadcast Chinese football highlights very early in the morning (at seriously antisocial hours. And on school nights too, the bastards). But I didn't just stick with the big Asian nations. Below, on the right, are 'maps' of Guam, Maldives and Singapore. Green blobs with arrows pointing to the capital cities rather than maps, if we're being honest. Channel 5 sometimes showed The Asian Football Show, so I got my fill of S-League action.
The final two football conderations were CONCACAF (comprising North and Central America, along with the Caribbean) and the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC). Apart from Australia and New Zealand the OFC was a real pain in the ass to research. Here are maps of Tonga and French Caledonia, complete with a picture of Christian Karembeau, who was born in French Caledonia but who played with relatively little distinction for France. Tenuous. Tonga doesn't appear to have any teams listed next to it. I probably just wanted to draw the map.
So despite my hostility towards it at the time, the internet is now a fine nursing home for this ageing piece of youthful creativity. This is only a tiny sample of a work that is so eccelctic that even I now wonder what I was thinking back then. It includes team profiles of the now defunct J-League team Verdy Kawasaki and Kaiser Chiefs from South Africa (nearly a decade before they became better known as a band), footballing maps of the Seychelles and Madagascar and player profiles of Wagner Lopes from Japan, Jürgen Sparwasser from East Germany, Marco Antonio Etcheverry from Bolivia and Lefter Küçükandonyadis from Turkey. Wikipedia does it all so much more thoroughly now, although I'm willing to bet there are several things here that slipped through its clinical filters.
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