Football Punk will probably succeed because it will be marketed to death (nice free advert on the Guardian there) and have 'babes' in it.

Welcome, benfawkes - you don't have to put your website at the end of every post though as there's a handy link under your name on the left.

Edit: you need to fix your link though

thanks for the welcome! and cheers for the heads up on my link - those icons arent so noticable!

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There was an extremely short-lived magazine doing the rounds during 1994/1995 called Sweet FA. It was a football version of Viz.

It lasted about two issues, if that. I think it was forced out of existence because its first issue carried a spoof story with the self-explanatory headline "DAVE BASSETT DOESN'T WANK INTO VACUUM CLEANERS".

Then again, it might have bitten the dust simply because it was pure shite.

Fucking hell I thought I was the only one who remembered that. My mum bought it for me because she thought it was a cartoon football mag that I'd like, little did she know that the first cartoon was called 'Chairman's Daughters' (or something like that) and had explicit cartoon sex on the first page. The 14 year old me thought it was great.

NHH wrote:

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I could see the point of Golf Punk; the public culture of golf was all pringle jumpers and business chaps doing deals and retirees. It didn't want to address the fact that a lot of young men like golf, play it and watch it, so GP came in to address that. It's safe to say football doesn't suffer from such a mismatch between the aspirations of young lads and the public culture of the sport.

Haymarket (of Four Four Two fame) are doing something of the sort with an athletics magazine called Spikes. It's all fluffy and dumbed down which might appeal to teenagers or novices to the sport but I fail to see how it will get anyone really interested in athletics. The excellent Athletics Weekly does a brilliant job in that respect, even though it should take itself a little bit less seriously if it is to appeal to a wider market.

And, to make the post football related, one magazine I used to love was Football Monthly. Always had a wide array of articles although, if I'm being honest, the first article that I looked for was the one about memorabilia and collectibles.

Plus, I used to buy World Soccer largely to read Brian Glanville's column.

I still think the missing link here is 11Freunde translated into English. It'd be the best mag around.

I *think* these people might also be the Golf Punk people, so this might be a harbinger of what their football mag might be like.

The person who I thought was the link between Golf Punk, 90 Minutes and possibly Football Punk, Iestyn George, tells me he is nothing to do with the the latter but that Catflap linked above is his work.

I still think the missing link here is 11Freunde translated into English. It'd be the best mag around.

I *think* [url=http://ezine.catflapmag.com/issue46/]these people[/url might also be the Golf Punk people, so this might be a harbinger of what their football mag mithese people[/url might also be the Golf Punk people, so this might be a harbinger of what their football mag might be like.

delicatemoth wrote:

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Is that a cartoon of David Pleat in a Mega City Judge's uniform?

No, Cantona.

The one issue of the french mag So Foot I read was quite good, but I've also heard I may have lucked into an exceptionally good issue. Anyone have a sense of how it compares to 11 Freunde? My German's nowhere near good enough to read it.

I think it's a great shame there's nothing in England like Argentina's El Gráfico. It's a mix of World Soccer back when it was good, but also packed with retrospective pieces (I have yet to visit a country more aware of its footballing history than Argentina, except probably for Uruguay), and it's been phenomenally influential across South America in terms of how the Spanish-speakers of the continent have grown up with, consumed and viewed their football. The editor during the 1920s / '30s invented the phrase 'La Nuestra', which is how Argentines describe the short-passing, dribbling, and (in the 21st century context) markedly anti-bloody-hulking-great-players-all-over-the-pitch style their sides have always espoused, during the non-dreadful spells of the country's footballing past.

It's so significant, in fact, that David Goldblatt dedicated a good section of a chapter of The Ball Is Round to it. And if it was available in English, it would probably be the favourite magazine of at least half the people on this board (um, apart from WSC of course).

Anyway - that Guardian article on Football Punk is the first time I've ever seen FourFourTwo described as a 'thinking man's football magazine'. I hope James Morrison's tongue was lodged firmly in cheek when he typed that sentence.

I recall when Ganja/PPV used to do those translations of Offside articles and have to admit that they rank among the best football writing I've read for quite some time.

Gramsci, I think So Foot is now to the point where it is just about as good as 11 Freude; the differences (and they exist) have more to do with differences in supporter (and "cool") culture in Germany and France than with any intrinsic differences in quality. So Foot's target audience is also probably a bit younger (and blacker) than 11 Freunde's.

Does anyone remember the ill-fated relaunch of Shoot as a monthly in, I think, the late 90's? It had the staff wearing replica shirts and hollering in a picture inside the cover and didn't seem to have much football coverage at all.

Another great fact: The "footie-mad (wa-hey!)" crew that staffed this rag were also, man for man, the same writers and staffers that worked on Nintendo's official magazine in the UK. They actually copied the formula and layout of the video game magazine down and tried to make it work as a football magazine. It was really quite surreal.

godot wrote:

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They actually copied the formula and layout of the video game magazine down and tried to make it work as a football magazine. It was really quite surreal.

You don't remember any of the cheat codes for Newcastle United do you?

The_Liquidator wrote:

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Fucking hell I thought I was the only one who remembered that. My mum bought it for me because she thought it was a cartoon football mag that I'd like, little did she know that the first cartoon was called 'Chairman's Daughters' (or something like that) and had explicit cartoon sex on the first page. The 14 year old me thought it was great.

I think the cover was a caricature of "Cantonargh" stamping on someone's balls.