The age of innocence: Football in the 1970s
A beautiful new book celebrates everything that was wonderful about football in the 1970s.
The 1970s are remembered as the decade that taste forgot – a merry-go-round of brown flares, big collars and thick, itchy sideburns thankfully swept away by punk rock and microwave computers.
Yet football seemed immune to this. Looking at the Netherlands and Argentina teams of 1970-’78, we see groups of young men at their athletic and creative best, wearing – and this is what really seals the deal – the greatest selection of sportswear the world has ever seen.
This was the time when Adidas, Puma and Umbro were really starting to flex their creative muscles, going from being mere manufacturers of boots to all-encompassing lifestyle companies behind everything from leisure suits to hotels.
For the first time, the kits they produced carried branding and were now made in fibres designed for local conditions – witness England’s ‘tea-bag’ top for Mexico ’70. Yet, despite the orange-and-purple madness of the outside world, the strips were simplistic, relying on bold colours and traditional designs to denote identity. Shadow stripes or textiles that ‘wicked’ away sweat were still years away.
A new Taschen book, The Age Of Innocence: Football In The 1970s celebrates this period, taking the reader from the first modern World Cup, Mexico ’70, to the astroturf and cheerleaders of the US’s North American Soccer League in 1979, when the world’s best players saw out their twilight years across the pond.
“Groups of males – usually dressed like the Bee Gees and smelling of Double Diamond bitter – would try and take each other’s ‘ends’, leading to mass sways and punch-ups on the terraces”
Though it’s a beautiful book, the use of the word ‘innocence’ seems incongruous. This period was, remember, the apex of football hooliganism, when Saturday afternoons in and around stadia in England were punctuated by large-scale violence. Groups of males – usually dressed like the Bee Gees and smelling of Double Diamond bitter – would try and take each other’s ‘ends’, leading to mass sways and punch-ups on the terraces. It was the era of pitch invasions, too, which in turn saw the construction of perimeter fences – something that would have dire consequences a decade and a half later at Hillsborough.
Despite this, in other senses, football was more innocent, still unaware of its global appeal and how it should be exploited. Players in England’s first division weren’t poor, but in those days, even the biggest stars lived in relatively ordinary suburban detached houses with wives called Jan or Jean. Even Bobby Moore – married to the lovely Tina – lived in relative mock Tudor modesty in commuter-belt Essex. These players were both extraordinary and utterly mundane, which is why fans could identify with them.
While Pele was still the world’s biggest soccer star (with George Best sliding into his ‘fat Elvis’ period), the baton of cool was passed to the Dutch national team and the Netherlands’ best club side, Ajax. Playing revolutionary ‘total voetball’ system that required players to be able to play in any position, the likes Johan Cruyff, Johan Neeskens and Johnny Rep criss-crossed Europe looking like a mix between progressive rock group Neu! and the Baader Meinhoff gang.
In Britain, Kevin Keegan was the country’s best known player, and his forays into brand endorsement (he advertised Brut with Henry Cooper) were a portent of what was to come, though “splash it all over” is still long way from David Beckham in his designer underpants.
For this magazine, though, it’s the on- and off-field style that makes this period so special. From Puma’s King football boot to the Adidas button-up tracksuits the West Germany team wore before the 1974 World Cup final, this was a 1970s a world away from revolutionary violence, power cuts and strikes.
This other, better, ’70s was populated by incredible physical specimens in some of the best sportswear of all time, playing a game changing as quickly as the world around it.
Less the age of innocence, more the era of perfection.
The Age Of Innocence: Football In The 1970s is out now.
