What is “20th Century Football: An incomplete philatelic history”

Not to sound pretentious but that is one hell of a title. It sounds like the title of volume six of one of those large anthology books you’d see on the office shelves of a university history professor but at the same time it leaves a lot unexplained. So to start things off, and set an understanding of what you can expect from this, I’m going to break the title down piece by piece.

20th Century

The focus is going to be from 1900 to 1999, while I may dabble a little either side of those years, that is my focus. But why? Well, it’s always nice to have a beginning point and an ending point. Considering the topic or topics, more to come on those below, there really isn’t much before 1900 and while there is more after, having an ending point is quite nice. I don’t have to worry about periodically adding a little more every two or four years.

Football

This is football in the global fashion, not American, Canadian, Irish, Australian or any other variation I may have missed or don’t know about. I could have used the word soccer, and very well may down the way, but it is football.

An Incomplete

This is important for setting an expectation and an understanding with you reader that there are things that will not be covered or discussed. There are three main reasons for this:

Not everyone football event has been philatelicly celebrated or acknowledged
I don’t have every piece of football philatelatlic released
Even within the pieces I do have, there are pieces that might not quite fit in.*

Philatelic

While stamps may have been a more accessible word to use here it wouldn’t have been true. While they will be the bulk of what’s featured there is also going to be covers and cancelles and cinderallas and more. And while those terms don’t make sense now, they will in time.

History

I am going to be talking about things that happened and were made in the past, so yeah.

So why write this in the first place?

There are thousands and thousands of books about almost every aspect of football you could imagine, that go into much greater detail than I could ever hope to have here. And the same is true about of books focused on philatelic topics. In both cases they are more thoroughly researched and well written by experts in their fields BUT what if we look at them in tandem? Let them walk together through their joint history, providing enough context to explain their time and place in history, but not so much to get bogged down. That there is my why but how.

The most logical way is chronological. Start at 1900 and keep going till I reach the end in 1999. And while I agree with that thinking there are a couple things that don’t quite work and would become a bit annoying. Since 1987 Poste Italiane, the Italian postal service provider, has issued a stamp for the winner of Serie A, the top league in Italian football. If I was to follow the chronological I would have to decide if I mention it in 1987 and not again, mention it in 1987 and then periodically pop up with a mention here and there, or have a little line dedicated to it in every year. Then I would also have to consider commemorative stamps for the Serie A champions issued by other countries or stamps commemorating the 100^th anniversary of a club. Chronologically becomes a bit of a nightmare. Based on this example and a few other similar ones, I am going to break it up into two sections: Chronologically and Topically.

Chronologically, it is going to cover items in the order that they happened. The World Cup, Euros and Olympics every 4 years. One off events or commemorative pieces

Topically, it is going to cover topics that are spread over multiple years or have a similar theme together into sections. The Serie A example above or topics such as youth sports or series of commemorative releases would all fit better in this fashion versus chronologically.

We’ve covered the what and the how and dabbled a bit in the why, so the only thing left to do is “Soccer it to Em!”

1* In 1994, Nevis released a series of stamps featuring Mickey Mouse and friends playing different sports with a phrase on the front. This included a stamp with Mickey Mouse doing what can only be described as an unquadanted scorpion kick with the phrase “Soccer it to Em!” on it. Could I include it, yes. Should I include, probably not. Am I including it, I think I have to now.