Escape to Victory is the greatest football film ever made. Directed by John Huston in 1981 it is set in a Prisoner of War camp during the second world war.
Michael Caine stars as Captain John Colby, who leads Sylvester Stallone and an all star cast of footballers including Pele, Bobby Moore, Osvaldo Ardiles,and Mike Summerbee, who agree to play a football match against some local german troops, but after the Nazi propaganda machine takes over they end up in occupied Paris playing the German National team.
If you've never heard of this film before then welcome to the Escape to Victory Web Site.
A football shirt collector recently emailed the escape to victory website saying he was a collector of worn football shirts, and that he had managed to aquire the Number 2 shirt from the German side, as you will be able to see in the photographs in the article
Amsterdam, 18 apr 2007 In honor of the 60ste birthday of Johan Cruijff, today a week from now, the management and council of commissioners of Ajax decided to 'retire' the shirt number 14 for good.
This has announced chairman John Jaakke during a birthdays dinner with the club leadership and Cruijff. With the symbolic transfer of the shirt to Johan Cruijff, 'number 14' will never been given to any player from the first team ever again.
John Jaakke: ,, Johan Cruijff has been of priceless value to Ajax and gave the club it's world-wide reputation.
Finally Mr. Goal is on the air again as of March 1st 2007 at mistergoal.com.
A really wonderful moment for the mascot who loves football and that's because for the first time since 1994 mistergoal.com is totally complete!!!
Yes, it's true, Mr. Goal was designed for the first time in the summer of 1994 by designer Pavlos Pavlidis. From it's early beginning the mascot showed it's ability. Everyone who sees him loves him right away.
Among them are the Greek National team's super star and European Champion Vassilis Tsartias and a super star of the world's football, one of the greatest players ever, the captain of European Champions (then, Milan) and Italian National Team as well, Franco Baressi.
Pele stopped the referee with a last-second request to tie his shoelaces at the opening whistle of a 1970 World Cup finals match and then knelt down to give millions of television viewers a close-up of his Pumas
The Brazilian was complying with a request by Puma's representative Hans Henningsen to raise the German sports shoe company's profile after they gave him $120,000 to wear their boots.
The clandestine advertising for Puma was a huge triumph for the company over hated cross-town rivals Adidas in the early days of the war for market supremacy in sports merchandise.
Barbara Smit, a Dutch author and journalist, has spent five years trawling the archives of the Adidas and Puma headquarters in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach to research Rudolf and Adolf Dassler -- brothers who started making sports shoes in their mother's laundry room in the 1920s before becoming sport and business giants.
Patrick Dewael, the Belgian minister of the Interior, has forbidden the wearing of football shirts displaying the numbers 18 and 88.
According to the Liberal minister the number 18 stands for "Adolf Hitler" and the number 88 for "Heil Hitler." A is the 1st letter of the alphabet, H the 8th.
The numbers 37 (Che Guevara) or 13 (Mao) are not forbidden. Neither are the popular T-shirts with Che Guevara’s portrait.
One reader in a Brussels paper wondered whether citizens living in houses with the numbers 18 and 88 will be blacklisted as Nazis by the authorities.
It becomes an expensive time for the die-hard Romario shirt collectors. The 41-birthday goalgetter wears a new shirt every time he scores a goal.
In his hunt on the milestone of 1000 goals, Romario playes against América (starts on the bench) with a Vasco da Gama-shirt with the number 13 on its sleeve.
13 is the number of goals that are necessarily to get to a thousand goals.
Romario wears his own number 11 in the games, and on his sleeve the number 13 counts down to zero with every goal he scores.
It is not known if O Baixinho (De Small one) changes his shirt as soon as he scores during a match.
Yes, it's back, back, back! Following the undoubted success of the 'Obscure Kits' series during this summer's World Cup (well, sort of), we bring you the footy strips that time forgot 'British-stylee'.
And where better a place to start than with the all-time number 1 cult kit from the annals of history. The reason for its notoriety can be summed up in one word - brown. Yes folks, we give you THAT Coventry Kit from the mid-to-late-1970's.
So who was to blame for this fashion 'faux pas'? It was Admiral, one of the most well-known kit manufacturers in Britain at that time.
Read more: Obscure Kits From British Football History #1 Brown Coventry
