When Shorts Were Short concerns itself solely with what was actually a very narrow window in football history when teams wore, well, short shorts. The podcast takes 1954 as its starting point, when Umbro made their first England kit with shorter shorts, to 1992, when short shorts were all but finished as Umbro's baggy shorts for Tottenham's new kit, ahead of the '91 FA Cup Final, quickly caught on.
If the shorts weren't short, we just don't talk about it.
The guest for this Euro ’84 special is one of the finest football writers these islands have produced, Patrick Barclay. 37 years ago, he was making his name at The Guardian. With the paper’s chief football correspondent David Lacey away with England on their South American tour that summer, Paddy was one of a handful of British football journalists sent to France to cover the 1984 European Championships. Incredibly, simply because none of the home nations had qualified, only two matches from this tournament were shown live on British TV.
It was the greatest international football tournament of the last 40 years, giving us peak-Platini, Tigana, Scifo, Elkjaer and more, but barely anyone in the UK saw it…
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The Perspective Football Podcast
France v Portugal 1984 European Championship semi-final
Spain v Denmark 1984 European Championship semi-final
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