The Hibernation of Balls & Boots

Dear readers and fellow Football Museum enthusiasts

You've probably noticed that Balls & Boots hasn't been updated for over a year now.
To be fair an enthusiast website need its enthusiast enthusiastic and to make a long story short, I've been quite fed up with football to be honest.
I am passionate about heritage issues and my team ÖIS here in Gothenburg. It's just been troublesome to keep my own interest up in world football and football museums. And I just don't seem to find the time anymore, working and parenting.

Hopefully you can still use the Balls & Boots site as inspiration and encyclopedia.
Hope to get back soon though.

I've got a wee football museum project going on at the Gothenburg City Museum where I work.

All the best
Pontus

ps. The Balls & Boots email address is not checked regularly. Please email me at pontushw[at]gmail.com on any matter.

National Football Museum has kicked off

On July 6th it finally happened: The National Football Museum in Manchester, England opened its doors, or turnstiles rather.
The whole weekend seems to have been a great success. Both the permanent exhibitions and the temporary ones seem to have been highly appreciated among visitors as well as the family activities.

The first temporary exhibition is: Moving Into Space: Football and Art in West Africa

"A thought-provoking exhibition featuring the work of leading contemporary West African artists whose art is inspired by football to explore wider social issues. The exhibition features a wide range of work including painting, sculpture, installation, textiles, and photography.

Today, football is a worldwide phenomenon with an estimated 715 million people watching the 2006 World Cup final. The game has spread to all parts of the globe and in West Africa it is part of the fabric of society, from the street games of children to the large amounts spent on national teams by governments seeking to gain popularity and electoral advantage."

Read more about the exhibition here.
Moving Into Space: Football and Art in West Africa6 July  - 31 December 2012

Sneak preview of the National Football Museum

I recently had a delightful trip to Liverpool and Manchester, UK where I got the chance to visit the National Football Museum one month before opening.
The behind-the-scenes tour was highly interesting and I can assure you that this museum will raise the standard immensly for all the Football Museums worldwide.
I am especially impressed with the balance in content, the well-motivated choices and the fresh design of both the building and the exhibitions.

Good luck for the opening on July 6th!
/Pontus Forslund, Balls & Boots

Thanks to Kevin Moore, Director of the National Football Museum who generously gave the tour and for a rewarding discussion afterwards.
I can't wait to come back and see the whole thing up and running

Some pictures from my visit:



One of my favourites: Ray Kennedy





The official Adidas ball of World Cup 1970

Newcastle United heritage is awarded grants

Newcastle United FC reports that grants have been awarded for a heritage project including an exhibition in the Discovery Museum in Newcastle as well as an education and outreach programme. The National Lottery Fund and the Premier League Community Fund are awarding grants in the total of nearly £170'000.

The project Toon Times kicks off in september 2012 and the exhibition is planned for October 2014 - June 2015. The whole project aims to attract 360'000 visitors.

Read the news here

Just a year ago there was another Newcastle United exhibition in the Discovery Museum: NUFC: For the love of Football.

There seems to be a strong connection between the club and the Discovery Museum. It is argued that a city of Newcastle size with only one professional football team enjoys much more support from the city council as well as the local community. This gives them a much greater chance to explore their heritage than other clubs in other cities that holds rival teams such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield or Glasgow.

German Academy of Football Culture

The next website you should visit is the Deutsche Akademie für Fussball Kultur.
An amazing resource for everyone interested in football in German and European society.
They also have a special page about Football Museums and collection. A real gold mine for Balls & Boots.
It also confirms Germany as the great nation of Football Museums alongside Great Britain.

I also came upon a Deutches Fussball Museum in Berlin. A little surprising because it seems to cover the same themes as the planned DFB Fussball Museum (the national museum of the German FA) in Dortmund.

So, I'll try to investigate further.
Meanwhile I have some German club museums to visit online and, look (guck mal) there seem to be another museum dedicated to a player in progress.
Stay tuned!

Museum Ball III: Walsall

This ball is on display in the Walsall Leather Museum, England. It is the match ball from Walsall FC's biggest game: when they beat the league champions Arsenal in the third round of the 1933 FA cup, 2-0. The game was played 14th january 1933 in Walsall's (nicknamed The Saddlers) Fellows Park.

Walsall supporter Steve Blake writes about the game:
In the first ten minutes, Arsenal were awarded many free kicks, and Walsall held the “Gunners” to a goalless draw at half-time. In the second half, Walsall’s centre forward,Gilbert Alsop headed in the first goal from a corner. They say the cheering was heard two miles away! Arsenal missed many chances untill Tommy Black lost his cool and the resulting foul produced a penalty, and Sheppard scored to put the result beyond doubt. Herbert Chapman, the Arsenal manager, was in a state of shock and promptly banned Black from Highbury, and then a few weeks later transferred him to Plymouth.

Fact File: Borusseum

Borusseum is the Club Museum, of the German Bundesliga club Bourssia Dortmund.

Location: In the North-East-Corner of the Signal Iduna Park, in Dortmund.
Opening year: 19th of December 2008 (the 99th anniversary of the club.)
Annual visitor number: 29 000 (2010)
Collection size: Several thousand, and increasing (about 10% is on display)

One of the great clubs of German and European football, Bourssia Dortmund enjoy a massive support in their home stadium. Currently defending champions of the Bundesliga and has got both a successful history from the game but also troubles with finances.

The Borusseum is a museum from supporters for supporters it partly focuses on the history of the supporters. A museum feature is for instance movies about the choreographies of the supporters.
In the special object exhibit there is the tricot from Lothar Emmerich, which shows spoors of usage of the final match of the European Cup of 1966 against Liverpool FC.
The treasure in the Borusseum treasury is certainly the Champions League Cup (right now the original trench coat from Ottmar Hitzfeld, which he wore in the Champions League final in Munich, is displayed in an exposition in the Wembley stadium).

Other players’ related objects are: the floodlight-tricot, which Reinhold Wosab wore in 1963 against Benfica Lissabon, has its own history (Dortmund won this match in his old stadium, called “Rote Erde”/ “Red Earth” 5-0);  the top scorer trophy Lothar Emmerich got together with Gerd Müller 1966/67; and Emmerich’s shoes he wore as top scorer in the Bundesliga as well as top scorer in the European Cup Winners’ Cup which’ve been gilded later on.

Another object related to the joy of winning are the broken glasses of manager Jürgen Klopp: they were damaged after the match against the FC Bayern Munich in February 2011. Nuri Sahin was so happy about the 3-1 success of Dortmund, that he jumped on the back of Jürgen Klopp so broke his glasses.

As for a classic Borussia Dormund anecdote: the Werner Erdmann brassiere is also on display. In 1947 the whole team of Dortmund was in training camp, because they wanted to be well prepared for the new season. They trained very hard, but they also had a lot of fun. Before the departure back to Dortmund the keeper Willi Kronsbein stole a brassiere from the clothesline of their hotel and put it in the suitcase of his teammate Werner Erdmann. Naturally, he didn’t suspect anything but back at home his wife opened the suitcase and found the brassiere. She immediately thought her husband had had a love affair. Werner Erdmann told her that he was innocent of such allegations, but Mrs. Erdmann was really angry and she went directly to the team meeting and wanted to hear the truth about the bra. After a lot of discussions Willi Kronsbein told her the truth and Werner was no longer suspected by his wife having a love affair. This was the first and only team meeting in the whole history of Borussia Dortmund where ever a woman participated. Therefore the brassiere is in the exhbition.

The Borsseum keep temporary exhibitions once or twice a year. For 2012, one is planned with the topic “The singing of the supporters”. For this exhibition the museum works scientifically together with the University of Paderborn and creatively with the FH of design in Dortmund. 

The museum is run and paid for by the club but also has some sponsors. They bought a tile with their names on it, on the bridge in the entrance hall. The Club’s special department for advancement and supporter activities has also been crucial to the foundation and current activities of the museum. Furthermore private people of fanclubs can donate a sum of 109,09 euros and get a plate, also with their names on a wall in the Boursseum. The thought is that they’ll become a part of the museum forever.

Thanks to Kirsten Behnke, of the Museum Direction (Museumsleitung)

When will the Manchester City Museum rise again?

Almost three years ago, in May 2009, The Manchester City Museum closed their doors to the public. The headline was "Museum closes to rise again".

"The club museum at the City of Manchester Stadium is going to get bigger and better, with plans in the pipeline for an exciting project that will reflect and cherish the club's rich heritage."

Three years later, judging by the MCFC website, the museum is still closed. An email from Balls & Boots has been sent for an update of this state.

Date set for the National Football Museum: 6 July

The National Football Museum of England has set a date for their opening: Friday 6 July.
This was stated in their web-based newsletter distributed today.

"The museum is home to the biggest and best football collection in the world, and will be filled with exciting, interactive exhibits for all the family. Inside, you'll be able to explore how the rules set out in England in the 19th Century grew into the world's biggest sport and how football has affected everything from politics, to social change, to art, fashion and the media."
More can be read on their website's article on the matter: National Football Museum.

Welcoming the Rapideum

Following two years of planning the Rapid Wien Museum - the Rapideum - opened on 15th December. As mentioned in a previous post the museum holds about 2000 objects and one of the in-depth exhibition features includes the story of SK Rapid Wien during the Nazi period: "Grün-Weiss unterm Hakenkreuz"
More info here on the Rapid Wien's news page
and here on the Rapideum home page.

Balls & Boots welcomes this new member of the football museum family.

Ajax Museum closes until further notice

From the Ajax official website:
Due to maintenance to the main entrance of the Amsterdam ArenA, the Ajax Museum is closed until further notice. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. As soon as there is more information, we will make an announcement on www.Ajax.nl

Leeds museum venture gets going

Earlier this year it was reported that Leeds United were considering the establishment of a club museum in a newly developed stand of the stadium Elland Road. In June these plans were place before the councillors of Leeds and now in november the project moves into the next phase where appointed curator Helen Castle is documenting the huge number of objects and archive material in the club's possession.
And now, Leeds United has also made a public appeal for club artifacts, via local press "Yorkshire Evening Post".

People with United memorabilia which they think deserves a place in the
spotlight are asked to contact Shirley Whitehead on the YEP newsdesk on
+44 0113 238 8917 or Helen Castle on +44 0113 367 6320.

The Leeds United Museum will cover about 400 square metres in the East stand of Elland Road and plans, not without ambition, to open in early 2012.

Rapid Wien soon to open museum

The Austrian club Rapid Wien (that's Vienna to you English lot) is the next football museum to open, by my calculations.
I got in touch with Thorsten Leitgeb, project leader of the Rapid Museum to see how things are getting along.

Q:
When are you to open the museum?

A:
The Rapid Wien Museum is growing and we would like to open it in mid november/the beginning of december.

Q: How is the museum set?

A:
It will be a very small, interactive museum with only 100 squaremeters and that's our tough challlenge: to put 112 years of history into a very small room. As you can imagine we can only feature our club history's special highlights.

Q:
Are any particular episodes from the club's history of special interest?

A:
That would be Rapid Wien's german league title from 1941 which was won under sensitive circumstances, while Austria was part of Hitler's Großdeutschem Reich. We want to tell this tale as part of Austrians history as victims as well as perpetrators and opportunists of the Nazi-Regime and, of course, in the context of Rapid Wien's destiny.

Q:
Many club museums in Germany address the period of the Nazi regime. I understand the mechanisms behind it, that it stirs up stories that need to be told. Do you think that this is something isolated to the football sector or do you find it common in German and Austrian society as well? Is it something you must go through before moving on, on other historical matters?

A:
The period of the Nazi regime still is and must be an issue in the Austrian society. Plenty is refurbished, some is not, but hopefully will soon be. When it comes to football Rapid Wien is the 1st club in Austria who did an academic research to investigate it's own role in these difficult circumstances: http://www.skrapid.at/9610+M5c5a1f4ff58.html
This research will be the basis for the execution in our museum. And yes, me and my colleague Domenico Jacono definitley think that this must be cleared before you can present your club's history to an (international) audience. Especially when you have been successfull in the years 1938-45, as we were.

Q:
Are there any certain Rapid players that will be honoured or highlighted in the museum?

A:
Yes, we will feature 6 Rapid players that will get a special treatment in our museum. Two of them I will reveal:
- Josef "Pepi" Uridil (nickname: The Tank) who was in the 1920s the first football popstar in continental europe, starting in a film and having for example a beer named after him. There even was a popular song written about him ("Heute spielt der Uridil" i.e. "Today plays Uridil").
- Ernst Happel (nickname: Aschyl) and also called Wödmasta - that means world champion, even though he was when teammanager only second with the Netherlands in the World Cup 1978. Also European Cup Winner with Feyenoord Rotterdam in 1970 and with Hamburger SV in 1983.

Balls & Boots wish Thorsten and his colleagues the best of luck and hope for an opening on schedule.

More museums added (September 2011)

Lately there has been a few additions to the overall list of football museums that I provide. Some have been found when searching the web and others are the results of tips that I've recieved. They are both existing museums and planned museums:

Added existing museums:
The BSC Young Boys Museum, in Bern, Switzerland
The Athletic Bilbao Museum, in Bilbao, Spain
The Spanish National Museum, in Madrid, Spain
The Benfica Museum, in Lisbon, Portugal

Added planned museums:
The Olympique Marseille Museum, in France (2014)
The Rapid Wien Museum, in Austria (2011)
The Tottenham Hotspur Museum, in London, England (2012-2013?)
The Aberdeen FC Museum, in Scotland

As for the Marseille Museum, it was previously thought to be an existing museum but this turned out to be false. It is now a trophy room and plans its museum opening in 2014 for their new stadium.
The Tottenham Museum is also to open with their new stadium and I doubt that this construction will be finished for the London Olympics in 2012.
Following some delays the Rapid Wien Museum is to open late this year. More about the Rapid Wien is to come later this week.

New Dissertation: Le football exposé, Les musées de clubs

Mr David-Sean Thomas of the Ecole du Louvre has recently finished his dissertation entitled: “Le football exposé, Les musées de clubs” (Football exposed, club museums)
Balls & Boots has received this fresh dissertation and with understanding about 10% of it all (it’s in French, and outside my linguistic domain) it looks really interesting.

This is what the author himself has to say about his work:
"Concerning my recently written dissertation, my first objective was to understand how football is displayed in museums in general. It quickly appeared that the most relevant structures to be analysed were football club museums.
My problematic is: is there a museographic identity for club museums?
To answer that question I posed mixed theoretical researches and a field analysis in six places : Liverpool FC, Manchester United, Arsenal FC, Real Madrid, FC Barcelona and Atletico de Madrid. In fact there are no real club museums in France.
The results showed that the same kind of objects and general dialogue are shown in these structures. Trophies, shirts, the importance of success, a nostalgic vision of the past are omnipresent. Some problems are the noticeable like the lack of quality of the conservation, of the scientific approach of the collections or of the pedagogical actions offered.
I really enjoyed this analysis and I am now waiting for the mark given for this work."

Balls & Boots wish Mr Thomas the best and keep fingers crossed for a good mark.

About the author:
David-Sean Thomas, (b. 1986) is a resident of Paris and started his studies in the university of Paul Valery, Montpellier where he earned his Information and communication degree. He then moved to Paris to study history of art in the Ecole du Louvre, located under the famous museum. Finally, he gained a masters degree in museology in that same university, writing two dissertations : the first was about Nicolas Poussin's paintings in the Louvre museum, the second about football in european museums. At the same time, he worked in the National Museum of Sport.

The Shamrock Rovers Heritage Trust

Since 2008 the Heritage Trust of Dublin club Shamrock Rovers has been active. They do not keep a club museum but truly operates in the same manners as other historical societies of football clubs that actually do keep museums.
The aims of the Shamrock Rovers Historical Trust are:

1) To collect, preserve and display club memorabilia in a museum-type setting.

2) To honour past greats who played for the Hoops and also those who stood on the terraces to support their heroes.

3) To organise and run the annual Player of the Year awards night.

The display of club memorabilia in a museum-type setting, judging from the photo differs little from established museum's minor object-based exhibitions.
If you have any Shamrock Rovers items you now know where to turn.

Exhibition: History of Swansea City FC

You still have a chance to visit the Swansea Museum and their exhibition about the history of their local team Swansea City FC called "Proud to be a Swan".

"In this football focused exhibition Swansea Museum commemorates the highs and lows of Swansea City AFC, from the earliest days of the club to present day success.
Fans Memorabilia supports and illustrates the story that deals with players, the ground and the history of the "Swans", including surprising aspects of the life of this great football club."

Roger Gale, exhibitions and events officer at Swansea Museum, said to the BBC:
"What the Swans have achieved in a short space of time is truly magnificent and this is an opportunity for people to celebrate the club and their wonderful heritage."

Exhibition is open until 30 september.
More images from the BBC here

Museo del Calcio: Video Interview

This is an interview with Dr Fino Fini, the director of the Italian Football Museum, Il Museo del Calcio, made by Toscana WebTV. It was produced in october 2009. All in Italian. Enjoy!

Pride of the English National Football Museum

The National Football Museum of England has launched a new website for the countdown of the opening in early 2012. It is a visually appealing site that wants user participation.
Follow the progress on their news blog.
One of the entries includes an interesting museological statement:

"We're proud that, as museum of the national game, we can reach people who wouldn't normally give museums a chance."

This sets the National Football Museum in a wider museological and strategical context which to my knowledge was also a cornerstone when the museum was housed in Preston.
Now, can this be true that football museum visitors differs from visitors of other museums? And is this probability higher in the United Kingdom than in other countries?
Will visits to football museums generate demographically diverse visits to other museums?
And do museum lovers attend football games?

Sadly, with the new museum website there is a lot of interesting information missing online about the museum collections for instance. We wish a speedy return.

Bedtime reading: Fussball und Museum

Most of the book "Die lokal-globale Fussballkultur" (The local-global Football culture) is available online. It was published in 2004 and includes (most of) Martin Wörner's text "Fussball und Museum" which is both a background to the subject and a plead for a German Football Museum (which is now underway).
A good read and a sound way to practise your German skills.

Follow this link to read (p.237-248)