HAPPY 30TH ANNIVERSARY, FourFourTwo

Three decades ago when FFT launched, no one imagined it would lead to an all-nighter with Delia Smith, being abducted by an Israeli taxi driver and sending Bobby Robson bottles of HP Sauce through the post. We speak to every previous editor, to hear the full story of the 'quite remarkable' football magazine...

- Chris Flanagan

Zinedine Zidane still had a full head of hair as he emerged from the bench in Bordeaux for his France debut in 1994.

Within minutes, the 22-year-old had picked up the ball midway into the opposition half, bamboozled one Czech Republic player with a stepover, sidestepped another, then hammered a left-foot shot into the top corner from 25 yards. Two minutes later, he rescued a 2-2 draw by heading home a corner, foreshadowing his famous brace in the 1998 World Cup Final.

Zizou had arrived, and he wasn’t alone in shooting to prominence that day. Just hours earlier, on the other side of the English Channel, the very first issue of FourFourTwo magazine had launched with a similar mission to entertain. Granted, we’re yet to win a World Cup and four Champions League trophies, but nor have we headbutted someone in front of 715 million people watching on TV, so swings and roundabouts.

Launching a new football magazine in the UK might have seemed counterintuitive in 1994, shortly after the only World Cup without any British involvement since 1938. But football was changing. The Premier League was two years into its breakaway, Sky Sports had burst onto the scene with the tagline ‘A whole new ball game’, stadiums were starting to be modernised, and Fantasy Football League and Gazzetta Football Italia were gaining cult followings on TV.

The idea for a new monthly publication came from a staff member at Wine and Spirit International, part of the Haymarket Media Group. “I went to my boss at Haymarket and said, ‘I would like to launch a football magazine’,” Norwich City supporter Karen Buchanan explains now. “In the 1980s you’d had the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters, and a perception of football being full of hooligans. But I had fallen in love with football at Italia 90, because of England and the brilliance of Gazza.