ThreeMatchBan
Every quiz on Three Match Ban works the same way. Each item is a picture or a clue: a faded sticker from an old album, a shirt from a forgotten season, or a career path written out club by club. Type your answer in the box underneath. Get it right and the box turns green, the scoreboard ticks up and the next one is waiting.
Answers are checked in your browser, so nothing you type is sent anywhere. Use full names: Queens Park Rangers rather than QPR, and the player's first name as well as the surname. Accents are not needed, but some answers expect the spelling a player was known by at the time.
Where to start
New to the quizzes? Try the manager stickers, where the faces are familiar and the haircuts are not. The transfer history quiz is the one regulars argue about, and the shirt quizzes reward anyone who spent the 1990s staring at kit adverts in Match magazine. For the players behind the stickers, the player profiles go into more detail.
The types of quiz
The sticker quizzes show a cropped picture from an old football album and ask for the player or manager. The faces are often younger, thinner or hairier than you remember, which is half the fun. The shirt quizzes give you a kit from a particular season and ask for the club. The transfer history quizzes list a career one move at a time, and the goal quizzes describe a famous strike and ask who scored it.
Some quizzes lean on pictures, others on written clues. Where a picture from the original quiz no longer exists, the item has a clue instead, so every question can still be answered. None of the quizzes have a timer, and you can come back to a half-finished one at any point.
Tips for a better score
Start with the items you know straight away and let the score build before tackling the hard ones. For the transfer trails, look for the one club that narrows the field: a single season in Scotland or Japan usually gives the answer away. If a sticker has you stuck, think about the era first. The style of the photograph, the collar of the shirt and the sponsor all hint at the decade, and the decade points to the squad.
Quizzes and the players behind them
Every quiz page has a short introduction to its theme, and many link to the profiles and articles about the people in the pictures. If a face or a club catches your eye, follow the link and read the story before having another go.
Picture quizzes and written clues
Some of the original quiz pictures no longer exist, so those items now come with a written clue instead of an image. The clue gives the same information a sticker would have shown, such as the clubs, the era and the position, so the question can still be answered fairly. The answers themselves are unchanged from the original quizzes, which is why a few of them expect a spelling that was common at the time rather than the one used today.
The score board at the top of each quiz shows how many answers are correct so far, and nothing is lost if you leave the page and come back later to try again with fresh eyes.
Each quiz also suits a group: read the clues aloud in the pub or at home and see who can fill the most boxes before the final whistle blows, with the score board keeping count for everyone.
The full list
There are twenty quizzes in all: nine sticker quizzes, six shirt quizzes, three built on transfer histories, one on Premier League goalscorers and one general player quiz. The list below runs newest first, by the date each quiz was first published, from February 2018 back to October 2009, and every entry links straight to its board. All the sticker quizzes are also gathered on the football sticker quiz page.