ThreeMatchBan
Football on video used to mean a VHS tape recorded off the television, labelled in biro and worn thin from replaying the same goal. This section collects clips in that spirit. Some are famous moments, others are adverts and studio shows that only make sense to people who grew up with them.
Each page explains what you are watching and why it matters: the match, the player, the advertising campaign or the presenter. The video itself loads only when you press play, so the page stays quick and nothing is fetched from YouTube until you ask for it.
What is on the shelf
Expect Mexican strikers advertising toothpaste, French pop songs about Marseille, Saturday-lunchtime television and long-forgotten indoor football from the United States. For more on the people in the clips, the player profiles and the articles fill in the background, and the history of football advertising goes further still.
Why old football television still matters
Before every match was broadcast live, most supporters saw their football through a handful of programmes. Highlights shows on a Saturday night, a preview on a Saturday lunchtime and the occasional live cup tie were the whole menu. The presenters, the theme tunes and even the graphics became part of the memory of a season, which is why a few seconds of an old opening sequence can take a viewer straight back to a particular living room.
Adverts tell a similar story. Footballers selling toothpaste, crisps or fruit juice show how the game and its stars were marketed long before social media. They are often clumsy, sometimes brilliant and always a snapshot of the moment the player was most famous.
How to watch
Every video page carries a short introduction, the background to the clip and links to related profiles and articles. Press the play button to load the video from YouTube. If a clip has been removed by the uploader, the page still explains what it showed and why it was worth watching, so the story is not lost along with the footage.
From the VHS shelf to the screen
Many of these clips survived only because someone kept a tape in a loft and later uploaded it. The picture quality varies, the sound sometimes drifts and the adverts between programmes are occasionally more interesting than the match itself. That is part of the charm. A clean, remastered version would lose the feel of watching football on a small set with the curtains drawn on a winter afternoon.
The section grows whenever a forgotten programme or advert turns up. If a clip reminds you of another, the related links at the bottom of each page point to the next one worth watching.
Adverts, songs and season reviews
The adverts are a small history of football marketing. Hugo Sánchez sold toothpaste in Mexico, René Higuita advertised fruit juice in Colombia and British players sold crisps and boots in a style that now looks wonderfully dated. The songs are just as revealing, such as the record made by Basile Boli and Chris Waddle during their days at Marseille.
The season reviews and documentaries bring back whole campaigns in under an hour: the Bundesliga of 1990–91, the American indoor game of the mid-1980s and Aston Villa in the first Premier League season of 1992–93. They are a reminder of how differently football was filmed and presented before the modern broadcast era.
Every clip comes with enough background to make sense on its own, so even a viewer who was not there at the time can see why the moment is still remembered so fondly by supporters.
How the list is ordered
The fourteen clips below run newest first, by the date each one was first posted on Three Match Ban, from November 2013 back to March 2011. Seven still play from their original upload. The other seven have been taken down by the people who posted them, so their pages carry the label "Clip no longer available" and keep the story and the background without the footage.