Big Match football programmes are those that are considered to be very widely collectable by supporters of any football club or international team. The sub-categories within this set are endless. A collector could choose to collect programmes for a specific team, country, competition, or any other weird and wonderful combination that can be imagined.
The most obvious type of Big Match is a cup final of a competition such as the FA Cup or League Cup. These collections can be limited to a certain date, depending on how ambitious you are with your collection. Another source of programmes are sponsored tournaments. Competitions such as the Autoglass Trophy, Watney Cup and Texaco Cup are a little harder to acquire and give us an interesting segment of the history of competitive football, especially when the cup is now defunct.
Programme collectors who are particularly enthusiastic about European based competitions will be interested in those printed for the European Cup, Cup Winners Cup, UEFA Cup, Intertoto Cup, European Super Cup. Those programme collectors who have a passion for non-league football would look for programmes relating to the FA Trophy, FA Vase Finals and the FA Amateur Cup Finals. In both of these categories, collectors would aim to go beyond the scope of finals, and may collected the varied styles of the semi-finals and quarter-finals programmes.
Also worth considering in this category are the programmes printed for international fixtures. British collectors will often collect the four home nations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in friendlies, qualification and tournaments. Some may even decide to add a fifth nation to their collection and collect programmes for the Republic of Ireland. Of course, there are also several options within the context of international matches, when one considers Under 21, Youth and Schools level.
The proliferation of European soccer matches from the Champions League, UEFA Cup, Intertoto Cup and various others on television in recent years has increased the demand for programmes from this category of competition. There are many potential avenues to explore in this subset of programmes, such as home and away matches from a particular team's campaign, or the involvement of British clubs within any given competition. One of the advantages of exploring this subset is the fairly recent development of these types of matches, having occurred only in the last sixty years.
All of the different sets described would make for a very interesting collection to a programme enthusiast. Due to the difficulty in obtaining match programmes from often quite remote corners of the globe for international matches, perhaps your greatest tool in acquiring additions to your collection is through programme dealers and shops. The Big Match issues will be well stocked as these are in demand from clients due to their contextual value, and potential added value they may acquire in the future. These sorts of programmes will be resalable in the future as they make up part of football history.
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