Match (magazine)

MATCH!

File:HotShots.png Name of Magazine #1, cover dated 31 November 2006
Editor	Ian Foster
Categories	Weekly, every Tuesday
Publisher	EMAP
Paid circulation	130,181
First issue	September 1979
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Website	www.matchmag.co.uk

MATCH is the UK's biggest selling football magazine. It is published by Emap Active, the division of Emap Consumer Media specialising in sports and leisure magazines. Aimed at the teenage and pre-teenage market, it is published every Tuesday, 51 times a year at a cost of £1.70 per issue. There is a double issues produced at Christmas that remains in the shops for two weeks. The magazine includes interviews, features and quizzes about the world's leading football teams and players.

History

Match was launched in September 1979, costing just 25p to buy. The original editorial team was headed by editor Mel Bagnall and subsequent editor Paul Stratton. It proved popular on its launch, with Kevin Keegan and Glenn Hoddle among its regular columnists in the early years of publication. David Platt became a regular columnist after the 1990 World Cup.

On its launch in 1979, the magazine initially failed to catch the dominant circulation of its main weekly football rival, Shoot. In the mid 1990s, under editor Chris Hunt, it finally eclipsed Shoot and other rivals such as 90 Minutes and Match Of The Day to become the biggest selling football title in Britain, with sales of over 200,000 copies a week.

Subsequent editors have successfully built on the reputation and strengths of the magazine, leaving it as currently the UK's only weekly football title. Rival magazines have either been forced to close or have changed frequency.

Many leading football journalists have started their careers at Match, including Mark Irwin of The Sun, Hugh Sleight of FourFourTwo and Paul Smith of The Sunday Mirror.

Current Content

Features that currently appear in the magazine include:

• Player interviews - Match usually includes between two and four player interviews per week, offering gossip and offbeat stories from the stars of England's Premier League. In the 80s and 90s the quality of its player interviews and columnists was one of the biggest strengths of Match.

• Hot Stuff - Reviews of all the latest football-related products, including football kits, video games and DVDs.

• Your Shout! - The readers letters page. Fans' drawings and photos are also featured.

• Coach King's Skill School - Offering football advice every week, such as how to take good free-kicks or save penalties. Readers can also submit their problems, which are then answered in the magazine.

• Euro Focus - This section focuses on the domestic leagues across Europe, with news stories and results, plus the league standings and top goal scorers from Germany's Bundesliga, France's Ligue 1, Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga. The section also has a "Team of the Week" feature, plus an analysis of a team from one of Europe's major leagues.

• Championship Focus - Alternating with Euro Focus, this feature focusses on the teams, players and gossip from the Coca Cola Championship in England.

• Matchfacts - Statistical round-up of the previous week's football, which includes results, statistics and player ratings for every match in the Premiership, Championship, League One, League Two, Scottish Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup and the Scottish Cup. At the end of each month, each Premiership player's ratings are averaged to reveal the top five performers from each club in the division for that month. Match often interviews the player with the highest overall rating, who is billed as "Matchman of the Month" In previous years the magazine has presented the winner of the Matchman Of The Month with an award. The Matchfacts section was, for many years, produced as a separate pull-out section of the magazine, and readers were encouraged to collect each pull-out through the season.

Fantasy League Game

Match has its own fantasy football game for under 18s called Match Megastars. There is also a celebrity league featuring teams chosen by various Premiership footballers, including Paul Robinson, Scott Parker and Arjen Robben. Reading's Steve Sidwell won the first game of the 2006-07 season. Previously, in the 1997-98 season, Match had a Fantasy Football competition based loosely on the Match Facts section of the magazine.

Books

• Match Annual - Since the early 1990s Match has produced traditional 'football Annual', aimed directly at the pre-teen Christmas market. The annual has proved a highly successful spin-off thanks to the strength of the Match brand. They earliest Match Annuals were paperback and sold through newsagents rather than book stores. In the past Match spin-offs have also included a yearly diary, published by Letts.

External links

• MATCH Website
• MATCH Megastars Fantasy Football