Panini goes to the dogs...
I was spending a year in Germany, and I was introduced to the wonder that is Panini sticker albums through collecting a Star Wars sticker album.
1982 I was back in Germany for the summer, and since I often did not get to watch much of the games (I stayed with relatives, few of which had an insatiable hunger for footie), my best bet for getting into the mood was collecting stickers. It was great! Even when I did not have the sticker, the album would provide info in each little box about the player, the club they played for and things like age, weight, and height, or even caps and goals.
Over the years, not only have the WC and EC expanded, but the albums themselves. Sure, there was the downside that they usually featured a limited squad which featured some players that did not end up traveling to the tourney, and excluded some young players who made the squad in the last minute. However, as seen in the picture above, the new album has no info in any of the empty boxes. Thus, the albums really are purely for collecting the pictures, and they are less of a resource. Further, they have added at least 100 useless pictures like photos of all the past champs or downtown Gdansk (notice my political correctness in not calling it Danzig). They even have some 'action' pix of players simply in action, but they are in addition to the normal squad photos and have no info on them. Overall, this means getting a decent amount of players (let's say 25%), you probably have to invest about $30, and a lot more will be useless pictures (like half of a photo of Kharkiv).
The world is going to the dogs, and Panini is leading the charge.
posted by Anonymous @ 7:06 AM
6 Comments:
Not only that, but I read that TOPPS, the baseball card company has signed some national teams to exclusive contracts which mean that Panini has to photoshop the heads of players onto generically painted kits. England might be one of those teams.
That's only fair, a lot of them played like a bunch of robots yesterday.
Ouch - that's not cricket, Red Devil. I thought England set out to do a job, which was to get a point and perhaps more. Of France's vaunted 19 shots on goal, most of them were from 25 yards out and charged down by Scottie Parker. France only got behind England on a couple of occasions and Benzema was forced to play outside the box.
I would argue that England are three or four players away from a very competitive young side for the future (e.g., Gary Cahill in for John Terry, Jack Wilshere in for Steven Gerrard).
Sorry to hear about the decline of Panini - I have very fond memories of collecting the cards and filling in the books, especially when summering at the beach in Bellaria on the Adriatic Coast during WC '74 and '78.
I have fond childhood memories of Panini cards that my brothers and I would collect , aka "stickies." I would sprint nonstop to the newsagent to get stickies, hoping that I would not get duplicates, finally completing Football 78 and Football 79.The memories and a much different time.My brother gave me World Cup 2010 two years ago when I was visiting. My first album since Argentina '78.
I was not only thinking of England. Frankly, it was Sweden who I thought played like a bunch of interchangable Teutonic robots.
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