Panini: Espana 82

Of all the Panini World Cup albums, this one will always have a special place in my heart because it was the first one I ever collected as a child. Chances are I got my album as a free giveaway with Shoot! magazine (so many Panini albums were back then), after which the lure of the accompanying green sticker packets became too much for me to bear. So what was Panini’s Espana 82 sticker album like?

Front cover

It was often thought that nothing could beat the image of a football player on the front of a book or magazine to truly encapsulate the exciting nature of the thing. That was certainly the case here and an artist was commissioned to paint just such a player, but to ensure neutrality the he was shown wearing a kit of yellow and red because, let’s face it, no-one in their right mind plays in yellow and red.

Dribbling across the mainland of host nation Spain like a giant, it’s pleasing to observe the English flag featuring among those of all the participating nations rather than the flag of Great Britain which was so often used in lazy fashion by graphic designers for years and years. Aside from the multitude of national identities, the logo and mascot of the 1982 World Cup flanked the left margin below the album’s title, proudly displayed in white on that vivid pine green background.


Page 2 and 3

Turn the front cover and the first thing you see is not the list of world nations translated into six languages or even the page of foils showing the trophy, mascot, logo and poster. Instead, you’re immediately distracted by an insert promoting a competition where you could win a wide range of sporting equipment from Lillywhites. All you had to do was predict the best four teams in the tournament, and a quick glance at my album shows I actually filled in my application form without entering it. Sadly my guesses of Argentina, Brazil, England and West Germany wasn’t ever going to win me anything, so it’s just as well I didn’t waste money on a stamp with that one.

Stadia and Posters

Previous Panini sticker books for major competitions often featured stickers showing the cities where games were being played, but Espana 82 focused squarely on the stadia and provided artistic relief by showcasing the posters commissioned to represent each location. In many ways, these posters were the high point of the album and it’s only a shame we couldn’t get a better view of them on the rather small stickers.

As it is, the posters were beautifully designed by a wide range of artists and each one had a distinctive look that undoubtedly added something to the album if not the competition as a whole. One of the posters has since taken on a special significance for me as in 2007 I visited the museum in Bilbao dedicated to the work of Eduardo Chillida, the Basque sculptor and artist. Having spent the day wandering around the beautiful gardens where much of of his work was on show, I visited the gift shop on my way out and there hanging on the wall was the poster I remembered from my Panini Espana 82 album - Chillida’s design representing Bilbao in the World Cup that year.

Team pages

In common with many of Panini’s early albums (domestic and international), Espana 82 used a two-tier system which seemed a little prejudiced towards those teams seen to be making up the numbers. For the footballing heavyweights of World Cup '82, a two-page spread was provided across which 13 player stickers could be seen accompanying a team picture and silver foil badge. Sadly Panini felt at the time that some teams, such as Cameroon and Kuwait, were only worthy of a single page onto which were crammed 16 players on eight half-and-half stickers (plus badge and team pic). All a little unsatisfactory, but it does at least provide a different page layout for those wanting more variety.

As ever, a welter of useful and occasionally superfluous data was provided on each of the teams including recent match results, player birthdates and places, but if anything it was the player stickers that themselves blurred the distinction between good and not-so-good. Having gone into production well before the tournament started, it must have been the devils own job to include players that would eventually take part in Spain that summer and predictably some failed to materialise (Alvin Martin, I’m looking at you).

For those that were correctly included in the album, much confusion was caused in many a juvenile mind by the number of unfamiliar team shirts displayed on stickers (let alone tracksuits) because kit manufacturers, of course, used the World Cup to launch new kits. This, though, was the price we were willing to pay back then as, if nothing else, we got to see what sort of shirts a team was wearing before the World Cup began.

Back cover

To round off this decent, if unspectacular sticker collection, we were treated to an advert giving Panini collectors the chance to snap up a surely irresistible bit of footy kit. Yes, by sending off a cheque or postal order for £5.99, you too could own a Subbuteo holdall and a Kikari Soccer Trainer!

(What’s that? You don’t know what a Kikari Soccer Trainer is? Oh alright, if you must know, it’s a net that fits round a football on the end of a long piece of elastic so you don’t have to keep chasing after it all day every time you re-enact Terry McDermott hitting a 30-yard-volley. Satisfied now?)

You have read this article 1982 World Cup / Espana 82 / Panini / Stickers with the title Stickers. You can bookmark this page URL https://couplesfootballstadium.blogspot.com/2012/09/panini-espana-82.html. Thanks!

The Football Attic Podcast - Episode 1

There's a well known philosophical debate that asks "If a tree falls down in a forest and there's no-one around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

Well, we can't answer that, but we can pose the question "If 2 blokes spend 40 minutes talking about Panini and stuff, will anyone listen?"

Thinking about it, it's more you who can answer that question... so... you know... download it... now!

Right-click and 'Save As' from the link below:

Football Attic Podcast Episode 1

or download it from iTunes... when I figure that out...

And please let us know what you think :)

You have read this article Panini / Podcast / Stickers with the title Stickers. You can bookmark this page URL https://couplesfootballstadium.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-football-attic-podcast-episode-1.html. Thanks!

Panini: Football 79

Having cracked the UK market the previous year, Figurine Panini returned with a new sticker collection – Football 79 – to further establish itself as the leader in its field.

The album's royal blue cover featured an action shot of Liverpool playing Club Brugge in the 1978 European Cup Final, but rather cleverly the designers also added a few well chosen stickers to make the collection even more appealing to young kids.

Inside once again was the trusty fixture grid into which scores could be written, but that was small fry compared to the first main feature of the album – a 6-part map showing the locations of all the league teams of England, Scotland and Wales. The map proved so popular that it returned the following year in Panini's Europa 80 album.

The stickers of the Football 79 collection were more rectangular compared to Football 78, but once again there were 17 of them for each team – 15 players, plus a badge and a team picture on every double page spread. The player stickers had a less cluttered look than before with each player name displayed simply at the bottom while a small pictogram featured just above it to indicate the team name, colours and badge.

The main talking point for Football 79, however, wasn't the player stickers but the team badges. For the first and so far only time in Panini's rich history of sticker production in the UK, team badge stickers were made from fabric rather than metallic foil. The fabric itself had a silky texture and a silvery sheen which was a masterstroke of design and added a tactile element to an otherwise papery norm.

Quite why these silky silver badges never returned in subsequent years is unclear, but one can only assume Panini (and the collectors of its stickers) favoured the shiny foils in far greater numbers. A shame as this was an example of great originality on the part of the Italian manufacturer.

The page layouts were much neater for this second domestic collection and a preference for showing the player biographies below the stickers was established in this album. Sticker spaces were decorated on either side by a column of red globe symbols while the text (including the team profiles) appeared in blue. For the Scottish League Premier Division, all the teams were given equal prominence at last although the club badges featured a green background rather than the silver one favoured by their English counterparts.

For the English Second Division, the same format was used as for Football 78. Each club had a badge and team picture – both in landscape aspect this time – with the badges sporting a gold background and a football symbol to the right of each one. The usual array of facts and figures for each team was on show, printed in blue throughout and accompanied again by a fixture grid.

Among the inevitable array of curiosities found within the Football 79 album are a youthful looking Sam Allardyce sporting the sort of moustache that no 25-year-old should ever have, Chelsea's Clive Walker sporting the frizzy blond hair and black beard combo that no-one should ever have and QPR goalkeeper Phil Parkes sporting the shaggy dog look that frankly no shaggy dog should ever have. All that, and the first sight of shirt sponsorship courtesy of Hibernian's affiliation with Bukta. Something for everyone, then, in this excellent Panini sticker album.

You have read this article 1979 / Football 79 / Panini / Stickers with the title Stickers. You can bookmark this page URL https://couplesfootballstadium.blogspot.com/2012/08/panini-football-79.html. Thanks!

Panini Euro 2012: How was it for you?

Two months on from our previous post, it’s now possible to assess the impact and effect of Panini’s Euro 2012 sticker collection. What have we learned from this self-adhesive sensation? Has it been a stick-on success or a double dose of despair?

Speaking from personal experience, there’s absolutely no doubt that Panini are enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment. For anyone thinking the days of sticker collecting ended when we outgrew our school uniforms, be in no doubt – Panini reigns once again, and age is no longer an issue.

As a 40-year-old blogger, I’ve been heartened beyond belief at the sight of so many peers devoting themselves to the pastime of tearing open packets and filling albums. A wide range of ages are covered, and though they’re located across all four corners of London and beyond, every man jack of them has taken the opportunity to exchange doubles and discuss their collections whenever possible.

The use of Twitter has undoubtedly been a useful tool in helping people to complete their Euro 2012 collections. And why not – back in our childhood days, we merely had to stroll into the school playground with a wad of swaps held together tightly by an elastic band in order to meet up with other like-minded souls. Decades on, the ability to tap into such a readily available group of fellow swapees is not so easy. Why not, therefore, use Twitter as a way to reach out to today’s Panini apostles?

Aside from the pleasure of swapping stickers with someone you barely know, the subsequent postal exchange of doubles is an ironic conclusion to any Twitter-based transaction. Social media tools can be said to have made communication easy as pie these days, yet at the end of it all we still have to rely upon the trusty old Royal Mail to receive the doubles we’ve requested. And let it be noted: there’s still something of a minor thrill to be had from hearing the plop of an envelope fall through the letterbox when you know there are stickers inside.

Being a London-based blogger, I’ve been lucky enough to meet many other people of the same persuasion to initiate an old-fashioned face-to-face swapping session. When I met Chris Nee from The Stiles Council several weeks ago, we found ourselves sitting in a darkened corner of the Sports Bar & Grill, Farringdon, staring intently at our open Panini albums on the table. It felt odd – embarrassing even at first: two men old enough to know better thumbing through each other’s packs of swaps, half-drained pints of beer readily within reach to one side. After a while though, that awkward feeling had disappeared. We were innocently enjoying that Proustian rush, harming no-one and living for the moment. Perhaps we were kids again, just for a short while…

A couple of weeks later, I met up with a whole crowd of bloggers in The Mulberry Bush on the South Bank. When I arrived, an entire corner of the pub had been taken over by people I’d known and respected for a long time like the written output they produce. Ryan Keaney, Jamie Cutteridge and many more were there, all heavily engrossed in the important business of assessing the swaps of others and filling their own albums. It was an extraordinary sight, but one which gladdened the heart. Panini stickers clearly meant a lot to a great many people, all of whom were happily using their hobby to hang on to a small part of their childhood.

Personally speaking, I was in the fortunate position of being able to display my list of ‘needs’ and ‘swaps’ here on the Football Attic blog site. This meant that I, like my co-blogger Rich, received a steady stream of emails from people wishing to exchange their doubles, and very useful they were too. It undoubtedly saved us both a lot of money in helping us reach that momentous point where we could apply for those last remaining stickers from Panini.

Interestingly, many friends of ours used similar tools to do the same. Some, like Damon Threadgold also posted lists on their blogs while others such as Terry Duffelen, Andrew Gibney and Ian Rands shared out Google Spreadsheets to the same effect. Either way, the internet was there to help us all – a technological playground we could all congregate in.

And what about the collection itself? Was it satisfying to undertake or disappointing? Well let’s get my personal conspiracy theories out of the way first. For my money, I accumulated an enormous amount of swaps early on – far more than with equivalent collections in years gone by. It was also a long time before I saw any England stickers to the point where one Twitter correspondent suggested they’d been mainly distributed in the north of the country. Probably not factually correct, but definitely the sort of thing that makes you wonder if it’s true or not.

I also saw precious few silver foils during my collecting campaign. When I visited the Panini website last week to order my remaining 33 stickers, the Germany badge, Ireland badge, Sweden badge and the bottom half of the tournament logo were all there among them, and that’s just four I can mention off the top of my head. There were plenty more where that came from.

Then there were the multipacks which, I’m convinced, provided a better selection of stickers than those sold from boxes. In the fullness of time, I came to see more ‘special’ stickers (i.e. badges, team pictures, slogans and so on) from the multipacks than I did from boxed packets. Coincidence? Who can tell…

As for the four-part team pictures, they were an ambitious feature on the part of Panini, but in execution not a huge success. Often was the time I found myself trying to marry up the matching details on adjoining stickers but I had the devil’s own job trying to form a decent looking whole. Somehow the printing and cutting of said stickers had gone awry in the production process and one can only hope they’ll sort that out before the 2014 World Cup collection comes out.

No matter, though. When I stuck the last of my remaining stickers in last night, it felt as though a genuinely fulfilling project had come to an end. The album was full and now it was time to reflect on a job well done. Yes, it had cost me a fair bit of money, but sometimes you have to spend a little to gain something exceptional. Panini’s Euro 2012 wasn’t just about collecting stickers – it was about sharing the experience with friends and feeling ever so slightly younger again, and that you cannot put a price on.

You have read this article Euro 2012 / Panini / Stickers with the title Stickers. You can bookmark this page URL https://couplesfootballstadium.blogspot.com/2012/06/panini-euro-2012-how-was-it-for-you.html. Thanks!

Panini: Euro 84

Given that England hadn't qualified for Euro '84, it was perhaps no surprise that I don't remember seeing Panini's sticker collection of the same name in the shops at the time. One thing I know for certain is that the BBC and ITV virtually ignored the tournament, the former showing a Spain v West Germany group game and the Final while ITV dropped their planned coverage altogether.

For those lucky fans with access to Panini's latest offering, it seemed that most things had remained the same since the Europa 80 collection four years earlier, but there were some minor changes to note for the eagle-eyed.

Front cover

No photographic image to catch the eye of a potential buyer on this occasion – instead, an artistic composition of a goalkeeper diving to the left on a blue background with the Eiffel Tower in the background and some gold bar lettering.

There's also a small cameo appearance from the tournament mascot, Peno the Rooster, plus the recently introduced UEFA 'Euro' logo in the blue and white of France.

Opening pages

As in 1980. the inside cover offered up all the qualifying round statistics and a chart to translate country names into six different languages – very handy for an international product such as this. Page three repeated the front cover design minus the goalkeeper with the bold and somewhat overworked 'Euro 84' lettering now in red. There was space for two stickers; one depicting Peno, the other being a gold foil showing off the Euro 84 logo.

Another returning feature and one retained in this year's Euro 2012 album was the Roll of Honour. This comprised of six stickers, each showing a black and white image of the previous winners, plus all the results from each of the tournaments between 1960 and 1980.

The following page was all about the posters for each of the eight competition venues. This was a new feature and one which showed how graphic design was being used to add a sense of identity to each of the Euro '84 venues. Many had a similar, modern feel – action shots of players heading, kicking or saving the ball – however the ninth poster, that of the Final, looked more like something culled from a 1950's French Ministry for Tourism office.

After that was the familiar site of a two-page spread showing pictures of all the stadia and the cities they were located in. Most striking of all was the view of Marseille harbour and all its boats and Strasbourg with its cathedral in the foreground. Sadly the view of St.Etienne's Geoffroy-Guichard stadium paled by comparison. Its pitch appeared to be covered in snow while nearest to camera five men can be seen sweeping up rubbish from the previous match.

Team Pages

Unlike the previous Panini Euro album, there was no favouritism shown towards the bigger teams. All competing nations had 20 sticker spaces for their players (and the coach) laid out over three pages coloured vividly in blue, white and red. Preceding them all was the traditional foil badge (all foils being gold in this series). There was also a four-piece team picture, doubled in size from those seen in Panini's Europa 80 album.

Everything else had a familiar ring to it – the spaces where you could fill in the results for each team, all the results per team since the last Euro competition and the 'Balance' table showing the total number of wins, draws and losses against all other teams.

As for the player stickers themselves, they had a clean appearance which looked a little more up-to-date than those in the previous Euro album. The tournament logo was inset into the top left corner, the mascot accompanied the player's national flag in the opposite corner and the player's name was at the bottom where you expected it. Nice, simple and easy to read.

Strangely in this album, there weren't too many opportunities for the reader to stop and giggle at a dubious player picture. If forced to pick out one, however, it would have to be the one featuring Klaus Berggreen of Denmark  who had the look of a man recently signed up by the Danish version of the FBI. Berggreen scored one of Denmark's five goals against Yugoslavia during the tournament but got himself sent off in the semi-final against Spain.

Excluded nations

Finally, at the back of the album, came the return of the Excluded Nations section – a chance for Panini to (a) bulk up an otherwise thin sticker album, and (b) remind you of the countries that were so good, they didn't see the need to win their qualifying group.

Over three pages, collectors had the chance to find a foil badge and both parts of a team picture for nine countries that failed to make the trip to France. England, of course, was one, but so too were the world champions Italy (who finished fourth in their qualifying group), the Netherlands (edged out by Spain), Scotland (edged out by everyone in their group) and the Soviet Union (second only to Portugal in Group 2).

The back cover

A map of France painted in blue, white and red showing the locations of each of the venues. On the off chance that words and place names weren't your strong point, the venues were also indicated by a sizeable picture of Peno in each case.

You have read this article Euro 84 / Panini / Stickers with the title Stickers. You can bookmark this page URL https://couplesfootballstadium.blogspot.com/2012/06/panini-euro-84.html. Thanks!

Future Nostalgia: Panini Euro 2012

I didn’t collect Panini World Cup 2010. I regret it now. I got to the party early, no-one arrived, so I went home. In my absence, the world showed up, had a great time and talked about it for weeks afterwards, every word lingering painfully within earshot. I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

As an adult, I’ve collected every Panini sticker album for a main tournament from Euro 2000 onwards except one - World Cup 2010. Why I ever felt it was a fruitless exercise two years ago I don’t know. The main thing is, I’m back. Not only that; many of the people I respect and admire in the football blogging community are joining me for the ride.

I bought my album last Friday, sealed as it was with three free packets of stickers inside its clear wrapper. It felt good. Really good. When I was a child, new Panini albums – those tied in with each domestic season in the UK - would typically be given away free with Shoot! magazine. Now they fight for shelf space in their own right with all manner of other magazine fodder in WHSmith's. Just as well the Euro 2012 album stands out with its vivid purple front cover.

This leads us to a strong element of the new album - the design. It permeates every page of the book, and that's largely due to the delightful way Brandia Central have branded this summer's tournament for UEFA. The floral device is very easy on the eye and allows for plenty of colour to be used without being too overpowering.

The next thing to notice is the layout of the team pages. No longer is each vacant sticker space accompanied by an abbreviated player profile below it. Most of that stuff's now on the sticker itself, remarkably. The player's name, club, date of birth, height and weight are all now below the player's face, thereby leaving each team page as a series of empty rectangles (save for a column displaying the appearances and goals for each squad member). A brave move by Panini, but one which works rather well.

And what about those stickers? Well they're beautifully designed as ever too. The usual high quality photographs feature throughout, and this year we have a few new ideas to liven things up. Each team includes three 'In Action' stickers showing full length images of three chosen players within a snazzy purple border. There are stickers showing the slogan 'Creating History Together' in the languages of each competing nation, stickers showing the mascots holding the team flags, a sticker for the UEFA Respect campaign - even a sticker for the official match ball.

But how did I fair out of all this?  Which stickers featured among those in the packets I opened first?  Well the first sticker I saw in my first packet couldn't have been more enigmatic, for it featured Italy's own Mario Balotelli. I got Liverpool's Daniel Agger, Spanish superstar David Villa and Manchester United's very own Ashley Young.

All very well, but I didn't get any shiny foil badges or team picture stickers, so the following day I did the decent thing and bought myself another half a dozen packets. At 50p each I realised that the option of flamboyantly buying a whole box was going to be out of the question (for now at least), but at least this new batch of stickers brought me the Portugal flag, Andrey Arshavin and Samir Nasri, plus a whole host of other well known football players gracing this summer's tournament.

And so it begins. A whole new collection is underway, only this time I have many friends to share the Panini love with. Already on board are Terry Duffelen (Football Fairground/Bundesliga Lounge), Chris Nee (The Stiles Council/Twofootedtackle), Andrew Gibney (French Football Weekly) and in the very near future, The Football Attic's very own Rich Johnson.

Between us, we'll be sticking our stickers like there's no tomorrow and sharing our experiences on Twitter (me included), so if you'd like to tell us how you're collection's going, send us a tweet! Better still, if you've got any doubles you'd like to tell the world about, make sure you use the hashtag #paninidoubles because you never know - someone might need it for their own collection...

You have read this article Euro 2012 / Panini / Stickers with the title Stickers. You can bookmark this page URL https://couplesfootballstadium.blogspot.com/2012/04/future-nostalgia-panini-euro-2012.html. Thanks!

Panini: Football 78

Panini’s first foray into the world of annual UK sticker collections began with Football 78. Its bright red cover featuring action photos neatly sectioned into the hexagonal patches of a big football was a beacon for kids across the country to go out and fritter away what little pocket money they had at the time.

For many sticker collectors, this was where it all began - the start of a lifelong obsession. The Queen's Silver Jubilee had been and gone, and now it was time to celebrate something altogether different: the glorious sport of Football itself.

Page 2 and 3

Inside, we get an early sight of two elements that would become familiar in later years: a grid for filling in First Division results (some of which were already filled in for you up to October 15th 1977) and the trophy page with spaces for stickers of the FA Cup, League Championship Trophy and the two Scottish equivalents. Of those four stickers, only the FA Cup and Scottish Cup were in gold foil for reasons we’re still trying to fathom out.

First Division pages and stickers

The team pages came next – two for each club with spaces for seventeen stickers each. Strangely in this first domestic Panini album we see an odd reluctance to fit in an extra player on the first page to create a uniform layout. Note the odd row of three rather than four where the manager and goalkeeper images reside…

The double-page spread has a familiar look for those that remember Panini’s later efforts, but in this early period the preference was to show biographies of each player in a single block on the second page rather than individually below each player’s picture.

There was also the statistics block situated between the badge and team photo; a mini-feast of facts and information for the knowledge-hungry child wanting to know a club’s record attendance or the change colours of Wolverhampton Wanderers.

As for the stickers themselves, the ’78 design was that of a red window frame with English flag, team name and badge at the top and player name at the bottom. Team badges were of the hard gold foil variety while team pictures used a similar design to those used for the players.

What’s notable about the player photos in this early Panini vintage is that each team member wasn't necessarily  seen wearing the same shirts. In many cases you can pick out two or even three different shirt designs per team, something Panini made a point of correcting to a large extent later on.

Second Division

Subsequent Panini albums may have dared give you a glimpse of life in Divisions Three or even Four, but it's only the second tier of English football that was spotlighted here. Again there was another results chart to complete (half of it already having been done for you) before the minimal format of badge-statistics-team picture rolled out across six pages.

Here we get our first glimpse of the double foil badge – a regular-sized sticker split in two for twice the pleasure. Even though the Second Division badges were, in reality, only half the size of their First Division equivalents, there was something undeniably joyful about getting two on the one sticker.

As for the teams listed, there was an eclectic mix of the rising stars, the fallen wonders and the perennial water-treaders. Premier League stalwarts such as Bolton, Fulham and, yes, even Tottenham Hotspur sat cheek-by-jowl alongside teams like Bristol Rovers, Orient and the previous season's Division Three champions Mansfield Town.

Scottish Premier Division pages

If you think there's a two-tier structure in the SPL today, that was nothing compared to Panini's view of the Scottish Premier Divisiom in 1978. Aberdeen may have been first in alphabetical order, but there was a pecking order to observe. First came Celtic and Rangers, treated royally to the same double-page spread of their English counterparts. Everyone else followed and had to make do with only a single page, if you don't mind.

Hardly fair treatment, really, especially as that only left enough room for seven players to accompany the manager, club badge and team picture. Still, at least we got a fair selection of the pale, pasty-skinned and wild-haired talent making a name for itself north of the border, as well as the ubiquitous half-completed results grid.

Sadly no Scottish First Division pages were included in this collection – they were to come in later years – but at least the strange array of Scottish Premier Division club badges made up for it. Celtic's badge looks a good 15 years ahead of its time, Clydebank's looks like it's been extracted from the cover of the Communist Manifesto while St Mirren seem to have settled for something scribbled on the back of a fag packet by Alex Ferguson himself.

Curiosities

Aside from the ongoing 70's competition to see 'who looks more like Graeme Souness than Graeme Souness', there's much to please the idle browser of this album. Sir Alf Ramsey makes an appearance as Birmingham City manager (Panini politely leaving out the word 'Caretaker' for such an undoubted legend of the game), while Everton's team picture appears to have been taken on a 1:3 hill.

Phil Thompson's lovely head of hair can only, in our opinion, be put down to him visiting the same stylist as Wendy Craig, star of BBC TV's 'Butterflies' whereas the winner of the award for the 'Too-Frightening-For-Words Pose' undoubtedly goes to QPR's Stan Bowles. 'Most Overlooked Badge'? That must go to the one worn by many of West Bromwich Albion's players… anyone know anything about this?

As for the team trying hardest to look professional in its team picture, that must surely go to the aforementioned Clydebank who all appear to be wearing the biggest stitched-on numbers ever on their red tracksuit tops. A fine effort there, we're sure you'll agree.

Back cover

A never-more-70's hand-drawn vignette depicted as if zooming away from view in a vivid red-orange-yellow colour scheme. A bit like the opening titles to a Lew Grade British spy thriller series shot through the prism of an official FIFA World Cup film. Kind of.

You have read this article 1978 / Football 78 / Panini / Stickers with the title Stickers. You can bookmark this page URL https://couplesfootballstadium.blogspot.com/2012/02/panini-football-78.html. Thanks!

Panini: Europa 80

Europa 80 was the first Panini sticker collection I can remember owning. I still have it in my possession - in fact of all my old sticker albums it's probably my most prized possession. To my astonishment, I recently discovered I'd filled 241 of the 262 spaces in the album. 'Astonishment' in that I don't remember getting so many of the stickers, plus I was only eight years old at the time and shudder at the thought of how much money my parents must have given me for the stickers. Still, there it is: a gallant effort in trying to complete my first Panini album.

Panini's first 'Euro' sticker collection coincided with UEFA's first proper European Championship. By 'proper', I mean one in which there were two groups of four competing teams playing all their games in one country. Between 1960 and 1976, the finals of the competition consisted of two semi finals and a final hosted by one nation. Hardly the sort of premise around which to base an entire sticker collection.

The 1980 UEFA European Championships changed all that. Having fought off England to host the tournament, Italy were given the dubious honour of providing the setting for games involving the likes of West Germany, Spain, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, England, plus the hosts, Italy.

This was to be England's first appearance in a major tournament since Gerd Muller hooked West Germany's third quarter-final goal past Peter Bonetti in the 1970 World Cup. Ron Greenwood's side headed off to Turin with a side full of emerging talent including Kevin Keegan, Ray Clemence and Trevor Brooking. That squad, along with those of the other competing nations, were immortalised by Panini in their inaugural Euro sticker album and a fine job they made of it too.

The Front Cover
Almost square in nature and distinctively black, it featured a big action photo of Italy's Franco Causio on the ball, closely watched by Dutch defender Piet Wildschut. The album title appeared in geometric cut-out letters above a band of flags representing the competing nations and the Europa 80 official emblem in the bottom corner.

Inside Front Cover
The inside Front Cover gave details of the qualifying round results and final standings, plus the classic Panini 'List and abbreviations of the nations'. Panini sticker collectors will be familiar with this as it cropped up in all their international football albums and provided a fascinating insight into European dialects. Even to this day, whenever I hear the quiz question "Which country is sometimes known by its Latin name of Helvetia?" I can instinctively and immediately answer "Switzerland" purely because of Panini's ever-helpful abbreviation list.

Of particular note is the appearance of several countries that weren't officially recognised at the time, such as Bohemia, Estonia, Croatia and Slovakia. Not sure if it was incredibly foresight of what was to come a decade later or recognition of what had gone before some forty or more years previous.

Features
The album got off to a rip-roaring start with a fabulous map of Europe on page 1 showing where all the competing nations were located. Made up of nine stickers in a 3 x 3 grid, the completed picture was a work of art in itself.

Pages 2 and 3 were devoted to a 'European Championship Roll of Honour.' This comprised of a potted history of all the Euro tournaments up to that point, each one represented by a star player sticker and another of the winning team. All the images were in black and white.

Page 4 featured five stickers, each one relating to an important aspect of the 1980 European Championships. They depicted in turn UEFA President Artemio Franchi, the official tournament emblem (a stylised football flower), the official mascot (a wooden Pinocchio toy holding a football and wearing a paper hat), the Henri Delaunay Cup and a map of Italy showing the match locations. Alongside these was the tournament programme - a place where you could fill in the results of each match as they took place.

Page 5 provided spaces for eight stickers, specifically a city and stadia picture for each of the four venues, and these were always a great way of building up an image in your mind of what the host country would actually be like to visit in real life. Among these, the beautiful coastal view of Naples and the historic splendour of Milan Cathedral particularly stood out.

Last but not least was a mammoth seven-page spread at the back of the album featuring 14 'Excluded Nations', or to put it more appropriately, 'nations that failed to qualify'. As a concept, this seems staggering by today's standards, but you have to remember that only eight teams qualified for Europa 80. In order not to exclude most of the continent from its potential sticker-collecting duties, Panini did the decent thing and allowed five sticker spaces for the likes of East Germany, Ireland, France, Helvetia (sorry, 'Switzerland'), Yugoslavia, Hungary, Northern Ireland, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, the Soviet Union, Sweden and Wales.

It wasn't the first time Panini had done this (as we'll prove in some of our upcoming articles) and if nothing else it made real the dreams of those football fans that never thought they'd see the day when the Welsh national team featured in a Panini sticker book.

The teams
The higher profile teams (West Germany, Netherlands, England and Italy) were set out on three pages of the Europa 80 album. On these were 20 spaces for players, one for a gold foil badge and two making up a double-sized team picture. The rest (Czechoslovakia, Greece, Belgium and Spain) had two pages featuring a badge, a two-part team picture and 14 players.

The sticker spaces were decorated with a pale green surround that contained hand-drawn images of players in goalkeeping, dribbling, passing and shooting poses. Sadly for me, my eight-year-old self coloured these in with felt-tip pens, but hey - how was I to know I'd be able to sell the album on the internet for a vast cost more than 30 years later?

As for the player stickers themselves, they featured the usual high-quality colour head shots framed in light blue with the player's name, Europa 80 logo and national flag of the player's team below. Among my favourites were those of the Netherlands' Johnny Metgod (still with a full head of hair before joining Nottingham Forest), Czechoslovakia's Zdenek Nehoda (a candidate for 1980's Movember campaign if ever there was one) and England's Peter Barnes (looking like he's having a drug-induced interlude, below-the-waist ecstasy or a hangover from hell).

The Back Cover
All black once again, save for a big picture of the Europa 80 mascot in the middle and the usual array of album prices as they were across Europe at the time (15p in Great Britain's case).

You have read this article Europa 80 / Panini / Stickers with the title Stickers. You can bookmark this page URL https://couplesfootballstadium.blogspot.com/2011/11/panini-europa-80.html. Thanks!