Only Good Stickers: Panini Fotboll 91

lunedì 2 novembre 2020

Panini Fotboll 91

Fotboll 91 is the third Panini album of the Swedish league, after the 1986 and 1987 editions. It is a marvelous collection in pure 80's style, with thick pages, metallic badges and yellow border stickers. The album includes the clubs of the Swedish leagues (Allsvenskan and Division I) and the National team. First the 10 competing clubs of the Allsvenskan are shown in alphabetical order, starting from AIK Stockholm. For these clubs there are 24 stickers over three pages: the metallic badge, the team photo (two stickers), the manager, and 20 players. IFK Goteborg won the 1991 Allsvenskan and qualified to the Champions League. Their team included the goalkeeper Thomas Ravelli, the midfielder Stefan Rehn (ex Everton), and the forward Kennet Andersson (top scorer of the league with 13 goals) who had a long career in Europe, with many seasons in Italy. The big rival Malmo got only the fourth place, despite 11 goals of the Swedish star Martin Dahlin.

After the Allsvenskan, there is a section dedicated to the Swedish National Team with 16 stickers: the team photo (two stickers), the coach, and 13 players. At the time of this album we were very close to the UEFA Euro 1992 hosted by Sweden in June 1992. Sweden had a good team that reached the semifinal of the competition and most of the players were playing abroad. We can mention Thomas Brolin (Parma), Glenn Hysen (Liverpool), Anders Limpar (Arsenal), Jonas Thern (Benfica), and Glenn Stromberg (Atalanta).

The last part of the album shows the clubs of Division I. The league is divided in four groups (Norra, Ostra, Vastra, Sodra) of eight clubs each. For each club there are the stickers of the badge (half metallic sticker) and the team photo (two stickers), together with details about the clubs and the name of all the people appearing on the photos.