Only Good Stickers: Topps Champions League 2017/2018

giovedì 27 dicembre 2018

Topps Champions League 2017/2018

The third Topps sticker album of the UEFA Champions League is similar to its predecessor of the season 2016/17. Again, the collection was released early in the season, when the group stage composition was not yet known. For this reason, the 22 teams qualified in advanced are not shown following the groups composition but based on the nationality of the clubs (first the Spanish clubs, then the German, English, Italian, French, and so on). For these clubs there are 19 stickers over two pages: the club badge (metallic sticker), the kits (metallic sticker), the star player in action (big size metallic sticker) and 16 players. The other 10 clubs that qualified with the play-offs in August are placed in 10 anonymous pages later in the album. These teams have a total of 16 regular size stickers: the badge (metallic), the kits (metallic) and 14 players. The album begins with the table of contents and two metallic regular size stickers: the logo and the trophy of the Champions League.

The last part of the album includes some special sections. "The Road to Kyiv" includes the program of the competition (with mini-stickers of club names to be placed in the corresponding groups) and the sticker of the Kyiv stadium. "Players to watch" is a two-page section with 12 stickers of some of the best players of the competition (double metallic stickers for Neymar and Messi). "Final Cardiff 2018" celebrates Real Madrid victory of the season before (Juventus-Real Madrid=1-4) with four metallic stickers, whereas "Winners" is a page with the all time winners and 5 metallic stickers of the last winners. Last sections are dedicated to the Women's Champions League (1 metallic sticker) and Youth League finals 2017 (1 metallic sticker).