Only Good Stickers: Panini Boca Juniors

Club Atletico Boca Juniors is the most successful team of Argentina, with 68 official titles won on to date. In Argentina, they won 33 Primera Division Championship and 13 domestic cups. Internationally, they count a total of 22 titles, including six Copa Libertadores, two Copa Sudamericana and three Intercontinental Cups (1977, 2000, 2003).

The club, which is based in La Boca neighborhood of Buenos Aires, was founded on 3 April 1905 by a group of Greek and Italian people from Genoa. Boca Juniors consolidated quickly among the best clubs of Argentina, with the promotion to Primera Division in 1913 and the first title in 1919.

In the occasion of the centenary in 2005, Panini published a commemorative sticker album called "Xentenario Boca 1905-2005" with 191 stickers about the history and the legendary players of the club. The complete album is a rare piece that we can present with all the sections in the following.

Nuestra casa - La Bombonera (6 stickers)

The album begins with a page dedicated to the club home stadium, the famous "Bombonera". The stadium was opened in 1940 and it has an actual capacity of 49.000. In this section there are four stickers of the stadium in different years and two stickers of the stadium map.

Para llevar en el corazon - El Escudo (6 stickers)
The evolution of the club badge is included with 6 metallic stickers on one page, from the first badge in 1920 to the logo designed for the centenary.

La gloriosa - Nuestra Camiseta (18 stickers)

18 stickers over three pages describe the evolution of the glorious shirt of Boca Juniors along the years. The original jersey colour in 1905 was a white shirt with thin black vertical stripes, replaced later by a light blue shirt, before adopting the definitive blue and gold. Legend says that Boca decided to adopt the colours of the flag of the first boat to sail into the port at La Boca. A Swedish boat arrived and its yellow and blue flag was adopted as the official colours of the kit. In this section we find also some special kits, like the white and blue used only for the Copa Libertadores final in 1977 or the jersey designed especially for the centenary.

Grandes de Ayer y de Hoy (60 stickers)

A large section of 10 pages is dedicated to the biggest players of the club. Here we find 60 stickers of players in action. Among them, legendary names: Maradona, Riquelme, Martin Palermo, Tevez, Batistuta, Samuel, Caniggia, Burdisso and Palacio.

Para revivir los grandes logros (24 stickers)

The big achievements of Boca Juniors are included in this four pages section. The first two pages show the main club trophies with 12 metallic stickers. Here we find among the others the first cup in 1908, the Copa Libertadores, the International Cups, and the Copa Sudamericana. The other two pages show celebrations of Boca players with the trophies. Among these stickers, Martin Palermo with the Intercontinental Cup 2000, Tevez with the Copa Libertadores 2003, and Guillermo Barros Schelotto with the Copa Sudamericana 2004.

Equipos gloriosos (29 stickers)

Some of the most memorable Boca Juniors teams from 1931 to 2005 are celebrated in this section of 29 stickers over 5 pages. The last sticker is dedicated to the best team ever, the supporters! They are known as "la 12".

Invencibles (6 stickers)

This section is for the goalkeepers that made the history of Boca Juniors. The invincible are Musimessi, Roma, Gatti, Montoya, Cordoba, and Abbondanzieri.

A puro Gol (18 stickers)

This section is dedicated to the top scorers of the club history. The best 18 are shown in order of goals scored for the club, starting from Roberto Cherro (210 goals), Domingo Tarasconi (192 goals) and Francisco Varallo (181 goals). Famous "goleadores" here included are Martin Palermo (104 goals) and Guillermo Barros Schelotto (81 goals).

Diego Armando Maradona (18 stickers)

The most iconic player of Boca Juniors is certainly Diego Maradona, who played for the club in 1981/1982 with 28 goals in 40 appearances and again in 1995/1996 with 7 goals in 30 games.

The album includes 6 stickers of Maradona in his first season with Boca and 12 stickers of his comeback.