Only Good Stickers: Panini Football 2020

martedì 10 agosto 2021

Panini Football 2020

Panini is back! Football 2020 is the first official sticker album of the Premier League released by Panini since Football '93. In the meanwhile 26 albums were produced by Merlin/Topps. The quality of the latest Premier League albums was rather low, therefore Football 2020 in comparison is a stunning collection. First of all, stickers are large and with high definition, moreover the shinies and the update section make the collection definitively one of the best of the season. Moreover, the hardcover album with slipcase is magnificent, reproducing a similar style of the Calciatori album, even though the overall quality of the collection is not the same.

Behind the cover with players in action and the badges of the 20 competing clubs we find a welcoming page with the first two shiny stickers: the Premier League trophy and the Panini's iconic figure. In the following two pages, the contents of the album are introduced with one sticker per team. Then the 20 Premier League clubs are shown in alphabetical order, with 29 stickers per team over four pages. On the first two pages the squad is presented with the shiny club badge sticker (horizontal layout) and 22 player stickers. The other two pages include six more stickers: the team photo (shiny), the home kit, the captain, the key player (shiny), the stadium, and the power pair. In the middle of the Premier League clubs, there are three special sections. The first one is "Premier League Elite", which includes 20 metallic stickers of the Premier League top players (one per team). The second one is "Legends", with 8 stickers of old football stars (five players and three awards) that can be found in regular packets. The last one is "Premier League by numbers", including six stickers of players related to Premier League records: Jorginho, Sigurdsson, Origi, Aguero, Hernandez, and Traoré. The album continues with the second part of the Premier League clubs, followed by the "Transfer updates" section. These 48 stickers numbered U1-U48 were released in a dedicated update set in March 2020. With Football 2020 Panini made a great return and certainly football fans are totally satisfied by this excellent product.

In the football season 2019/2020, Liverpool dominated the Premier League with 99 points, 17 more than Manchester City (2nd place) and 33 more than Manchester United and Chelsea (3rd place). Salah and Mané were the keys for this successful season, with 37 goals combined. However, the topscorer of the league was James Vardy with 23 goals.