Only Good Stickers: agosto 2022

venerdì 19 agosto 2022

Panini Football 81 (France)

Football 81 is the sixth sticker album of the French football produced by Panini. It includes all the clubs of Division 1 and Division 2, but there are no other sections with stickers. The structure of the album is simple and straightforward. Behind a colourful but childish cover, the clubs of Division 1 are first shown in alphabetical order. For each club there are 17 stickers over two pages: the club badge (metallic sticker), the coach, and 15 players. Then the clubs of Division 2 are shown following the group division (Group A and Group B). For each club of Division 2 there are the club badge sticker (half metallic sticker) and six stickers of players (two players per sticker). The collection does not include extra material (poster, updates).

In the season 1980/81, Saint-Etienne won the Division 1 with 20 goals scored by Michel Platini. The top goalscorer of the tournament was, however, Delio Onnis with 24 goals. Other relevant players of this collection are Tigana, Santini, Domenech (trainer), and Roger Milla.

Back cover of the album

Internationl strikers from Football 81: Roger Milla from Cameroun and the Argentinian Delio Onnis, who was the top goalscorer of the league with 24 goals

Club badge stickers from Football 81

French stars Michel Platini (who won the tournament 1980/81 scoring 20 goals for Saint-Etienne) and Jean-Amadou Tigana

Album details

Full name: Football 81

Publisher: Panini

League: French (Division 1 and Division 2)

Season: 1980/1981

Number of clubs and stickers per club:

Division 1 (20 clubs, 17 stickers)
Division 2 (36 clubs, 6.5 stickers)

Other sections: No

Extra (poster, updates): No

Checklist: click here

Total number of stickers: 574

venerdì 12 agosto 2022

Topps Champions League 2021/2022

The official sticker collection of the Champions League 2021/22 was published by Topps, being the seventh consecutive Topps album of the competition. This season the collection is a clear improvement in terms of quality of the stickers and the album. The main new features are the update sets released along the season incuding the new signings and the "Live" stickers (actions taken from the Champions League matches 2021/22). In addition, the hardcover version of the album was released on the French Topps website, being the second hardcover album of the series after the 2016 edition.

The album begins with the contents and four introductory stickers: Topps logo, Champions League logo and trophy. The album continues with the Classic Finals section, which shows the poster stickers of all of the 30 Champions League finals from 1993 to 2022. This looks like a superfluous section given the repetitive graphics of the stickers. The group stage of the competition is then presented with four pages including the match schedule and the metallic club badge stickers of the 32 competing clubs.

In the following pages, the album shows the 32 clubs divided by groups. For each club there are 18 stickers over two pages: the stadium (two stickers), the Hot Shot (large sticker), the rookie (large sticker), and 14 players, out of which the captain sticker is a signed golden sticker. However, two players of the squad are just printed on the album with no sticker, making the total of 16 players for each club shown in the album.

In the center of the album, there is a two-page section, "Superstars - Limited Edition" where there is space for six large stickers of players in action. These stickers are cards and stickers combined, because once peeled the sticker off, you are left with a Match Attax card of the same player. These cards-stickers can be found in special products, like the starter pack or the multi-pack and they cannot be ordered from Topps. The album includes also a two-page section with two stickers dedicated to the Women's Champions League.

The Live section, which tells the development of the Champions League 2022/23, is in the hardcover placed at the end of the album. There are in total 104 new stickers (numbered L1 to L104) released in five different batches on the Topps website. These stickers show the games played from the group stage to the final won by Real Madrid against Liverpool, and there are also 24 stickers with the new signings of the clubs that reached the round of 16.