Only Good Stickers: Panini Calciatori 1997-98

Calciatori 1997-98 is the official sticker collection of the Italian football, covering all the professional leagues from Serie A to Serie C2. This is the first album with Ronaldo, who moved from Barcelona to FC Inter in the summer 1997. In addition, this collection is full of football stars playing in Serie A, like Zidane, Del Piero, Baggio, Pirlo, Djorkaeff, Batistuta, Veron, Mancini, Totti, Buffon, Cannavaro, Maldini, with special stickers dedicated to Vieri and Zola, playing abroad at that time.

The album starts with the Serie A clubs in alphabetical order. For each club there are 21 stickers: the shiny club badge, the team photo (two stickers), and 18 player portrait stickers, with the careers printed on the album. After the Serie A clubs, there is the only additional section of this album, featuring 40 stickers of player caricatures made by the artist Achille Superbi. Here we can admire the comic version of the best Serie A players.

The album continues with the Serie B section, including 9 stickers for each club: the shiny badge, the team photo, and 7 stickers with two players per sticker (for a total of 14 players). The album features then the Serie C1, with the club badge (half sticker) and the team photo stickers of the 36 clubs divided in two groups, and the Serie C2, with just the club badge sticker of the 54 clubs divided in three groups (one sticker includes four club badges). There are no updates for this collection.

In the season 1997/98, Juventus won the Serie A with controversial episodes, especially a not given penalty to Ronaldo during Juventus-Inter. However, the destiny in the European cups has been different: Juventus lost the Champions League final against Real Madrid (0-1), whereas Inter won the UEFA Cup (3-0).