Only Good Stickers: Topps Euro 2024

giovedì 12 settembre 2024

Topps Euro 2024

The official sticker album of the Euro Cup 2024 was published by Topps, for the first time after they got the UEFA rights. Unfortunately this was not a positive event for sticker collectors, as Topps produced an almost embarassing sticker album, compared to the historical editions published by Panini.

First of all, Topps had no rights for some of the main federations (Italy, England, France, Germany), therefore the player stickers of those teams show just the player face. Secondly, the sticker distribution in packets was awful, with rarity of SP stickers needed to complete the album and the presence of too many useless parallel stickers. Moreover, nonsense choices, like the sticker of Zinedine Zidane as French captain. In addition, the terrible customer service made this album complicated and a nightmare to complete, as the individual sticker service was open for only couple of weeks with many issues. Finally, many players that took part in the tournament are not included (just to say one name: Mbappé!) and there are no updates for this album.

In this review we show the blue International edition, composed by a base set of 707 stickers and a hardcover album. There is also a red Swiss edition, with the same stickers, but just a red border instead of blue and no hardcover album.

The album begins with an introduction of four regular sticker: the Topps logo, the Euro 2020 logo, the official ball and the mascot of the tournament. Before showing the competing teams, there is also a section with the trophy (shiny stickers) and the ten stadium stickers made with childish drawings instead of real photos.

The teams are then shown by group order. Each group is introduced by two pages with the map overview (two stickers) and the country landmark of each team (two stickers), followed by other two pages with the main players: the "Player to watch (PTW)" (shiny sticker), the "Star Player (SP)" (golden sticker) and the "Top XI" (two stickers). The teams that took part in the play-offs have just the regular star player sticker (two players on one sticker) without PTW and Top XI stickers. The star player stickers of the directly qualified teams can be found with or without signature, with random distribution in packets.

The 21 teams that were directly qualified to the group stage have 21 stickers over two pages: the shiny badge, the shiny captain, the "artist" player in action (shiny), and 18 players. The play-off teams have just eight stickers on one page: the shiny badge, and seven stickers of players (two players on one sticker, for a total of 14 players included).

In the center of the album there is a "Dream Team" section of two pages where it is possible to stick spare stickers of the favourite players. In those pages there is also a sticker composed by the mascot of the tournament (half sticker) and the signature of the Topps official manager, José Mourinho (half sticker). The last section of the album features the stickers of ten Euro legends: Torres, Bale, Rooney (shiny), Nedved, Shevchenko, Seedorf, Figo, Zidane (shiny), Beckenbauer (shiny), and Ibrahimovic.