Only Good Stickers: Panini Calciatori 1980-81

martedì 24 giugno 2025

Panini Calciatori 1980-81

With the Calciatori 1980-81 album, Panini celebrates the 20th anniversary of its iconic Calciatori sticker series. This edition continues the tradition of transforming the collection into a true encyclopedia of Italian football, featuring stickers for all the clubs in the professional leagues.

Each of the 16 Serie A clubs is presented in alphabetical order, with a layout of 19 stickers spread over two pages. These include: a shiny golden club badge, a team photo split across two stickers, and 16 individual player stickers. Each player is accompanied by a detailed printed biography outlining their football career.

Serie B clubs are featured more compactly, with each team occupying a single page and represented by nine stickers: a golden club badge, a team photo, and seven player stickers—each containing two players—for a total of 14 featured players per team.

Serie C1 is represented more modestly: the 36 clubs are each illustrated with a single team photo sticker at the bottom of the Serie B pages. Serie C2, which includes 72 clubs split across four groups, features club badge stickers only—each sticker displaying two badges side by side.

This album includes three special themed sections. The first is a tribute to Panini’s 20-year milestone, featuring stickers of all 20 Calciatori album covers from 1961/62 to 1980/81. Each sticker showcases two covers, for a total of 10 stickers in this celebratory section.

The second special feature is a visual map of Italian football, displaying the badges of all 20 Serie A clubs positioned geographically on a map of Italy. This section also includes 10 stickers, each with two club crests.

The final section, placed after the main league presentations, focuses on national and international competitions. It includes six shiny golden stickers representing major trophies: the FIFA World Cup, UEFA European Championship, European Cup (now Champions League), Cup Winners’ Cup, UEFA Cup, and Coppa Italia. Notably, this collection does not include any update sets or additional stickers beyond the main release.

In the 1980-81 season, Juventus claimed the Serie A title with 44 points, finishing two ahead of AS Roma, who went on to win the Coppa Italia after a penalty shootout against Torino. Roberto Pruzzo was the Serie A top scorer, netting 18 goals.