Panini: Football Superstars (1984)

Back in February 2014, we reviewed Panini’s ‘Soccer Superstars’ collection from 1988. Consisting of an album into which picture cards (not stickers) could be inserted, this was a rare chance to see Panini veer away from the tried and tested sticky-backed formula of yore. It was not, however, the first time they’d attempted something so radical.

Four years earlier, the similarly-named ‘Football Superstars’ made an appearance and on this occasion, the medium of choice was not cardboard, but plastic. Clear plastic. It was an inspired selection and provided a somewhat futuristic slant on the stickers we’d been collecting for many years (not that these were self-adhesive).

As with Soccer Superstars, the pictures of players and national team emblems had to be slotted into diagonal cuts on each page of the accompanying album. The pages were loose and unstapled which meant, in theory, that you could pin each completed double-page spread on your bedroom wall. Five teams were featured - England, Scotland, France, Italy and West Germany - while the last two pages featured ‘All Stars’, a collection of top players from around the world.

Curiously, the double-page format isn't as jam-packed with pictures as in Panini’s regular ‘Football’ series that was available at the time. Instead, only a dozen cards are featured, and in the case of the five mentioned teams, that means one team badge and eleven players. There’s no text giving a potted summary of their careers, just a few paltry details relating to each individual below their card.

The plastic cards themselves, however, look great. Before they’re slotted into the album, they can be held up to the light like a film negative to gain a tantalising glimpse of a picture that isn’t immediately complete. Placed on a white space inside the album, though, they come to life with a distinct vibrancy you won’t find on a regular Panini football sticker.

The choice of teams is a curious one and reinforces the feeling that this was a one-off set-piece project by Panini. Dated by various internet sources as being from 1984, the album features Scotland’s Graeme Sharp who didn't make his international début until 1985. Whether Football Superstars was actually published the following year is unclear, but either way the absence of other prominent countries like Spain and Belgium is a little unfortunate.

England’s line-up is a mish-mash of established players, those heading for the end of their international careers and those struggling to get theirs off the ground. The reassuring presence of Peter Shilton in goal is matched by Terry Butcher, Bryan Robson and Ray Wilkins outfield, but beyond them, there are some less familiar faces. Stoke City’s Mark Chamberlain (father of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain) made only eight appearances for England, while Mike Duxbury of Manchester United only managed two more. Tottenham’s Graham Roberts only notched up six appearances.

All of the other teams boast an altogether more convincing array of current and future stars covering everyone from Lothar Matthaus and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge to Paolo Rossi, Michel Platini and Kenny Dalglish. Nearly all of them made an appearance at the 1982 or 1986 World Cups, and a fine bunch they make too. Added to the dozen ‘All Stars’, however, you have an even more rounded view of the top footballing talent of the mid-1980’s.

Here we find South Americans in the form of Passarella, Zico, Maradona and Falcao, plus the best from the rest of Europe. Finally there is a mention of Arconada and Gordillo of Spain and Enzo Scifo of Belgium (both countries capable of having their own double-page spread), plus Poland’s Zbigniew Boniek and Chalana, Portugal’s ace midfielder of Euro 84. Even Ian Rush gets a much-deserved inclusion, alongside another star of Euro 84, Soren Lerby.

It’s all very nice and all very different, but in many ways this collection seems a little tame by comparison to Panini’s regular self-adhesive equivalents. The innovation of making clear cards is excellent and the attempt to show such versatility is very admirable, but the content of the album lacks substance and direction. One could even bring into question the use of the term ‘Superstars’. Diego Maradona, absolutely, but with the greatest of respect, Mike Duxbury? Probably not…

There was, however, one additional reason to buy packets of Football Superstars cards, and that was the inclusion of a scratch card game. It consisted of a series of silver spots located all over a football pitch, and as either the red team or the yellow team, you had to scratch one off at a time to navigate your way from the centre circle to the opposing goal. Revealing a ball symbol enabled you to scratch off another silver spot, failure to do so gave your opponent another turn. Good harmless fun, and further proof that Panini could think outside the box when it came to creativity, but this was very much a sideshow to those clear cards that numbered only 72 in total. Personally I’d have rather had more cards to collect and not had the scratch cards, but there it is. This was, as mentioned before, Panini showing off their many and varied skills, and this album is an interesting part of their history accordingly.

-- Chris Oakley

Our huge thanks go to Graham Hannay of Retro Football Stickers for allowing us to use the images featured in this article. To find some of those missing stickers you need to complete your collections of yesteryear, check out Graham's website at www.classicfootballstickers.co.uk.

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1994: Football of the Future

The year is 1984. Charlie Nicholas is the poster boy of British football, Bryan Robson and Ray Wilkins share the British transfer record and players everywhere are earning more money than they've ever done. Where would it all end, or more specifically, what would football be like ten years hence in 1994?

That was the question Shoot! magazine asked 29 years ago, and to find the answer, it assessed the state of the British game at ten-year intervals leading up to 1984.

"Stanley Matthews was on £15 a week in the winter and £12 a week in the summer in 1954" said Shoot! as if to reinforce the stereotypical view of post-war austerity in Britain. "Blackpool, then in the First Division, carried a staff of 39 full-time professionals and their weekly wage bill for players was not more than £650... The terrace admission price was 1s 9d (8.40p). Match programmes cost twopence (0.75p)."

It all sounds like chicken feed by today's standards. The biggest British transfer back then was the £30,000 Tottenham paid Aston Villa for Danny Blanchflower, and even that was exceptional given that most players were still going to training sessions either by bus or bicycle because they couldn't afford a car.

Ten years on and Jimmy Greaves was the star of the day, earning £60 a week, while Tottenham had a wage bill of £2,500 for its staff of 35 people. Match day programmes would have set you back one shilling while five shillings would have got you a place on the terraces to see the match. As for the biggest transfer deals, the bar had been raised to £116,000 following Denis Law's move from Manchester United to Torino in 1962.

And so it went on with monetary comparisons made for 1974 and 1984, the year when this Shoot! article was published. All very interesting too, but one has to wonder how all these values equated when inflation was taken into account. What could Stanley Matthews have bought with his weekly wage of £15 and how much is it worth in real terms from a modern-day perspective?

As ever, The Football Attic intended to find out, so what follows is a series of graphs that show the changes in value for each of Shoot's main criteria based on their 2013 worth. Also shown on the graphs are the predictions made by the magazine as to what values they expected to see in 1994 (more of which later), plus the real values for 1994 and the years that followed.

Weekly Wage For a Top Footballer

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Having heard that Stanley Matthews earned £5 per week during 1954 and Jimmy Greaves earned £60 per week in 1964, Shoot! went on to explain that West Ham's Bobby Moore picked up the equivalent of around £230 per week during 1974 - the equivalent of £2,038 per week in today's money. "He drove a Jaguar and his wife had a sports car and they lived in luxury in a magnificent house called Morelands," Shoot! went on to say.

As for Charlie Nicholas, he was raking in £2,400 per week in 1984 while at Arsenal - over £6,500 per week by today's standards. "If football earnings continue to increase at the same rate as in the last 20 years" said Shoot back then, "a top First Division star in ten years time can look forward to netting around £30,000 a week!" As it is, that figure turned out to be nearer £10,000 per week in 1994, but that was nothing compared to the £50,000 per week that Javier Hernandez was earning at Manchester United in 2012. Using the Mexican as a randomly chosen top player of the era, his weekly earnings were far greater than even Shoot! could have predicted.

Top-flight Football Match Ticket

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Paying one shilling and ninepence for a ticket to see Stanley Matthews in 1954 was the equivalent of paying just over £2 in today's money - a bargain whichever way you look at it. A decade later you'd have been paying double that, and in 1974 you'd have been paying the equivalent of £6.62. Curiously the real cost of a ticket for Highbury in 1984 was slightly less than the 1974 equivalent.

In 1984, Shoot! magazine was predicting that a ticket for a match in 1994 would cost as much as £25 - that's £68 in current terms. This turned out to be a big over-estimate as the real value was just under half-that, but it's true that ticket prices have continued to rise dramatically. The cheapest ticket for a match at White Hart Lane this season currently stands at £37.

Match-day programme

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It can be argued that today's match-day programmes offer much more content and higher production values than the offerings of 1954. Even so, the tuppence you'd have paid for one back then - 15p in today's money - still seems paltry.

The cost of a programme was up considerably come 1964, although the cost remained relatively constant right up to 1984 when it was worth just over £1 in 2013 terms. That, however, didn't stop Shoot! predicting that in 1994 "match programmes will cost £5." You'd have actually paid around £1.50 back in 1994 (£2.53 today), whereas a guide to the match at Stamford Bridge in 2013 will still only set you back £3.

Highest British Transfer Fee Involving a British Player

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You hardly need us to provide a graph to tell you how much transfer fees have sky-rocketed over the last few years. Gareth Bale's £88.5 million transfer from Tottenham to Real Madrid in 2013 dwarfs any previous transfer involving a British player, even taking inflation into account.

Just for once, Shoot! was almost spot on with its prediction that in 1994 the record transfer fee would be £5 million. In 1992, Paul Gascoigne moved from Tottenham to Lazio for £5.5 million - the equivalent of £9.6 million in today's money. Ten years further on, Rio Ferdinand's move from Leeds to Manchester United resulted in £29.1 million changing hands (2013: £40.1 million).

Shoot! Magazine

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Looking ahead ten years on from 1984, Shoot! predicted that it would cost £3 in 1994 "and it would continue to be the best read in football." Modesty aside, the magazine actually costed 70p in 1994 (£1.18 by today's values) and was still only £1.80 when its final issue was published in 2008 (2013: £2.03).

Shoot! cost just one shilling when it was launched in 1969 and its value in modern terms barely changed over the next 15 years, costing 8p in 1974 and 33p in 1984.

Poking fun at the past

If you're not now reeling from the statistical tidal wave that's just hit you, we end with a little light relief.

As anyone that used to watch Tomorrow's World will tell you, long-range forecasts can sometimes prove hilarious with hindsight. Such is the case as we look at Shoot! magazine's predictions for what football would be like in 1994.

"We at Shoot have been looking into our crystal ball and forecast that in 1994 there will be a British Super League with Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen joining nine elite clubs from England." So far, so wide of the mark. "Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Spurs are the English clubs likely to lead the revolution, with many of the smaller clubs either going to the wall or surviving with staffs of part-time professionals." Now we're getting somewhere...

"Synthetic pitches - with the infamous bounce controlled - will be commonplace," it proclaimed, "...and most major clubs will carry a sponsors name in their title, for instance GUINNESS RANGERS at Shepherd's Bush [QPR]." If only - the thought of seeing CARDIFF MALAYSIA would surely have been a sight to see...

It continued: "Matches will be played on summer Sunday evenings, and there will be one televised match every Saturday... There will be no standing on the terraces at British Super League matches because the grounds will be all-seaters." A virtual bullseye there, although Shoot! may not have predicted the reason for the changes in the first place.

With a final glimpse to the future, we see the illustration of two players on what we assume is a synthetic football pitch wearing sponsored shirts, elbow pads and full length gridiron-style pants instead of shorts. Though most of Shoot's predictions turned out to be hopelessly wrong, we're glad to see that this one wasn't any different.

(Inflation calculations courtesy of This Is Money)

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Super Action Soccer, 1984

The Colecovision games console was much prized for its near-perfect arcade titles back in the early-1980s. With games like Donkey Kong Jr, Zaxxon and Q*Bert, you could be entertained by great graphics and top sounds in your own home just like the coin-operated classics.

Unfortunately when Super Action Soccer was published in 1984, little of that quality seemed to remain. Oh sure, the graphics were better than we’d seen in other games on other consoles... but only just.

Having booted up your Super Action Soccer cartridge (I wonder why it was never known as ‘SAS’, by the way?) you were quickly greeted by the sight of two teams lined up and ready to play. The players, for their part, looked like the symbols off a Gents toilet door - one team coloured light blue, the other in a shade of yellow we shall henceforth refer to as ‘Smoker’s handkerchief.’

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England v USSR (Match-Day Programme, 1984)

We're delighted to bring you our very first guest post courtesy of Rob Langham, a member of the team behind the brilliant blogsite The Two Unfortunates. Here, Rob takes us back 28 years to an international game he attended at Wembley and the match-day programme that accompanied it...

The programme for England’s international against the USSR, a match that took place on 2 June 1984, is a fascinating time capsule, not least due to the advertising strategies of the time - more of which later.

Unbeknownst to all of us at the time, the Soviet Union only had another seven years to run. Mikhail Gorbachev was still a year away from assuming office and our relationship with the USSR was filtered through the prism of the late Cold War period - tit for tat Olympic boycotts and Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s video for Two Tribes perhaps the most memorable manifestations of international relations.

That was a polyglot Soviet side. Having performed solidly at the 1982 World Cup in Spain, they, like England, had failed to reach that Summer’s European Championships in France. Far from Russian-dominated, the various republics of the union were well represented with captain Aleksandr Chivadze and Tengiz Sulakvelidze representing Georgia, Sergei Aleinikov and Sergei Stukachov hailing from Belarus and Kazakhstan respectively, and the Armenian Khoren Oganesyan acting as the XI’s primary creative force.

All of that was to be swept away two years later of course - as incoming manager Valeriy Lobanovskiy made a better fist of what Ron Greenwood had tried to do with Liverpool players for England the previous decade by jettisoning much of the existing squad (including Oganesyan - dropped for developing a ‘star complex’) and packing the team with the Ukrainians of Dynamo Kyiv.

But for now, it was an effective and unspectacular unit that cantered to a 2-0 victory against an England led by Bobby Robson.

In his programme notes, Robson opined about the lack of availability of players on a consistent basis and it was a weakened team that eventually took the field here - Mike Duxbury’s horrendous error allowing for the first goal and provoking a chorus of boos in a sparsely populated Wembley.

The old guard - Peter Shilton, Terry Butcher, Bryan Robson, Ray Wilkins and Trevor Francis was supplemented by a number of newcomers with perhaps the most significant being Gary Lineker - appearing in the squad for the first time in the 1-0 defeat to Wales that Spring.

But the number of unlikely names betrays a team in transition after the failure to overcome Denmark in European Championship qualifying. Former NASL man Steve Hunt, David Armstrong, Mike Hazard and John Gregory all made it to Bisham Abbey.

The most intriguing of the inclusions was winger Mark Chamberlain, Dad of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and a man who performed spiritedly on the afternoon - overshadowing the man on the opposite flank, John Barnes (the latter was to have the last laugh a few days later when he scored after a mazy run against Brazil).



There was also a Watford inflection to things - as reigning European under-21 Champions, Robson had seen fit to promote a number of that set up to the full team and Nigel Callaghan was one to benefit. Add to that Luther Blissett, at the time a Milan player but forged at Vicarage Road nonetheless.

But the theme didn’t end there. In a year that saw the Hertfordshire club reach an FA Cup Final, the programme advertised ‘The Summer of 84 Concert’ for later that month, with chairman Elton John headlining, supported by Nik Kershaw, Paul Young, Kool & The Gang and Wang Chung plus DJ appearances from Steve Wright and Simon Bates among others. Dull and dreary England’s 2-0 defeat may have been but presumably considerably less horrific than the entertainment offered by that shower.

Elsewhere in the publicity sections, the prospect of gridiron action involving the Tampa Bay Bandits and Philadelphia Stars was offered (no, I haven’t heard of them either) and a typically oblique Benson and Hedges adorned the back page - MIDDLE TAR.

Our thanks go to Rob for that wonderful trip down memory lane, and don't forget you can catch more of Rob's writing (together with that of many other fine folk) at www.thetwounfortunates.com. We also urge you to follow TheTwoUnfortunates on Twitter, too.

If you'd like to contribute an article of your own, please do so - simply contact @COakleyFtbl or @sofa_soccer on Twitter or leave us a comment on one of our blog posts and let us know all the details. Cheers!

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