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.

Read More

Collectables in 1980/81: Part 2

The second and concluding part of Greg Lansdowne's look back to the football sticker and card collecting scene at the start of the 1980's.

Having launched in 1978, the Daily Star felt confident enough to chance its arm in the football sticker market just three years’ later.

Although it would turn out to be a one-off, ‘Top British Teams’ was a decent effort from the newcomer.

Peter Batt, Chief Sports Columnist of the Daily Star, misjudged his audience in the foreword, however, by pitching it more to adults rather than the accepted target market of kids:

“Middle aged dads browsing through these pages will be instantly reminded of those magical pre-television days when the football circus came to town once every fortnight.

“If I close my eyes I can still inhale the steamy aroma of wet mackintoshes on the crowded top deck of the bus transporting us to wonderland.”

With 412 stickers, the Star opted for two First Division players to a sticker – slightly bigger than the Scottish versions we became accustomed to with Panini. Most were paired in the same clubs but occasionally you would get a Coventry player (Mick Coop) with a Nottingham Forest (Garry Birtles) or David Langan (Birmingham City) with Nicky Reid (Manchester City).

Where the newspaper differentiated from conventional albums was in the shape of their landscape publication, which gave them space for 14 individual player shots (as opposed to 13 from FKS and 12 from Panini that season).

With room for an extra squad member or two, Top British Teams featured a fresh-faced Ian Rush in what Americans would call his ‘rookie card’.

Nominally the players were ordered alphabetically but Ryan came after Suddaby for Brighton and Bannister after Hunt for Coventry when spelling went awry. There is even a rare shot of Clive Allen in an Arsenal shirt... albeit shoved in between Peter Nicholas and Neil Smilie at new club Crystal Palace.  

Claudio Marangoni (Sunderland) and Steve Archibald (Tottenham) compete for the worst superimposing job, the latter of which looks like his head has been placed on Lou Ferrigno’s body.

Claudio Marangoni, Steve Archibald and Garth Crooks

Selected Division Two sides were afforded 12 smaller-sized stickers (Chelsea, Newcastle, Swansea, Sheffield Wednesday, West Ham) while 11 stickers were given out each to Aberdeen, Celtic, Dundee United and Rangers in the Scottish mix. These were sold as four to a sticker.

A swanky competition finishes the album, to win a complete ‘Video Outfit’ - in conjunction with JVC - by naming your best Great Britain team and a slogan for them! A closing date of November 30, 1980 indicates the album came out early season, meaning a lot of credit should be given for putting together, in the main, a worthy first effort.

Less credit goes to Topps for their album-less Footballer ’81 set.

Topps/A&BC had previously brought out series after series of impressive individual player cards but the latest effort would prove the beginning of the end (as just one more set was produced for English football thereafter before the US company took a lengthy hiatus from the UK).

Just as Panini would innovate from Modena and then transfer those ideas abroad, Topps’ US head office would set the guidelines for any tinkering to their products. So it went, Footballers ’81 imitated the same three-players-to-a-card format being used for American sports at the time.

Notwithstanding some bizarre card ordering, the basic premise saw players divided into club sides based on the 1979-80 First Division placings. In between fourth-placed arsenal and Nottingham Forest, in fifth, were the top scorers for the previous season’s Division One teams.

Leeds United and Norwich City were separated by England players; Manchester City and Stoke City were bracketed by internationals from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and Wales; at the end were an assortment of Division Two players.

So far so moderate.

But then you find Larry Lloyd marooned from his Nottingham Forest team-mates, in with Manchester City. Quite why Billy Gilbert of Crystal Palace and Gary Owen of West Bromwich Albion are stuck together before the Second Division players is another mystery.

I will spare Topps’ blushes and leave their ‘out of ordering’ there.

Known as ‘pink backs’ (each Topps set used a different colour on the reverse to differentiate itself), Footballer ’81 packs were an attractive offering to any would be collector: nine picture cards (albeit three cards divided into three each), plus one of 18 ‘Super Star Posters’ and a stick of bubble gum.
Problems only start to arise when one looks deeper into the collection.

With just 198 mini-cards to the set, there really is no need for some of the players to crop up three times (as the likes of Paul Mariner, Glenn Hoddle and John Robertson do for their club, country and as last season’s top scorer).

Some of the photo selections also leave a great deal to be desired. Manchester United’s Ray Wilkins in a Chelsea kit (whom he left in the close season of 1979) appears quite reasonable compared to Southampton’s Kevin Keegan in a Liverpool shirt (a club he departed in 1977).

Brian Kidd would be forgiven for struggling to remember which club he was playing for at that time as he features on a Bolton Wanderers club card in painted on, badgeless, kit as well as on a top scorer card for Everton in Manchester City apparel.

I could go on... but it would be easier to put this collection out of its misery.

As a postscript, Topps did bring out an album for its ‘Footballer’ set in 1981-82 but there was a reason that collection was to be their valediction in England.

With the sketchy competition outlined, it just leaves Panini’s ‘Football 81’. As a previous Football Attic post has already done this album justice, I will close with some embellishing from Peter Warsop, who was the sales and marketing manager at WH Smith Distributors at the time, responsible for, among many other publishers, the sales, marketing and physical distribution for Panini UK:

“Nineteen seventy eight was a great year for Panini on football. As well as the World Cup we sold over 80 million packets of stickers on the Panini ‘Football 78’.  Nineteen seventy nine was down 10% but 1980 and 1981 shot back up to above 1978 levels. During this period we did market collections heavily but I put the main growth contributor down to completely overhauling the distribution system; this was done by reducing down fairly considerably the numbers of wholesalers involved. Those that remained had to provide agreed levels of service to retailers and their performance was carefully monitored and performance reviews given at regular intervals. Both wholesalers as well as retailers were put under some pressure to reward our marketing investments and due to the high volumes being achieved this worked in everyone’s favour.”

With the Daily Star bowing out after one year and FKS and Topps signing off in 1981-82, the path was well and truly clear for Panini to dominate for years to come.

Got any memories about the cards and stickers you collected back in 1980/81? If so, drop us a line and tell which collections you favoured most or those elusive players you needed to complete your sets!

Meantime, as ever, our sincere thanks to Greg Lansdowne for his wonderful blog post, and don't forget, you can buy Greg's book, 'Stuck on You: The Rise & Fall... & Rise of Panini Stickers' from Amazon UK and all good book stores right now (prices vary).

See also:

• Collectables in 1980/81: Part 1

Read More

Collectables in 1991-92

If you've recently read Greg Lansdowne's excellent book 'Stuck On You: The Rise & Fall… & Rise Of Panini Stickers', you'll know how much detail he managed to cram into 256 pages about the wonderful world of sticker collecting.

Now, especially for Football Attic followers, Greg takes a closer look at a pivotal time in the UK's sticker and card collecting market - the 1991-92 season...

Collectables will eat themselves

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

On reflection it was just the worst.

If you were a fan of football collectables, the Eighties splits opinion. Reading Rob Jovanovic’s book on the subject, ‘Swap Yer’ one would think it was a period in the doldrums.

Perhaps it is just that Rob is a ‘cards’ rather than ‘stickers’ kind of guy, but calling that decade a “barren time” and “dark days” for collectors are assertions that, in part, led me to write a book espousing the virtues of Panini, and stickers of that decade in general.

What followed in the early Nineties is a bit less equivocal.

It was a mess.

For those who had longed for the return of the football card there was a beacon of hope in the shape of Pro Set, yet its bright opening was quickly extinguished – partly by its own hand.

For sticker fans – or, specifically Panini sticker fans - it was the end of an era, encapsulated by the ‘Football 92’ (sic) album.

In fact the 1991-92 collectables season marked such a low point that it merits an unexpurgated retrospective.

It could be argued that having the opportunity to deal in four separate issues (six if you were able to get hold of two dedicated-Scottish versions on top) would be manna from heaven for those of a collecting disposition.

In reality, what was on offer was a dog’s dinner of a Panini sticker album plus three – three! - card collections.  

During the previous season, Panini had at least attempted to innovate (albeit badly) in an effort to counter the competition (new entrant Pro Set and the Sun’s ‘Soccer Sticker Collection’).
‘Football 1991’ begat not one but two different packets of stickers.

The red set, called the 'Foil Collection', was for club shinies, managers and Italia 90 World Cup action, coming out early in the season to lengthen the album’s presence. The 'Players Collection', in yellow, were the tried and tested individual head and shoulder pictures and team photo stickers, arriving in the familiar January Panini window.

Panini’s experiment was a failure – Pro Set was the collectable du jour for 1990-91 – but at least they tried.

By 1991-92 the album was remodelled to ‘English Football 1992’. It would be hard to find an album less Panini-like in composition.

Here is the crime sheet:

• No Scottish stickers
• Standardised head and shoulder shots had been replaced by action photos
• Lower division football reduced to ‘Twelve of the Best from the Second Division’
• No player biographies 
• No foils/shinies!

Of course, there were mitigating circumstances.

Panini UK (along with other regions) had seen their budget severely cut – and, indeed, their resources dipped into in an attempt to manage leaks in other areas of owner Robert Maxwell’s empire -  and that was reflected in the resultant ‘English Football 1992’.

It was during this season that Panini lost the most controversial leader in their history – drowned at sea. Recovery in the UK – certainly in football terms – would take a number of years as Merlin became the prime mover. But that is another story.

If English collectors felt short-changed by Panini’s offering, at least those north of the border could feel like a wrong of the previous decade had been partially avenged. For many years, Scottish players were reduced to two players per sticker in Panini albums – a slight felt strongly by many.

Now, however, in ‘Panini Scottish Football 1992’, the Scottish Premier Division clubs were afforded a distinction not provided to their English counterparts that season.

They each had a shiny club badge.

With only 12 teams in the Scottish Premier Division, the album was padded out to the lofty heights of 180 stickers (compared to a still-paltry 276 for the English edition) with a section on Scottish players in England.

If Panini really were keen on cutting costs that year, why not produce the same stickers for players such as Chelsea’s Steve Clarke, who featured in both albums. Especially when the shot chosen for ‘English Football 1992’ is more of a crowd scene than a tribute to the now Reading boss.

But for all Panini’s sticker efforts, 1991-92 will go down in football collecting history as the year of the card.

American company Pro Set had capitalised on the over-egging of sticker albums over previous years with an innovative (for this generation of collectors) card set. Having made a successful entry into the lucrative US trading card market in the late Eighties, owner Ludwell Denny’s expansion plans showed early promise as it shifted around 20 million packets of the ‘Pro Set 1990-91 Collector Cards’ series.

With the help of football agent John Smith, Pro Set became the official card of the Football Association as it made a surprising, and successful, move into the UK.

That success was short-lived down to two factors.

Firstly, two rival card sets – Panini’s ‘Official Players Collection’ and ‘Shooting Stars’ – muddied the waters the following season.

Secondly, if the competition didn’t get them, Pro Set did a good job in bewildering collectors by issuing their 1991-92 edition in three different packets (Official Fixture Cards, followed by Player Cards in two parts). Like Panini’s sticker collection, they also chose to issue separately in Scotland.

Confusion reigned.

Each company pinned their colours to the masts of various football publications as they attempted to shout loudest amongst the cacophony of competing voices: Pro Set collaborated with Shoot! and The Sun, Shooting Stars with the newcomer 90 Minutes, while Panini worked with Match Weekly, Roy of the Rovers and the Daily Record in Scotland.

Similarly-proportioned cards had been hugely popular throughout the Sixties and Seventies as A&BC (subsequently taken over by Topps in the mid-Seventies) produced a series of memorable releases.

But whereas those sets were almost exclusively head and shoulder pictures, the latest collections (particularly Panini and Shooting Stars) were a hotch-potch of portrait and landscape action shots where the player represented would often be vying for attention with one or more opponents and/or or team-mates.

With Pro Set already seemingly an established brand – despite just one previous season – the new kid on the block was Shooting Stars. American-based billionairess Patricia Kluge set up Super League Publishing after her son had shown an interest in British football collectables. While Pro Set gave away 10 cards per pack, Shooting Stars went for 15 – a fair chunk of a 400-set.

With no experience in the industry, Kluge called upon the services of Merlin Publishing to distribute and market the collection. Founded by four former Panini employees/distributors, Merlin had already dipped its toe into the murky football waters, but ‘Team 90’ and their Italia 90 sticker albums had limited success. As a result they had decided to give football a wide berth while the volatile market settled down. To that end they were happy to assist Kluge without putting their name to the product.

As they had advised her, Shooting Stars proved to be a flop – as did every sticker and card collection that year - but it all ended happily ever after.

Kluge ended up taking a sizeable stake in Merlin, as well as introducing them to then Arsenal Vice-Chairman David Dein - who just so happened to be looking for a company to produce a sticker album for the recently-founded Premier League, with which he was also involved.

The rest is history.

While the 1991-92 collectables season had no winners, it did ‘turn out nice again’ for Kluge and her Merlin collaborators as well as, in the long-run, Panini. Even Pro Set had already ensured its place in collectables history for bringing about the revival of football cards in the UK… a legacy that lives on through Match Attax.  

Nick Berry had summed it up perfectly just a few years earlier… Every Loser Wins.

-- Greg Lansdowne

Our grateful thanks go to Greg Lansdowne for his excellent guest post, and a reminder to everyone that his fabulous book, ‘Stuck On You: The Rise & Fall… & Rise Of Panini Stickers’, is on sale now via Amazon UK and all good book shops.

Read More

Panini: Soccer Superstars (1988)

Mention the name 'Panini' to anyone and the word they're likely to associate it with is 'stickers.' An understandable association, given the many thousands of self-adhesive pictures the Italian company had churned out by the late 1980's. Not all of their collectable pictures were sticky, however. Not even tacky. Having said that, Panini's Soccer Superstars album did use the words 'crucial' and 'wicked' on the cover, so tackiness was never too far away.

In 1988, Panini sticker albums were still a mainstay of many a schoolboy's juvenile life, but already the allure of home computers was becoming something of a distraction. Not only that, but after over a decade the novelty of collecting stickers was no doubt starting to wear off a little, sad though it is to say it. Luckily Panini have always had the ability to innovate, and in this special set they kept the collecting bug alive with this curious football sticker/picture card hybrid.

One of three 'checklist' cards from
the set

As detailed on the back cover of the album - sorry, 'display folder' - there were 96 cards to collect, available, as ever, from your local newsagent. At this point, Panini connoisseurs might have dropped their doubles at such a low number compared to the 500 or more stickers featured in their annual 'Football' albums. The reason for such a low number was because of the medium used - card. The folder was made up of seven sheets of card, and the collectable images were made of card. Put any more pages in the folder and the damn thing wouldn't have folded at all.

'Custodians'?

As it is, this wasn't a serious problem because this was Panini offering something different - a modern-day equivalent to those dusty old albums your granddad owned containing cigarette cards of the late, great Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews. Each double-page spread of Soccer Superstars had diagonal slots where each corner of your picture cards had to be slotted in. A refreshing change from the peel-and-stick nature of Panini's other collections, although the downside was that the front cover of your display folder ended up with lots of white triangles all over it.

Another difference between this album (sorry, I can't keep up this 'display folder' nonsense any longer) and it's once-a-year sticker equivalents was in the layout of the pages. Instead of players being displayed as part of their respective clubs, here they were shown off as fine examples of their respective playing positions. Mind you, even that was turned on its head by Panini. No double page spread on 'Goalkeepers' here - instead, these were 'Custodians.' Similarly midfielders were labelled 'Playmakers' before inspiration ran out altogether for the 'Defenders' and 'Strikers' sections.

Titles aside, each page simply contained half a dozen pictures of the top players of the era, along with a short summary describing their career and other notable facts. Some of the text was on point - David Seaman "tipped by many as a future England goalkeeper" - while other passages were, well, let's just say... 'interesting'. John Lukic, we were told, was "probably the only Arsenal goalkeeper ever to speak fluent Serbo Croat". That must have come in handy...

'Playmakers'?

The centre pages of the album were undoubtedly the high point of the collection with a focus on World Stars, but genuine stars seemed a little thin on the ground at the time. Yes, there was Maradona, Gullit, Van Basten and Voller, but Portugal's Dito looked slightly out of place, and though Jean-Marie Pfaff was undoubtedly a good goalkeeper, his place might have been better taken by Rinat Dasayev of the Soviet Union in my humble view.

Still, all that was just half of the deal because Soccer Superstars had a clever selling point up its sleeve because each picture card had a peel-off sticker on its back. Adhere the stickers to the poster that came free with the album and you'd be able to build "giant colour pictures of four of the most crucial stars in the collection."

Panini 'body part' stickers

Quite who they were remains something of a mystery because two of the stickers seemed to come up far more often than the others - one showing a hand and the other showing a pair of feet. As for the poster, they're similarly elusive as anyone trying to find one on eBay will testify. Though the albums and cards are attainable, the posters, sadly, have become separated from their main publication in all too many cases.

Detatched or complete, this is an interesting collection from Panini that shows its ability to reinvent its output for many of its avid followers. Old-fashioned football cards they may have been, but Panini showed they could still produce wicked stuff, even with the 1990's just around the corner.

Read More

Pro Set Football Card Collection 1990/91

We like to showcase other people's memories here at the Attic (saves us a job for one thing!) and tot hat end, here's a fantastic article from James Welham recalling his collection of Pro Set Football Cards

A recent trip to the ancestral family home (my Mum's house in Essex) found me digging around the garage looking for some precious heirlooms. While no antique clocks or Picasso originals were found, I did manage to stumble across something even more impressive - the entire 1990/91 Pro Set Football Card collection.

Football cards you say? Not stickers? Are you American or something? Well, Pro Set were an American firm who, in the early 1990s, tried to muscle in on the likes of Panini and Merlin who dominated the football sticker market in the UK. The cards were designed to be displayed in plastic sleeves inside a binder so that you could see both the picture on the front and the player profile on the back.

Every top flight team featured at least 11 players, while, further down the leagues, the process was seemingly random with some teams getting three players and many none at all.

A number of things struck me while going through this collection. For one, the lack of players from outside the British Isles. A Romeo Zondervan here, an Erik Thorstvedt there, but essentially almost every player is from these shores. So much so that in the player profile for Sunderland's Thomas Hauser they felt moved to comment "It is rare indeed to find German players in English football".

Then there is the appearance of the players. Tattoos for starters; a red rose or military symbol on a forearm and that was it. None of your sleeve tattoos in 1990. Likewise facial hair - no stubbly little beards, just proper moustaches. Men's moustaches. I'm talking about you Tony Coton. And you Neil Pointon.

The kits haven't changed that much - even back in 1990 kits were made from 100% man-made materials and every team had a sponsor - although nowadays we no longer have to go through the mental torture of short shorts. Some of the kit makers are long gone though. Whatever happened to Spall, Ribero, Influence and Beaver? They may have been naff, but it was good to see a wide variety of kits rather than the all-pervasive templates that are to be found these days.

Many aspects of the collection were quite shabby. For example, the picture of Tim Sherwood - then at Norwich - is actually another player entirely. Andy Hinchcliffe was at Everton at the time, but his picture shows him in a Man City kit. All the cards were numbered and followed a logical sequence (Arsenal, Aston Villa, etc) but for some reason half of Derby's players are right at the end, along with a load of Division Four 'stars'.

There was also a tinge of sadness as I went through the collection. A number of featured players - Gary Ablett, Tommy Caton, David Preece, David Rocastle, Les Sealey, and Gary Speed - are no longer with us. Being reminded of these men, all of whom died far too young, was certainly quite poignant.

That said, it was great fun going through these cards. And the name 'Peter Shirtliff' gives me the giggles as much now as it did 23 years ago.

Thanks to James for sharing his memories there...if you'd like to share anything from your football memorabilia collection, drop us a line and let us know to admin [at] thefootballattic [dot] com

Read More

Brooke Bond Oxo 'Play Better Soccer', 1976

Mick Channon was one of the top football players in England back in 1976. An England international with a knack for scoring goals, he was highly regarded by peers and fans alike.

History may consider him the poor man's Kevin Keegan, but we won't hear a word of it. He remains Southampton's all-time top scorer and a much overlooked great from England's rich football history.

Who better, then, to put their full weight behind a football card collection called '40 Ways To Play Better Soccer', a title very nearly adopted by Paul Simon for one of his many songs and disregarded all too quickly, if you want our opinion.

Rather than depict the top players and teams of the day, this set of picture cards took the approach of instructing young football fans how to... well, 'play better soccer'.

There were 40 cards to collect and each had a hand drawn illustration on the front and some text on the back. Each illustration showed a footballing skill that youngsters were invited to practice and master. Whether it was diving in goal, heading for goal or executing 'the chip pass' (?), you can bet it was depicted in full colour in this collection.

If the pictures weren't self-explanatory enough (how many big black arrows do you need, exactly?), the text on the back would spell it out for you in tiny writing. But just who was providing the expert guidance on how to achieve such footballing greatness, exactly? You guessed it - the man himself, Mick Channon, along with his England chums Colin Todd, Gerry Francis and Ray Clemence.

Given the personnel enlisted by Brooke Bond Oxo, you wonder whether there were cards titled "How to do the 'windmill arm' celebration" as favoured by Channon or Ray Clemence's guide - "How to deal with a tear gas attack"... If anyone actually owns those cards, they're probably sitting on a potential fortune.

We mention Brooke Bond because these cards were distributed in boxes of PG Tips - an excuse to drink ten times your own body weight in tea if ever there was one. You could also get the album free from grocers if you bought ¾ lb of PG Tips or tea bags, or failing that, you could send off a coupon with a 6½p stamp. Thirty-seven years on, you can save yourself an abnormal number of visits to the grocer (or the toilet, after drinking all that tea) by visiting eBay where you'll find cards and albums available for not much money at all.

So there we have it. Football picture cards, tea bags and Mick Channon. What else would you need to Play Better Soccer?

Read More

The Sun Gallery of International Soccer, Soccercard Album No.4 (1978/79)

I'm not going to sugar coat what I'm about to say. This is without doubt one of the worst football picture card collections you will ever find.

Because of that, however, it is also one of the best card collections you will ever find, because from the moment you set eyes on it, you'll hardly stop laughing.

Almost everything about this item is wrong. Essentially a modern-day collection of football cigarette cards, The Sun, in its infinite wisdom, decided it was time to bring back the once popular nicotine-related pastime for kids - even though they were already being tempted by self-adhesive stickers. A noble move by the popular tabloid, but that would be the very peak of any credibility the project would attain.

Something doesn't add up...

"There are 1,000 different cards... Each card is a full colour drawing" proclaimed The Sun. So many cards to collect, and perhaps that's why they had to be sold in packs of FIFTY at a time. As a proud member of the Panini generation, my mind boggles at the prospect of a pack of football pictures containing ten times the normal amount. Oh to see some pictorial evidence of that...

Such a large number of cards needed not just one album to display them in but four. At this point, you're probably already doing the math... 1,000 cards divided by four albums = 250 cards per album, right? Wrong. The Sun, ever attentive to detail, allowed only 150 cards to be mounted in each of their albums. Nice work.

Fun with gum

Although each of the albums and the cards themselves were individually numbered, the spaces inside the albums were not, which meant you could affix any cards you liked, wherever you liked. In addition, each card had a biography of a player on the reverse, thereby inviting you to be particularly creative with the glue if you wanted to read the blurb after the card was fixed in place.

Stars?

Somewhat helpfully, each of the cards was listed inside every album so you could check which ones you still needed to collect. Unfortunately it only served to expose the highly dubious way some of the players were categorised. Take the 'International Stars' section, for instance. There were 200 of those, among which were worldwide stars such as Joe Harper of Scotland (4 caps), Pat Sharkey of Northern Ireland (1 cap) and Eric Pecout of France (5 caps). There were also Brazilian players that were so famous, they didn't even need to be spelled correctly, like Riverlinho, Dirceau and Emerson Leoa.

The humorously entitled 'International Stars' listing

The rest of the listing continued in much the same vein. In the 'All Time Greats' section were 347 players including such legends as Paul Edwards of Stockport County, Kevin Bird of Mansfield Town and Alan Dugdale of Charlton Athletic. After assessing the selection of 'Midfielders' and 'Strikers' (goalkeepers and defenders weren't worthy of inclusion, apparently), there was also a subset of 60 national flags to collect, because that was absolutely essential in a collection of football player cards.

A case of mistaken identity

But what about the actual picture cards themselves, we hear you cry? What unfettered joy were they capable of bringing into our lives during the late-1970s? In short, they were as bewilderingly awful as they were hysterically funny. One can only assume some poor amateur artist was approached by a Sun employee and asked if he could paint pictures of almost 1,000 football players in the space of a day and a half, on account of it being 'a bit urgent.' The poor fella no doubt weighed up the situation and figured it was more important to get them all done rather than make them lifelike in any way. The results were, let's say... 'interesting.'

Oi... Narey... get your hair cut...

To begin with, several of the players were situated so low down in the frame that you'd be mistaken for thinking they'd been cut off at the knees. For others, a curious selection of colours was applied to render many a club shirt unrecognisable in a psychedelic sort of way.

The part of Peter Springett will this evening be played by
Sean Connery in Zardoz.

If the colours were right by some strange quirk of fate, many a detail on the shirt wasn't. On occasions, a player was seen wearing a shirt for a completely different team, but hey, we're just splitting hairs here.

No, you're not mistaken... that really IS Mick McCarthy
(top right)

Look at his face! JUST LOOK AT HIS FACE!

But let's not kid ourselves. The real reason to point and laugh uncontrollably up our sleeves wasn't anything to do with the shirts. It was the mangled, often contorted-as-if-reeling-from-an-accident-with-a-food-blender depiction of the face and hair.

At what point can a man with the grooming and elan of Watford goalkeeper Andy Rankin be robbed of his self-esteem purely because The Sun's resident artist thought he looked like a grapefruit wearing a wig?

Wait a minute... haven't we seen him before somewhere?

Oh yeah - thought so.

If a player had grey or even blonde hair, heaven help him. Chances are he'd end up looking like he was balancing a small whitewashed mammal on his head, such were the limitations of our esteemed painter.

Les Chapman? For an extra £20, we could have got an
Old English Sheepdog...

Got a player whose face is caught in heavy shadow? Not a problem! Let The Sun depict him as a man with a seriously contagious skin condition. It's the least you deserve as an 'International Star...'

Alan Stevenson, a.k.a. The Singing Detective

...and so it goes on. Page after page of brightly coloured, erratically drawn football players providing a never-ending parade of mirth from cover to cover. But let's be mature and stop for a moment to consider the serious content provided for us by The Sun's professional band of football writers.

Don't make me laugh...

Throughout this album were articles on everything from the World's Biggest Stadiums to Soccer Development Around The World. There was even a lengthy series of texts charting the history of international football from the Second World War onwards. And if that was too challenging for you, there were also quizzes, puzzles and trivia features.

World's Biggest Stadiums: Insert glorified list of statistics
here

Geoff Hurst is the only man to score a hat-trick in a
World Cup Final?!? Amazing!

Football from a bygone era, and Gerry Daly:
an accidental juxtaposition.

But let's be honest - all these articles, no matter how noble they have been in their efforts to educate the reader, were never going to be the main focus. This was purely and simply an attempt to bring comedy to the masses through the medium of art, and we use the term 'art' very, very loosely.

So to close, here's some more badly painted football players of the late-1970's as we salute the ridiculous delusion of a national newspaper that thought it didn't need to pay for some proper photographs. How wrong they were.

Read More