Panini 2002 World Cup Album

We at the Attic don't just write about our own experiences of football nostalgia, we also like to be a conduit for others...here Victor M Rey shares his memories of his first ever Sticker Album...

The 2002 World Cup is the first football championship I remember, but if there is something that I remember better than the World Cup itself it is the Panini Sticker Album.

I was 7 and I was living in Venezuela. Despite Venezuela has never played a World Cup, the people followed the football, specially their parents/grandparents' country football team, like Spain (this is my case), Italy, Portugal... And most of the children had the Sticker Album.

Everybody in my class had the album, we changed between us our repeated stickers in order to have the maximum number of stickers possible.

Regarding the album, the first pages talk about old World Cups, the countries who have won it and stickers with the photos of the stadiums in Korea and Japan... and some pictures of the 2002 WC pets!

The rest of the pages were, as usual, dedicated to the participant countries. Each page has the country's logo, name in some languages (English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German...) and a photo of their main line-up. It has something curious, it is that some countries, instead of a line-up, their had a picture with the head of the players (I used to joke with my friends saying they hadn't enough money to pay for the photo). The rest of the page has the photos of the players, with their city of birth, age, weight and height.

The pages that belong to the countries of the last group (like Russia) has fewer stickers, because each sticker has the photo of two players, a really interesting thing.

I remember I spent all my summer trying to get all the stickers. I had around 10 stickers left, so my father helped me calling Panini in order to complete the album.

It was the first football sticker album I completed by myself, and I remember it with great emotion.

Thanks to The Football Attic for letting me share my experience.

Huge thanks to Victor for sharing his sticker album memories there...if you'd like to share anything from your past (preferably football nostalgia related, we're not licensed therapists!), drop us a line and let us know to admin [at] thefootballattic [dot] com...