FIFA World Cup 2018 – official licensed sticker album

The FIFA World Cup in Russia begins on June 14 and that means it’s that time to start collection stickers for your Official Panini sticker album. The Italian company started with World Cup in Mexico in 1970 and this year’s edition marks the 13th consecutive World Cup sticker album. My first edition was the 1990 album for World Cup in Italy, I even remember the very first football-star I spotted when I opened my first packet – Ruud Gullit!

The cover of this year’s Official sticker album.

The three most recent editions of the World Cup and Euro albums by Panini. The colour-scheme of the Russia 2018-album is very similar to the France 2016-album. 

Since then I’ve been collection stickers and albums before every World Cup, and since 1996 also before every UEFA Euro Championship – I even got the first UEFA Women’s Euro album (from last year’s championship in the Netherlands). It’s simply not a proper championship without these sticker albums.

The very first Women’s Euro-album with a sticker of the Norwegian captain Maren Mjelde. Notice the fact at the bottom right which notes in what year she had her national debut. A factoid this year’s stickers also will include.

The 1994, 1998 and 2000 albums of course have a special place in my memory as those were the championships featuring my home nation, Norway. I also must confess that while I’ve collected these albums their aren’t exactly stored in a way befitting their sentimental value, writing this post I’ve only certain where about half of the collection is stored.

But enough about previous albums,  let’s take a look at what this year’s edition is all about.

 

The first pages with the basic information about the album.

One of the main points in these albums for me is the spaces you can use to fill in the score in the various matches.

As usual Panini has done a few changes. Some editions only consist of 670 stickers (for example the BENELUX lands) while others (like Germany, the Nordic countries, UK and France) have a full 682 stickers. In the more common 682-sticker editions you can collect 12 stickers representing posters for the various host cities, in the 670-sticker editions the poster are just printed pictures, the difference seems like an odd decision by Panini. In Switzerland you can also get a special gold edition (gold-coloured covers, gold-borders on the stickers  and gold-tint on the foil stickers). The album is available in the usual soft cover version and a more exclusive hardcover version.

In a rather odd decision by Panini only some countries editions while have stickers of the city posters. The Moscow poster is one of few double-sticker pictures in the album.

In this edition you now get a separate page for stickers of previous winners (all in foil) + 2 legends (Pelé and Klose). In total 50 of 682 stickers are foils. A change from recent editions is that stadiums are represented by single stickers instead of the previous two stickers for 1 stadium picture.

A cool new feature is the Legends-page with room for 12 foil stickers .

The last page has no stickers but more record-facts from the World Cup history, certainly a thing the fans will appreciate.

The 2018-edition feature a single sticker for each stadium.

The player information and sticker layout is pretty much like previous editions. One thing that started with last year’s Women’s Euro-album is the inclusion of when a player debuted for his national team. I remember in past editions you also got things like place of birth (it was always fun to see which player where born in a foreign country, not that uncommon in 1990 with players from several former colonies etc. This edition is also the first where Panini has the license to all the teams (yes, that includes English players), what that means is no more silly photoshopped pictures. 

Information on how a team reached the World Cup is also standard in the Panini albums. This is the qualification for France.

The teams are as has been usual represented by their national football association logo, a team photo and 18 players (the 1970 album had only 11 players per team). Releasing the albums and stickers in April also means that Panini has to take an educated guess at to who include among the 18 players. The final 23-player squads must be submitted to FIFA by June 4, based on a 35 provisional squad that must be named by May 14, but these deadlines isn’t something Panini can use. In previous editions there have been a few glaring mistakes and odd choices; I still remember the Geirmund Brendesæter sticker in the 1994-album, a player how had played only 1 friendly match and was miles away from being included in a national squad for the World Cup. They have become better at getting the squads mostly right, and of course Panini can’t predict injuries and similar reason to be dropped from a squad. This will also be the first World Cup to feature Iceland and Panama so I bet those fans are especially eager to collect their heroes for the very first time!

The minor changes to the stickers from 2014, 2016 and now in 2018. Here represented by the Croatian star Luca Modrić.

Collecting these stickers isn’t cheap. The album has a retail price of €2, a packet of 5 stickers cost 80P, €0,9 or 10 NOK, but multipacks and display-boxes are available. Collection these stickers is very similar to collection CCG (like Magic:TG or Pokemon), you’ll end up with duplicates and to get a complete set you’ll either fork out a lot of cash (estimated to be about 770£) or have plenty of friends to swap with.  Then again, you cold do the mellow approach like myself and buy as many packets you like and feel fill out the album adequately.