Life through the Panini album

That moment when you start tearing your first wrappers and it seems you’re only unveiling endless Japanese and South Korean players. Or when you realise Lucas Neill still features in the Australian national team. The despair after mistaking a sticker for the wrong number. Slowly slowly, you start establishing who are the ones with the funniest hairstyles (the Japanese still rank high here) or names (my favourite so far is Carlo Costly of Honduras – thank God I already have him).

Nothing beats the Panini sticker album to get into World Cup mode. The first edition goes back to Mexico 1970 and it has since then provided millions of kids (and slightly older collectors like yours truly) around the world with innumerable magical anecdotes of hard-fought negotiations over a missing badge, or a literally ubiquitous player (I have a high-definition mental image of the 1986 Hungary goalkeeper with the beard having found half a dozen images of him).

Gradually, you start grasping the fact you’re getting old and becoming a mature young man ready to face the grim reality of life when you stop assigning disproportionate value to the Italy, England, or Germany badge as you used to do with the lucky image of Maradona, Gary Lineker, or Roberto Baggio. Oh, the struggle to find Baggio in 1994! The misery each time I got doubles of the other Baggio, lanky midfielder Dino.

Looking back at previous editions, you will find greats and nobodies, the have-beens and the eternally promising. There are photos of players who are today, 20 kilos later, still very much part of the football scene, such as coaches or club managers. Others vanished or faded out professionally, quite a few have passed away. 

You will find countries that are no more – think East Germany, Zaire, Yugoslavia, not to mention the USSR. Along the years, newer editions sported new badges and new team shots. The latest entry is Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Despite all this, the Panini album is one of the very few things in football that remained pretty much the same throughout the years - the concept is the same we always knew since we were kids. It is one of the very few things that enable kids to actually meet and speak face to face to exchange their stickers and flaunt their latest treasures. Until someone comes up with some virtual album that allows you to buy stickers online, pay them via Paypal, and exchange them on Facebook.

Until then, I will treasure my collection of Panini albums.

NB: For the record, the goalkeeper with the beard was Peter Disztl. How can I ever forget his name?