Picked one up for my 4yr old this afternoon, who I'm currently brain washing (very successfully) into a love of football (Blades first and foremost).
I was driving home as he tried to find Norrington-Davies and Ndiaye's names in the album.
He couldn't find them. I figured they're tricky names.
At home I got it inside and had a look... I'm appalled to tell you these lads are not Panini World Cup stickers.
The backlash starts here. #BURNPANINIHQ
Note: I told him before he even knew what the thing was, that we cannot afford to buy any of the stickers - we'll draw the players.
You'd think it would have been released when the squads were named
It's impossible to wait for the squads to be announced as there wouldn't be time to get it printed and shipped.
They take a best guess of the squads based on the last 12 months and go from there.
It's not done and dusted though, where fringe players become more prominent they issue an update pack during the tournament, which is easy to buy direct from Panini. For example, if Connor Roberts doesn't make the final Wales squad and RND plays every game, he will likely be given a sticker. You'd then put it in the book in place of Connor Roberts.
As it stands there are 6 defenders in the Wales squad with more caps than RND and Ndiaye has only played 25 mins of international football so is still way down the pecking order. They usually only print 18 players from each squad so there will be some players missing out.
It's easy and very cheap to buy single stickers from eBay so you can always get the Blades players that way. Happy to help with that if needed.
The Women's Euros collection was even more unusual as all the
teams weren't even known by the time Panini went to print, due to Russia being kicked out late and UEFA taking their time to decide what to do. There was also no overall update pack, so no Alessia Russo (one of the best English players of the tournament) as she only had 2 caps before this year, or Ada Hegerberg (former Ballon d'Or winner) as she came back from an ACL injury earlier than expected.
I read that it will cost around 2 grand to fill the panini world cup book… get those pencils out
It's a load of bollocks. Those articles are the most predictable thing to come around every World Cup or Euros.
After spending £120 you'll have 670 stickers, which is how many the book contains. Keep the unique ones and swap the duplicates. Plenty of websites available to help with swapping. Obviously not everyone can throw £120 at it, but it's very different to the figures in these articles.
They always make the calculations based on not swapping, so it comes out to a sensational amount to put in their clickbait shite.
