Jonny McCambridge: Diego Maradona, Paolo Rossi and the heyday of the Panini sticker albums

For a young boy in the 1980s, Panini stickers came to represent something of almost indescribable importance, an outlet way more intoxicating than religion or education.

The albums covered a range of subjects (I once almost completed the A-Team album), but for most they represented just one thing – football. The annual Football League book was a coveted item and the competition to be the first in the class to fill it could ruin friendships (I once remember two boys coming to blows over ownership of the Manchester United team photo sticker).

It worked this way. The album was purchased and then every penny of pocket money was scraped together over several months to buy as many packets of stickers as could be afforded each weekend.

As best I can remember there were six stickers in each packet. The packaging was ripped off and with trembling hands the portraits of the footballers were placed (almost straight) onto the blank shapes on the correct pages.

The book also contained masses of information about the players. Well before Google or Jeff Stelling’s Soccer Saturday, this was where I learnt my stats at a time when my brain was still able to retain information.

It could be frustrating. One year I desperately wanted to get Norman Whiteside but instead ended up with 14 doubles of Watford’s Kenny Jackett. However, the doubles were currency in the playground and the bothersome maths and English lessons in the classroom were just filling in time until I could swap stickers with the other boys.

The yearly book was valuable, but the true magic surrounded the World Cup album. For a child, the four year gap between their publication seemed like an unbridgeable chasm, a vast period of time in which mountains could rise and fall.

I had the Espana ‘82 album, when I was still too young to possess the perseverance to finish it, and the Mexico ‘86 book, which I triumphantly completed before any of my friends in class.

My mind has drifted back to these albums several times recently, due to the deaths within a few weeks of legendary footballers Diego Maradona and Paolo Rossi, the stars of those 1986 and 1982 tournaments.

The Maradona sticker was one of the last I got for the ’86 book. I remember keenly the moment I found it in the packet - the stern, almost sombre look on the Argentine’s face. In the image he seemed to be on the verge of tears, as if fearful of the scale of the challenge which awaited him.

As I placed Maradona into the album I had no idea that within a few weeks he would go on to dominate the global tournament in a way no single individual has before or since, the squat little man bouncing low like a rubber ball between the flailing tackles of the hapless English defenders on his way to sporting immortality.

It may seem rather quaint to modern sensibilities that such importance could have been attached to mere stickers in a book. But a child’s perspective then was very different than it is in these times. The album itself was so cherished because it filled a gap – the gap left because there was no live football on TV.

For a millennial sports fan stuffed like a Christmas turkey on a non-stop diet of on demand entertainment this may seem like an alien concept; but there was a time, not very long ago, when the only live football was the FA Cup final and the World Cup.

Thus, when I cried for hours after the brilliant Brazilian team were knocked out of the World Cup in Spain in 1982, it was only partly at the unfairness that the best team were not to prevail. It was just as much because I knew that if I ever got to see these exotic stars again – Zico, Socrates, Eder – then it would not be for another four years.

Long after that Brazilian side was eliminated I still had the Espana ‘82 album and gazed intently at their page. Because of it there was a time that I knew by heart the height, weight and date of birth of every member of the Brazilian squad. In the absence of live football it was the best I could do.

I am sitting in my living room as I type these words. My son is at my feet, on the carpet, playing with the abundance of toys left by Santa and family members. He will spend hours engrossed in his new Nintendo Switch, and when he comes away from it there is the walking dragon which breathes fire and the miniature UFO which flies above our heads close to the ceiling. Occasionally he will decide to watch TV and will scan through our multitude of streaming services to find the exact film or programme that he desires. If I was to try and explain that there was a time when it didn’t work this way, I’m not sure he would understand.

The idea is not fully formed in my mind but I have a nagging thought about how our characters are shaped by our experience. How mine was defined by often not having what I wanted, of having to wait. My son’s will be shaped by his understanding that most of what he desires is readily available, and perhaps valued less because of it.

I’m not sure where this train of thought leads. After all, want can do strange things to a juvenile mind.

Prior to the 1982 World Cup, driven half mad by the interminable wait for live sport and intoxicated by the prospect of the summer of football to come, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I took my Panini album and played out my own version of the tournament, with the same teams, fixtures and groups. I cut up bits of paper with numbers on them and secreted them inside an envelope. I then drew out the numbers blind to represent the scores of the imaginary matches.

I executed an entire tournament in this way. Kuwait beat Honduras 8-5 in the final.

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