Soccer 88 - Daily Mirror Sticker Album

Continuing my theme of writing about non-Panini sticker albums, I'm doing it again and this time it's a sequel. Having covered the Daily Mirror's first foray into football stickers with 1987's Stick With Soccer, what we have here is their follow up from 1988.

There are some noticeable changes from the 86/87 album and, perhaps sadly given how different that album had been from the usual Panini fayre, most of them seem to have been done to fall more in line with the accepted version of the sticker book format. What I'm saying is, they Paninified its ass!

The 2 most obvious changes come with the name. While "Stick With Soccer" had followed the numbering format to match the league season it related to (86/87), Soccer 88 adopted the traditional (i.e. Panini) approach of the year the book was released in.


Secondly, "Soccer 88" is now the actual title (as opposed to the last one being officially titled "Stick With Soccer - 1986/87 Season"). This one does however, have a nice subtitle - "Britain's Top Sticker Album". Note, there's no asterisk there linked to a footnote with something like "in the Gateshead area for 3 weeks in March", nope this was apparently Britain's top sticker album. One can only assume that to be true as it's highly unlikely a tabloid newspaper would print any outlandish claims without facts to back it up. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is satire.

There's also been a price reduction...from 25p to FREE!

some words

One thing that hasn't changed is the foreword, blandly presented again by Bryan Robson...pretty sure he didn't write it though the sheer moribundness of it all maybe suggests he did. I have a lovely image of him, chewed pencil in hand, tongue sticking out as he concentrates oh so hard to fulfill the 200 word brief.

The intro does reveal that in the 87/88 season the top flight was in one of those transition phases between 22 and 20 clubs...in other words, 21.
There's also 360 stickers in total, up from 286 the previous year (thanks Bryan).

Wot no Villa?

An extra little nugget from the inside cover shows that Daily Mirror stickers came not in packets, but in "envelopes" - 6 stickers (surprised they didn't call them sticky-pics or something) costing 12p...

As with 86/87, we dive straight into the teams (all 26 of them...I'll come to the other 5 later) and of course it's perennial sticker book openers, boring boring Arsenal. These are of course followed by...Charlton. Eh? Where are Aston Villa? This is 1988, they're in the 2nd Division...which is funny...much much funnier than being in the 3rd tier with no home and -10 points oh yes! (SISU OUT!).

Sansom and...is it midnight?

One other new feature where the Mirror have, er, been inspired by Panini, is the introduction of foil stickers. That doesn't mean we get club badges (copyright issues anyone?), but instead the foils are reserved for the Team Manager and the Captain. The foils are...how shall I put this...crap?

Where the Italian foils are lovely and magpie-temptingly shiny, the Mirror's are just...dark. Sure if you shine a bright light on them they just about display their wares, but they're hardly what you'd call a mirror finish (and there we have ourselves a whole plate of pun...a punnet even...I'm on FIRE!)

CCFC...because I can...

Also making its debut is the player profile shot. 86/87 was all action, but this time round there's a strange mix of almost all action and then the odd player's mug appears. It all adds to the rather cheap feel that dominated the previous album and somewhat lets down the clear attempt to be taken more seriously. They should have stuck with one or the other and given the quality of the photos in this album are much better than before, the unique angle provided by the action shots should have been used as a USP. Speaking of the stickers, the quality level may have increased, but the stickers themselves have shrunk...down to normal Panini size, therefore allowing for more per page (hence the increase in number).

Super indeed!

The middle pages detail a rather bloody good competition to win a 10 day holiday to watch Euro 88 in West Germany. No doubt funded by the Mirror newspaper group, this was nevertheless something you wouldn't have found in any Panini album. Naturally, this is advertised heavily on the front cov...no wait...there's no mention of it anywhere prominent. Another opportunity missed! Contrary to competitions these days, to win this you had to choose your England XI to win Euro 88. Wonder how many entries would have done better than the real 11.

Rangers? Rings a bell...

After the 21 English Division 1 clubs are covered, there's time for some north of the border action. And by some, I mean 3 teams. Aberdeen, Celtic and some team called Rangers? Nope, me neither...

The final pages are taken up with a quite-common-at-the-time World Stars selection, featuring the best of the football world at the time, from Josimar and Maradona to Sanchez and...er...Glenn Hysen and the ultimate England squad as chosen Sir Alf Ramsey. One can't really argue with his choices, although the choices do seem to be either 1966 or 1988...the 2 decades in between seem to have been skipped over. Keegan, Brooking? Nope, but we do have Alvin Martin...nah, I'm kidding...he's not there.

Class from home and abroad

And that's your lot. As with the previous album, Soccer 88 was to the point with little in the way of superfluousness, but in my opinion, it was better for it. Despite the obvious lean towards sticker album conformity, it's a clear level above its predecessor and one can't help but feel that if they'd made another, which I'm pretty sure they didn't, it would perhaps have been a decent rival to the great Panini. As it is, they ducked out of sticker albums and so these two serve as the Mirror's sole efforts from the 80s. Around this time, Merlin were just getting started and would go on to provide a serious rival to Panini with the introduction of the Premiership. Perhaps this newcomer finally convinced those at the Mirror that there just wasn't room for a third top flight sticker collection. I guess we'll never know...

World Cup - A Daily Mirror Special (1970)

It can never be underestimated just how much English football fans were looking forward to the 1970 World Cup. Having hosted and won the 1966 tournament, England were ready to take on anyone that dared snatch their title from them. With such self-confidence and excited anticipation, the entire country lapped up every bit of Mexico ‘70 ephemera they could find.

The Daily Mirror was not to be left out as it produced its special guide to the Finals. Calling on the talents of its writers, designers and photographers, the Mirror had all the ingredients required to inform and educate its readers.

Those self-same talents would be put to good use analysing the qualities of the England team and its likelihood to retain the Jules Rimet trophy. Undoubtedly one of the key elements for success would be the way Sir Alf’s squad adapted to the heat and altitude of the host nation. Ken Jones confirmed what we already knew from a recent Attic article:

“The planning began many months ago when the world’s greatest athletes were punishing their bodies in search of gold medals. Sir Alf Ramsey was there then, watching, probing, searching. He went to hotels, tasted food, explored training facilities and talked.”

Jones also correctly pre-empted the pace of the games in the searing heat of Mexico: “Running will have to be restricted and it will become a matter of precise judgement. If the ball is carelessly given away then England will find themselves in trouble. The order will be for no unnecessary effort and the tempo will be slowed down in an attempt to conserve energy.”

Harry Miller explored the rigorous preparations further still in his feature titled ‘Be Prepared’: “Players will be examined daily to see how much sun they have absorbed. There will also be regular checks on feet and a careful watch on diet.”

He went on: “Each player is being issued with two special pairs of sun-glasses [sic]. If you have colour television and expect to see England in a change strip of red - the colour worn when they beat West Germany in the 1966 World Cup Final - forget it! England will wear sky-blue when they are unable to play in traditional white. It has been found to absorb less heat.”

While there was ample pictorial evidence of the players receiving their inoculations, Harry Miller also discussed the important subject of how the squad would avoid boredom during their stay in Mexico: “A variety of indoor games, darts, draughts, feature films and the inevitable playing cards should help.” The Playstation Era this was not...

Further on, a brief description of each group in the tournament was provided although little was learned from each of these mini profiles. In the case of Group 2, a particularly bad prediction was made as the Italians, so it was said “will display the most brilliant football but their suspect temperament could well see the solid defensive play of the composed Swedes pipping them for the second qualifying place.” That’ll be the Italians that reached the Final, no doubt...

The Daily Mirror flooded each page of its guide to the World Cup with many photographs, all of them adding interest to the piece, with some having a curious novelty value. ‘The Magnificient Seven’ showed England’s Leeds United contingent wearing suits while ‘My World Cup’ looked like an easy excuse to show Bobby Moore’s then wife Tina in an England shirt. “Women’s rights are not part of the England soccer scene” said the caption, “but you have to admit Mrs Tina Moore shows pretty good form in Bobby’s international shirt.”

After the visual pleasantries that headed the feature, Frank McGhee took three pages to discuss pretty much every single decent team and player he’d ever seen in a World Cup. Throughout this huge indulgence, it was actually his opening gambit that was the most interesting to read. In it, he referred to Joao Saldanha, coach of the Brazilian team, whose views on the future of the tournament were somewhat gloomy in nature.

“He feels it will be killed eventually, maybe even during the coming decade, by the surfeit of national feelings and international troubles that affect it and which will in time sicken die hard fans and football associations of the competing nations” said McGhee. “And he insists that he won’t be sorry to see it disappear, to be replaced at the game’s grass roots by competition between clubs in which anthems and flags and patriotic drum-beating will be out of place.” Thought-provoking stuff.

At the back end of the Daily Mirror’s fine World Cup guide, Derek Wallis looked at ‘The Outsiders’ and wondered whether the likes of Israel, El Salvador or Morocco could repeat the achievements of North Korea four years earlier (they wouldn't), while Tony Cornell told us all about the efforts the BBC and ITV were making in preparing for the forthcoming televisual festival.

But this review ends with the back page feature focusing on the qualifying results that made up ‘The Road To Mexico.’ Before you ask, though, it wasn't the results that caught my eye - more the picture at the top of the page. It shows the draw being made for the 1970 World Cup Finals, and in particular one man holding aloft a piece of paper showing the name ‘Italy.’

Where these days team names are printed onto beautifully woven pieces of silk or elaborately decorated paper, back then the names of the teams were scrawled on by hand with a pen, and not particularly neatly either.

For that reason and that reason alone, we salute football’s ‘good old days’ and give thanks for this special Daily Mirror commemorative guide.

Stick With Soccer - Daily Mirror Sticker Album 1986-87

Say "football stickers" to anyone and they'll probably wonder why you're shouting random phrases at them in the street... and why you appear to have no pants on, but are still wearing a nice pair of shiny brogues.

That's not what this article is about though so instead I'll concentrate on the responses of those who are into football stickers, and that initial response is almost certainly "PANINI."

There are times however, when a boy decides that he wants something more than what everyone else has, when he decides to forge a path not trodden by others... and primarily when he sees a set of stickers that are bigger than Panini ones and  feature 'action shots,' rather than boring head shots.

Despite owning two of these sticker albums (86/87 and 1988), I cannot for the life of me remember how I used to obtain the stickers, or indeed the album itself. We never bought the Daily Mirror newspaper so it's unlikely I got it free via that route and the album does have a price of a whopping 25p on the front, so I can only assume I purchased it. Same goes for the stickers. Were they given away in the paper and we just bought it for that reason for a while, or were they available in packets? I honestly cannot recall, so would love someone to fill in this missing info.

So, to the album itself.

There's a brief intro from Bryan Robson, which, if you read it in his traditional monotone way, almost puts you off right there and then. I can hear the quoted words, "Stick With Soccer" (for that is the official title) being forced from his mouth with all the panache of a comatose twig.

Turn the page and we're straight into the action... literally. As mentioned, the stickers in this album are all action shots, no doubt taken from the extensive Daily Mirror archive and it's this aspect which really did appeal to the 12-year-old me. Panini may have been the official collection, but a bunch of staged headshots has nothing on proper pictures of the named stars from an actual match.

John Lukic foreshadowing Arsenal's fortunes?
No...

There seems to be one problem with this approach however, and that appears with the very first sticker in the album. The quandary facing the photo selectors was thus: What do you do when the only image of Arsenal keeper John Lukic is quite clearly landscape? Possible answers to this were "crop the image" or maybe even "Photoshop his head onto someone else's"... known as 'the Panini approach.' But no, the answer the DM came up with was "ah just put the sticker in sideways."

Yup, the first sticker in the album has John Lukic pointing at the floor. Good start, Stick With Soccer.
Sadly, Arsenal have stayed in the top flight all this time, thus robbing me of the opportunity to make some kind of 'pointing the way' / relegation joke. Cheers, Daily Mail!

*** See UPDATE below for further news on this ***

The action shot approach does have its flaws, however, one of those being the availability of images. The John Lukic debacle is one aspect of this... the other is the variety of kits you see on show. On one page, across only seven stickers, we get four different Arsenal shirts!

So...which is this season's kit then?

Dull...no that's not what it says in the Club Info!

One page that does have all that season's kits on show is Coventry City (like I need an excuse to show CCFC!)  This page, though, does demonstrate another issue with the Mirror album. Their approach seems to have been quantity over quality as, though the stickers are about 50% bigger than the average Panini ones, the quality of the shots does vary wildly throughout the book, with most pictures being rather dull in colour and often quite dark. This is not just 26 years taking their toll; I remember them being like this at the time.

Looking at the Coventry page, the contrast between the background image and the stickers makes the dullness even more apparent.  Most of the stickers look washed out and too cold. The only one that appears normal is Kilcline and the fact that one of the stickers on the page is noticeably different just highlights the lack of consistency.

A further issue caused by the large size of the stickers is there are only 13 players on each double-page spread. No fringe squad players will be found here!

Bobby Who? £25 Spending Money!!!

The format of the album is very straight laced with pages only for the 22 teams in Division 1. The only gimmick present is on the last two pages, where a Soccer Super Subs Competition appears. The idea behind this was you used your swaps to create an all star 11, which you would then stick in the blank spaces provided on the reverse of the page. The prize was a not inconsiderable one - a 7-day course at Bobby Charlton's Soccer School, including accommodation, and not forgetting "2nd class rail travel and £25 spending money."

One final note: out of the 22 clubs that made up the 1st Division in 1986/87, nine are no longer in the top flight. They now reside in the following divisions:

Yes Son, Luton used to be in the top flight...wait, come back!

Charlton Athletic - Championship
Coventry City - League 1
Leicester City - Championship
Luton Town - Conference
Nottm Forest - Championship
Oxford Utd - League 2
Sheff Wed - Championship
Watford - Championship
Wimbledon - League 2

On top of that, several clubs are back in the Premiership, having dipped out to varying degrees, Man City being the most notable fall and rise and Norwich, QPR, Southampton and West Ham having only recently returned following often intermittent stays of varying length.

While the quality may not have been up to Panini standard, it was a very worthwhile album to collect and the novelty of having action shots certainly made it worth owning, especially if one album wasn't enough to sate your desire for collecting football stickers!

The Daily Mirror followed the album with a much more professional affair the following year (and also ditched the 'season' style numbering and following Panini's style of being named after the year of release, so the one that came after would be known as Soccer 88, rather than Soccer 1986/87.) I'll review that album another time however, where you'll get to see the Mirror's attempt at foil stickers!


*** UPDATE ***

In the few hours since I posted this, Steve Jinman (@EducatedLeftFt) retrieved his Daily Mirror album and it seems his John Lukic was the right way up?!?!  The mystery deepens... where did the perpendicular Lukic come from? It's definitely a DM sticker so whaaaaa? Anyone have the answer? Was it from a previous album? An alternative universe? WHO KNOWS???

Big thanks to Steve for finding this!