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...

Retro Round-Up: 2 August 2013

Welcome aboard the good ship Round-Up where once again it's time to take another sail through the calm and pleasant waters of this week's football nostalgia on the internet...

We begin with the happy tale of a young Brighton mascot that didn't get to meet Jimmy Saville, brought to you by The Goldstone Wrap...

A mesmerising piece of skill from Ronaldo at Inter, remembered fondly by Old School Panini...

Steve Mitchell recalls some happy childhood memories of Butlins' soccer coaching camps over at Got, Not Got...

If you heard our podcast on computer football games, you'll also like Who Ate All the Pies' round-up of their own favourite football video games...

A touching tribute to a young player that sadly died this week, courtesy of 8Bit Football...

Something we just missed out on last week, Falcon of Fury is a short film all about one boy's desire to be accepted as a Subbuteo master. It's written by David Quantick and stars Michael Spicer...

eBay Buy of the Week: A classic programme from a curious football match - Watford v Vancouver Whitecaps in 1981, and yours for a starting fee of just 99p (+ postage and packing)...

...and finally, a bonus item which isn't new nostalgia but is certainly right up our street, brought to our attention by Spirit of Mirko - it's 45Football.com, the place where all bad football records go to die...

Badge Focus: Crystal Palace

Following our previous look back at the club badges of Wolverhampton Wanderers, we now turn our attention to Crystal Palace, a team that have just launched their own new design...

Formed 108 years ago in the south of London, Crystal Palace’s first club badge didn't appear on their shirts until 1955. Some twenty years previous, they'd had the letters ‘CPFC’ stitched on the left breast, but the Selhurst Lane club changed tack with a new design showing the façade of the old Crystal Palace building, site of the 1851 Great Exhibition. As mid-50’s badges go, this was a very nice example of how to use simple composition and styling to create an easily recognisable ‘brand’.

The new crest remained in place (albeit in modified form latterly) until 1964 when Palace played Real Madrid in a commemorative match to formally celebrate the installation of their new floodlights. The kit became all-white for two seasons and the shirt was adorned with what can only be described as a baffling half-shield in blue and red. Looking like something that had fallen off the tail fin of a French Air Force plane, this surreal attempt at a badge didn't make it past 1966, and possibly with good reason.

After a season where no club badge appeared on the shirts at all, Crystal Palace replaced the badge in 1967 with some embroidered gold stitching showing the team name. In 1972, however, this was also replaced and a circular creation arrived, complete with claret-coloured ring and an angular light-blue ‘CP’ in the middle. Palace’s name featured in the outer circle, as was their nickname - ‘The Glaziers’. A distinctive moniker and a pleasing, if slightly unimaginative, badge too, but both would be gone by the end of 1973.

The reason for the change in mid-season can be attributed to one man – Malcolm Allison. He arrived as manager at Selhurst Park four months into the 1973/74 season and decided that Palace were in need of reinvention. At a stroke he got rid of the club’s colours (claret and blue for as long as anyone could remember), the club’s nickname (opting for the altogether more inspiring ‘Eagles’) and that minimalist badge.

By way of a replacement there was a new colour-scheme of red and blue and a badge featuring a swooping eagle landing on a football with the words ‘Crystal Palace Football Club’ running in circular formation around them. A considerable improvement for sure, and although it wasn't enough to stop Palace dropping briefly into the Third Division, it did set the club on a more positive bearing for the seasons that followed.


Though the team’s fortunes fluctuated regularly, the badge remained constant until 1987 when a coming together of old and new created the emblem that has remained in place virtually ever since. Out went the circular motif and in its place came an image of the glass fronted Crystal Palace building that was last used in the 1960’s together with the swooping eagle. The overall arrangement proved popular and had a unique appearance that stood out easily from their rivals.

Strangely enough, a little tweaking was called for in 1994, and not necessarily in a good way either. Firstly, the dynamic swooping eagle was replaced with a standing eagle whose body was facing in the opposite direction. Secondly the ball upon which it was perched was updated from the 1960’s long-patch style to the 1970’s Adidas Telstar. Now surely if you were going to modernise the appearance of a football on your club badge, you’d bring it all the more fully up-to-date, wouldn't you? Apparently not, in this case...

Aside from that, there’s also a bit of a question mark over the patchy shading on the eagle itself. For some reason, it looks as though it had been photocopied and then that photocopy has been photocopied and so on to the point where all the detail has been lost.

With that in mind, it's a little surprising that it took 19 years before someone felt the need to freshen up the badge. The result, however, was a consultation between club and fans in which the latter were asked to vote for their favourite among a selection of potential new designs. The winner, designed by Crystal Palace fan Dan Mulcahy with help from Palace's own design team, featured a crisp, sharply illustrated eagle on top of an old-fashioned ball with a new blue ribbon below and a restyled version of the Crystal Palace building behind in grey.

In our view, the new badge looks excellent, but we'd love to hear your views on it or any of its predecessors. Please leave us a comment or take part in our online poll below. We look forward to hearing your thoughts!



See also:

• Badge Focus - Wolverhampton Wanderers

(Article updated from previous version originally published on Football Fairground).

The Football Attic Podcast 11 - England Kits

Following on the from the recent England Kit Poll here on the Attic, we thought it'd be fun to discuss the results of the poll and England kits generally down the years... and it was!

Listen as Rich rails against the poll result and the '82 kit in particular (yes, again! Let it go!!!)

Hear Chris defend it... along with the rest of the world!

Oh and listen out for some quality* mash-ups of some Prodigy and Aztec Gold... er...

*ropey

Subscribe on iTunes or download here

Retro Round-Up: 26 July 2013

Hello everyone! How are you? Has your week been a good one? Did you do all the things you set out to do? And what about that annoying itch you've been having... you know - the embarrassing one you've been meaning to see the doctor about?

We hope the last seven days have been pleasant for you and utterly itch-free, but even if things haven't gone so well, console yourself with the fact that the world of football nostalgia makes everything right in the end. Proof is provided with this wondrous list of web-based bliss we present here for you to enjoy...

The Guardian is here to test your knowledge of football players that appeared on Panini stickers. See how many you can score out of ten...

The Goldstone Wrap remembers Brian Clough's brief spell at Brighton still being long enough to accomodate one typically brazen utterance, as detailed here...

Who Ate All the Pies looks back to 1984 and the arrival of Diego Maradona at Napoli...

It's nearly 20 years since Norwich City's Jeremy Goss stunned the football world with his volley against Bayern Munich in the UEFA Cup, so here's 8-Bit Football with their own unique tribute...

Giles Metcalfe returns to Got, Not Got with a guest post about those football clubs named after companies and other corporate entities...

FootballGaffesGalore does the business again with over eight minutes of wonderful Sammy McIllroy memories on YouTube...

Subbuteo continues to make the headlines with the first Scottish Challenge Cup tournament - details here at Toy News...

A sad end to the career of a wonderful broadcaster: James Alexander Gordon rightly remembered as a radio great, again over at The Guardian...

And finally, our eBay Buy of the Week - The first 93 issues of Shoot magazine, presented in four binders - and yours for just £230...

Solved! The Mystery of the 96-97 Argentina Shirt

OK, so most of you reading this will a) not be aware there's any kind of mystery around a certain mid-90s Argentina shirt and b) not give a toss, but I DO!

For the past few years, I have been seeing this Argentina shirt all over eBay and it's usually described as the 96-97 shirt. I know this to be inaccurate as I am a complete nerd when it comes to Argentina kits and I happen to know that, between World Cups 94 and 98, AFA had only one other style of shirt... although even that appeared in about 4 different versions!

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon an excellent site, bursting with Argentina-Kit-Nerd-Porn (yeah, I'm uber-niche!) and learned such awesome facts as in 1991, the AFA Youth side wore kits almost identical to the "one off" away outfits the senior side wore against England at Mexico 86!

Perusing that site last night, what lay before me, but that 96-97 shirt! At last I thought, an answer! Except i was on my mobile so couldn't translate it... hours later and my PC screen reveals the truth.

I was right! It never was an official AFA shirt! Turns out it was a proposal Adidas put forward for the 1994 kit, but which was rejected due to the navy pinstripes, the AFA insisting there would be no colour other than the blue and white (4 years later, they finally allowed black detailing on the shirts worn at World Cup 98). So, not only was it not a shirt ever worn by the Argentina side, but had the AFA not been so prickly about a 3rd colour on the shirt, this could have been the outfit worn by Maradona in his last ever match for his country. Personally, I think they made the right call and the one eventually chosen for USA 94 was very classy.

88? Really?

So now you know... and probably still don't care ;-)

Just this one to solve now...

You can read the full article here. And in case you were wondering, I use Google Chrome, which translates it all for me...

eBay - Top 10 Buying Tips

Following on from our recent Memorabilia Collecting Podcast we were contacted by Jamie Parkins, who's provided this excellent Top Tips guide for eBay hunting!

Between 2001 and 2008 I had the pleasure of working at eBay UK. In the early days I managed both the Sporting Goods and Sports Memorabilia categories - charged with growing the number of seller's listing items on the site.

In the case of the memorabilia, I was fortunate in that by its very nature, collectors, fans and aficionados knew the site well and were already selling items in their multitude. At a football level, pretty much every club was represented somehow by fans selling and buying memorabilia of all shapes and forms. Instead I tended to try and support some of the key categories at a grass roots level in order to build up support for the website. I fondly recall working with Corinthians PLC the makers of those weirdly big-headed figurines and also sponsoring the UK Subbueto Championships in Birmingham (top tip: running out of eBay goodies to hand out about 45 minutes in makes for a long weekend!)

I've been following The Football Attic for some time now and needless to say eBay comes up a lot. Whilst I'm not here to promote one trading platform over another, there's no denying it's in my DNA, and so I thought some tips on buying on the site might be of help to you…

Whilst I can't guarantee you Pele's 1970 World Cup shirt for under £100, you never know what gem these might lead you to.


1. Review Completed Items

A hidden gem, eBay saves historical data of up to 90 days for all items listed. By switching an advanced search to include "Completed Items" you can see what had previously sold and the price they went for. Really useful for getting a measure or proxy for the average bid price for a certain, repeated item, ahead of when you bid.


2. Timing is Key

Bid early and declare your interest or bid late and run the risk of lots of collectors fighting for the auction. In the early days there were plenty of 99p bargains to be won, but less so nowadays. Simply put, you are up against thousands of other people in most verticals now so don't be naive and think that no-one else is watching the item. The page views counter, sometimes displayed at the bottom of the listing, is a good visual reference to let you know if you have stumbled onto something that no-one or everyone is looking at! By bidding early you kind of declare your hand, but eBay at least then knows this and can keep you up to date with the progress of the auction. If you don't initially bid, remember to either watch or at least bookmark the listing as it's amazing how time can sometimes fly past and a bargain goes a missing.

As a football collector, another angle to consider is that during actual matches, the chances of a fan bidding on their team's memorabilia will fall as they are likely to be at the game or at least watching it. Items ending between 15:00-16:45 on a Saturday or 19:30-21:15 midweek may often end up going for less than usual.


3. Saved Searches

If you're tired of searching the same old phrase on eBay in the vain hope that that lesser spotted pre-season programme is going to be listed, why not set up a Saved Search? Punch your search into eBay and you'll be presented with the chance to save it. eBay will then automatically email you on a daily/weekly basis when an item is listed that matches the search criteria. Double up with the mobile app and you can get push notifications for when that item is listed. Again, no excuse to miss out when, say, you are away from your computer for a prolonged period of time.


4. Go Mobile

eBay got into the proliferation of mobile apps pretty early and it's easy to see why. With more people connected via their mobiles, the chance to win an auction when away from the traditional desktop means collectors have no excuse to miss out. The iOS mobile app is very easy to use and connects well to your My eBay account so Saved Searches and Watches are all displayed. The interface for bidding, it could be argued, is even better than bidding on your desktop but look to ensure your 3G or wi-fi signal is strong enough to not lose out. You can download the iOS app here and the android app here.


5. Know Your Budget

I'm amazed when I watch friends bid. General practice, seems to be (1) bid and get outbid immediately (2) panic stricken, pull a number out of thin air and throw in a new maximum bid (3) outbid again, draw in air through teeth and come up with another new number exclaiming "sod it" as they click on the bid button. This is NOT the way to plan a bidding strategy.

From the onset, know what you are ultimately prepared to pay for the item. What is it worth to you? What is the highest you would be prepared to pay for it? When you have that answer you have your highest placed bidding strategy. With that number to hand you can place your maximum bid, let eBay's technology bid for you and watch the auction unfold. If you win, great; if you lose, well tell yourself it was never meant to be.

6. International v Domestic

A subtle one, but eBay's search results can be quite funky at times. Depending on how you set your location and what your default search criteria is, you may be missing out on items listed in international market places. Most sellers of memorabilia - aware that their are no boundaries to the geography of football fandom - set their items to be sold to all countries, but occasionally you'll find the odd gem listed on another country site that you may be able to snare.

7. The Gamble That is 'Buy It Now'

When we introduced Buy It Now to eBay, the community kicked off. The end of eBay they cried. Now fixed priced sales represent over 70% of site sales. With sporting memorabilia often its hard to put a fixed price on nostalgia and seller's will often pray on the desperation of the collector by putting a Buy It Now price on an auction listing. It's a great way to snaffle that desired item, but usually you pay over the odds. An alternate approach is where you see a Buy It Now auction, bidding low and early will remove that fixed price opportunity. In doing so, you remove any chance of another collector grabbing the item at the higher fixed price and the listing reverts to a traditional auction, in which you are now the current leading bidder. 

8. Misspellings, Typos, Nicknames

Spurs v Tottenham Hotspurs, United v Utd, Glasgow Rangers v 'Gers. You get the idea. There are many ways a team can be represented online. Similarly Gazza v Gascoigne or England's World Cup winning captain misspelled as Bobby More. It has happened. eBay's "did you mean" algorithm is pretty strong but occasionally the odd gem sneaks through and goes for a bargain.

9. Snipe, If You Dare

Controversial they may be, there is no denying the ability of automated bidding software to snag you that all-important item in the last seconds. There is a useful review of them here but be aware that their usage comes at a cost, sometimes monthly usage or a flat fee per successful bid.

10. Be Bold - Ask the Seller

If it looks too good to be true it often can be but you always have the chance to ask the seller. Just because we're online it doesn't mean you need to take the human element out of the transaction. Email the seller your questions and break down their reply. Are they being open and transparent? Did they answer your question to your satisfaction? Would this be the type of person you would interact with face to face? If you are thinking of spending some serious money on an item then see if you can speak with the seller directly. Are they able to explain the background of the item in question? How is it in their possession? Last resort, question them about their feedback. If there are negs in there, ask them why that negative was awarded, what did they do to resolve the situation. It's about creating a bond of trust.

Jamie Parkins is an eBay nut with a four figure feedback. His first purchase was a Watford Subbuteo team (LW 620 1986-88). You can find him at www.jamieparkins.co.uk