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235: Ole-Gunnar Solskjaer, Manchester United, Panini Football Sticker Album, The Official PFA Collection, A-Z of ALL the Top Players from All the Top Teams in ‘97

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Coursework season has recently come to a close at work and it’s hard to tell who is more relieved. For students there is the catharsis of handing in a significant piece of work which has caused several sleepless nights while for teachers it means we can actually finish up the content for the upcoming public exams. The tight word count often leaves students needing to cut towards the deadline and my advice is always for them to read their work aloud as it often highlights repetition, typos and waffle. Despite the word limit for this particular blog being forgotten a long time ago I still ask my long suffering wife to listen to my posts before I upload them for the aforementioned reasons. She’s only fallen asleep a couple of times in the last six years. She did have a little chuckle for herself at the mention of Swiss side BSC Young Boys’ home ground, Stadion Wankdorf, last time out which led me to reference an American Football team my old man had mentioned having the nickname ‘the Wa...
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N/A: Eusébio, Portugal, Topps Match Attax Trading Card Game International Legends Collector Binder (Exclusive to Tesco)

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EA Sports FC 26 was released in September 2025 and, by the end of the following month, had sold twelve million copies. The latest edition of the successor to the infamous FIFA series apparently included “a complete overhaul of dribbling mechanics”, “more lifelike goalkeeping animations ” and the ability to make your Career Mode starlets experience homesickness. I’m sure all of this is great but as someone who hasn’t played a football game released since 2008 it isn’t exactly making me want to remortgage and buy a PS5. FC 26 can boast incredible attention to detail, however, with more than 20,000 licensed players and a host of realistic stadia including Everton’s new offering and the, never not amusing, Stadion Wankdorf home of Swiss side BSC Young Boys. Graphically it also looks frighteningly realistic and a far cry from Chris Kamara ’s Street Soccer but probably doesn’t let you play in a medieval castle. Access to such licensing was not always a given for the franchise formally known...
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525: Dean Holdsworth, Wimbledon, Merlin’s Premier League 95 Sticker Collection

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Whether you love it or loathe it the tabloid press is an integral part of both British society and the beautiful game. While the decline of print media, and the Leveson Enquiry, has curbed its power its influence extends far beyond its dwindling readership and, perhaps, no more so than in its contribution to the English language. Robert Hutton’s excellent ‘Romps, Tots and Boffins…The Strange Language of News’ goes further to define the language of the press as a separate entity, known as ‘journalese’, where formal discussions are always “crisis talks”, large sums of money are routinely “trousered” and all award ceremonies are “glitzy”. In amongst these are the “bigwigs”, “chiefs” and “tsars” who dominate the worlds of law, business and the civil service, the “crooners” and “rockers” who make up the music industry and the “playboys”, “vice girls” and “love rats” held up for public disdain. Football (or, more often for the press, “soccer” or “footie”) has accordingly always provided a nu...
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572: Aaron Connolly and Dom Ballard, Leyton Orient and 630: Joel Pereira and Kelvin Abrefa, Reading and Panini EFL 2025/26 Sticker Collection

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It’s amazing what a global pandemic, several boxes of old football stuff and Peter Fear ’s curtains can do but, 399 posts after an attempt to stay sane, here we all are. Throughout this time the UK has had four Prime Ministers, two monarchs and economic twists and turns that mean buying a Freddo now probably requires a mortgage. In the footballing world England’s men have reached two consecutive European Championship finals while the Lionesses have won two consecutive European Championships , Leicester City and Crystal Palace have won the FA Cup and Watford have had fifteen different managers . Plenty of other stuff has happened too and whether or not any of us here has remained sane is probably best put to our long suffering partners, children and friends. When live football was taken away from us its absence convinced the four of us that we really missed it. This ignores the fact that my attendance at Selhurst Park since Palace returned to the Premier League is worse even than m...
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359: Barry Bannan, Sheffield Wednesday, Panini EFL 2025/26 Sticker Collection

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Our 399th post comes from Mat Jolin-Beech and goes some way to explain his absence from our upcoming 400th post. In the past Mat has given us a taste of his travel adventures with trips to Japan , South Korea and Singapore with accompanying tenuous links to football stickers. This time he’s taking it to strange new places. Over to Mat. Inspiration can come in many forms. Especially on a blog like this. We’ve delved into childhood heroes . And villains . Schoolboy Sunday league careers. First matches. Last matches. But this must be a new one. A metro line. Now, let me give you some context as to how an urban public transport line links with the now-Millwall player, Barry Bannan. It all started back at the end of 2025 - remember that? My wife was heading on holiday to Taiwan when, actually still in Heathrow, she completely ruptured her Achilles tendon. Yet, not knowing the full extent of the injury, she flew with her mum to Taiwan. The day after they landed, she, somehow, walked for f...
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108: Joe Allen, Wales, Panini UEFA Euro 2020 Official Licensed Sticker Album, Tournament Edition

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Prior to the Reformation the number of holy days, or holidays, in Britain is believed to have numbered somewhere between forty and sixty per year. As well as a church service, where a majority illiterate population would hear some Latin and be told they were off to Hell, these days were often accompanied by festivals and public gatherings. Sometimes a kickabout broke out with various forms of ‘mob football’ played across the country generally involving transporting something vaguely spherical from one village to another with church gates or doors serving as goals. The injury rate was such that both Edward II and Edward IV attempted to ban the game in order to ensure their kingdom had enough blokes left for their difficult second legs against Scotland and the Lancastrians respectively. Up until the nineteenth century the aforementioned spherical object was often an inflated pig’s bladder before more uniform leather creations began to be used as the game became codified and expanded. Sim...
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252: Papa Bouba Diop, Portsmouth, Topps Match Attax Trading Card Game, 2009/10

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Just under a fortnight ago Senegal won their second ever African Cup of Nations tournament thanks to an extra time goal from Pape Gueye sealing a 1-0 victory over hosts Morocco. On paper this sounds like the classic cagey international final but in reality there was more drama than an entire series of The Traitors and that was just in second half stoppage time. First of all Senegal had a perfectly good goal disallowed with the added farce of VAR not being consulted. Luckily fans of prolonged delays and questionable decisions only had to wait a few minutes for Morocco to be awarded a penalty when Brahim Diaz was held in the box. The understandably enraged Senegal manager Pape Thiaw instructed his team to leave the pitch in protest and, while captain Sadio Mane spent fifteen minutes talking his teammates back into finishing the game, there was an attempted pitch invasion and a fight in the press box. When the Senegalese players returned Brahim Diaz decided that this had all been a bit du...
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