DR3: Jesse Derry, Chelsea, Topps Official Premier League Trading Cards 2026/27, Flagship Edition

The combination of interesting supermarket promotions, indulgent grandparents and me being his Dad meant it was only a matter of time until my son started his own football sticker and card collections. The false dawn of completing his first two books, aided entirely by his Nana’s patronage of M&S, has encouraged him to dive into this season’s first selection of Premier League cards and I’ve had to wait until after his bedtime to sneak this post’s card out of its binder. Thankfully the excitement of getting some Crystal Palace shinies and the fact we’re not remortgaging to buy regular packets means he is yet to have become disillusioned with doubles or the fact that half the players depicted have moved clubs since going to print.

As well as the 300 ‘base cards’ in the collection there are a plethora of questionable additional cards to search for with such toe-curling themes as “Beast Mode” and “Nitro Boost” as well as “8 Bit Ballers”. I have no idea what any of these words mean but it probably explains why the likes of Nani, Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard have made an appearance. What this does highlight, however, is the American influence of Topps and their parent company Fanatics leaning into their background in baseball cards and the ‘collectibles’ market. This is particularly evident in the numerous “Rookie Cards” dotted around this year’s collection. According to the manufacturer this means that my son’s binder is “packed with the hottest young talent in the Premier League” and provides a celebration of these depressingly youthful players’ first appearance in trading card form. Sadly he is yet to unearth Joseph of Aramathea or Methuselah but here’s Chelsea’s vaguely biblically named Jesse Derry.

With this being Derry’s first year as a Premier League footballer, and especially one who plays for Chelsea, he is already out on loan with Sporting Lisbon. His Chelsea career to date has consisted of a substitute appearance in the FA Cup against Hull City and suffering a head injury against Nottingham Forest. Still, more than Patrick Bamford managed in five years at Stamford Bridge. Prior to this he came through the Crystal Palace academy where he spent seven years and earned the club’s under-18 player of the season award in 2023/24 after an impressive sixteen goals in 22 games. There’s every chance he’ll go on to be a very useful footballer and he could do worse than following in his father’s footsteps. Derry Sr, or Shaun, made 650 professional appearances and was a much loved part of the Crystal Palace midfield in the mid-2000s despite his tendency for terrible long range efforts and interesting takes on the Hoxton Fin. According to one chant he was better than Stevie G and John Terry and, delightfully, “he won’t shag your wife”. But I digress.

It’s probably not the biggest surprise that today’s football cards have such a Septic flavour. Ten of the top flight’s twenty clubs are backed by American investors, six clubs have American shirt sponsors and the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur are raking in over £15m per year from American sleeve sponsors alone. I’ll stop short of going full Alan Partridge and acting out the opening to The Spy Who Loved Me but it is odd to see such a famously football-averse nation hold such sway. Of course you could look back to the launch of the Premier League and its cheerleaders, pyrotechnics and skydivers as harbingers of the Americanisation of football while the growing number of superfluous statistics owes much to the Moneyballing of the game. Without wanting to be another old man yelling at a cloud the fact that Brighton and Hove Albion’s xG “was only 1.98” meant f*** all when they thrashed Palace 5-0 the other day while the news that Mikel Arteta has liaised with a ‘Creativity Consultant’ for more cringeworthy training ideas makes me fear for Declan Rice’s sideburns.

What happens to my son’s collection of football cards in the future is anyone’s guess. Maybe he’ll forget about them for thirty years and then start a nostalgia blog with some of his mates. If Jesse Derry goes on to have a phenomenal career he may be able to cash in on this ‘Rookie Card’ and set himself up for life. After all the New York Yankees’ Mickey Mantle’s maiden Topps appearance sold for $12.6m in 2022. Either way it’ll probably serve as a reminder of his first forays into the world of questionable football ephemera and one that will, hopefully, be vaguely recognisable to the next generation of fans of the English game.

26 conversions in AD46!