Collecting, swapping, sticking: This triad is a tradition for many fans during football tournaments. This time too there are pictures of the players. However, for the first time not from Panini, but from competitor Topps. And he has a lot of rights problems, which leads to some strange things.
Without Manuel Neuer and without Marc-André ter Stegen at the European Football Championship? The German Football Association is apparently trying again with the long-retired Oliver Kahn at the goalkeeper position. A sensation! Well, of course that is absolutely not in the spirit of national coach Julian Nagelsmann. Rather, it is the squad that the collectible sticker provider Topps is putting into circulation before the home European Championships.
For the first time since scrapbooks were invented, Panini is not the publisher, but rather its US competitor. According to “Spiegel”, Patrick Rausch, the company’s head of marketing for Europe and Asia, described the sticker album for the European Championships as the “biggest project in the company’s history”. Topps was acquired by fan merchandise giant Fanatics in 2022 for almost $500 million and is already an official partner of the Champions League and other European club competitions. UEFA then signed an additional contract with the provider for the 2024 and 2028 European Championships, and Topps even signed cult coach José Mourinho as an advertising figure. And yet things are not going smoothly; the deal with Topps has far-reaching consequences. Because it’s also about rights that Panini owns and doesn’t give up to Topps so easily.
For example, the coats of arms of the national associations of Germany, England, France and Italy may not be used, reports the Swiss “Blick”. Topps makes do with the national flags, Germany now has a black, red and gold flag. However, that is a less big problem than the one caused by Neuer, ter Stegen and other top stars.
Götze also returns
Due to a lack of rights, Topps cannot show the Germans Toni Kroos, Florian Wirtz, Kai Havertz, Antonio Rüdiger and Jonathan Tah as well as the other possible goalkeepers Bernd Leno and Oliver Baumann. That’s why Kahn appears in the squad – and Mario Götze. The keeper ended his career in the summer of 2008 and has even been out of his position in football, namely as CEO of FC Bayern, since May 2023. Incidentally, his European Championship statistics do not exactly indicate a sensational comeback for the 55-year-old at the World Cup: with him in goal, Germany were unable to win a single game at the European Championships 2000 and 2004. When he won the European Championship in 1996, he had to sit on the bench in favor of the then number one, Andreas Köpke. Götze is still actively playing football at Eintracht Frankfurt, but the 2014 World Cup hero played his last international match more than a year ago, in March 2023 against Peru – while still under Hansi Flick.
Also listed are, according to a post by “11Freunde” editor-in-chief Philipp Köster at None of them had previously been appointed to the squad by Nagelsmann. Ginter from Freiburg also suffers from persistent problems with his Achilles tendon and has to undergo surgery, which means both the end of the season and the definitive end of all European Championship hopes for him. With Nico Schlotterbeck, Niklas Süle and Julian Brandt, three Dortmund players who were recently eliminated would be back.
Or to list it the other way around: Topps has only included six of the players in the magazine who recently achieved victories under Nagelsmann and contributed to the emotional uplift of the team and the fans.
33 nations in the album
There are also a lot of delicacies in the England squad. Like Luke Thomas. He is a left-back at Middlesbrough FC in the second division – and has never played a senior international match. Instead, the two Manchester City stars Phil Foden and John Stones do not appear in the album, nor do Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka and Marcus Rashford from Manchester United. Superstar Kylian Mbappé is missing from France, youngster Lamine Yamal from Spain as well as Bundesliga players Dani Olmo from RB Leipzig and Alejandro Grimaldo from league leaders Bayer Leverkusen.
In return, the collector gets even more on offer than the 24 teams that will play in Germany. The collection also shows the nine teams that did not make it into the tournament through the playoffs. Because production began before the playoffs, Topps did not take their outcomes into account. There are also pictures to collect from the teams from Luxembourg, Greece, Israel and Estonia. The collection includes more than 700 stickers in total – a lot of them are unfortunately useless for the European Championships.
An expensive pleasure that is inflated by the nine nations. The starter set with a collector’s booklet, 24 stickers and ten packages costs 15.99 euros. Each additional pack of six stickers is available for one euro. Many duplicate stickers increase costs – or barter on school playgrounds.
Squads will not be determined until the end of May
In general, the whole production is a lot of guesswork, after all, not a single squad has been finally named. However, Panini already had this problem when they were still in charge of manufacturing. Nagelsmann had said that, compared to the successful test matches against France and the Netherlands in March, he would only want to swap in a few positions. But it is always unclear whether there are still injured people. In addition, the squad can only contain 23 players, not 26 active players as was the case at major tournaments.
Nagelsmann will only nominate his squad after the end of the Bundesliga season; the list must be submitted to UEFA at the beginning of June. There’s still plenty of time for line-up changes and surprises. Who knows, maybe Nagelsmann will also take a cue from the Topps scrapbook and name Oliver Kahn and Mario Götze.