EDICOLA NEWS: THE REVIEWS nr. 252
album: Women’s Euro England 2022 (Panini)
stickers: 370 (1-366, C1-C4)
album not distributed in Italy
While the world of football rightly goes, at least in this, in the logical direction by giving a well-defined role to women’s football, Panini Italia goes against the trend and snubs the event, limiting the availability of this album, in our fundamental opinion, to the world only of the web.
Understandable if, although extremely painful for us, the commercial policy had been to definitively sink the relationship with newsstands, closing even more within their four walls and dedicating themselves mainly to selling on their own site. This is not the case, currently on newsstands, we have wonderful Panini albums (Jurassic World Dominion, for example) and other questionable ones that we strongly doubt will have the appeal but also the sales of the European women’s.
Let’s dispel another myth, Italy has not been the heart of the world of stickers for many years, the strongest European markets are others, England, Germany, perhaps even Spain and France. We are just the country that hosts the most important sticker factory in the world, should we therefore deserve a little more respect? Difficult to say, for sure the players deserved more respect, especially those of the Italian national team and all the fans.
In fact, a not insignificant detail, in this album we find Italy, in the one at the end of the year of the men’s world cup in Qatar, as we well know no. Another detail, so to speak, is being the last album on Europeans (men or women) made by Panini, Euro 2024 will be branded Topps. It will probably be just a goodbye but the change is epochal, even if only in the format of the album, except, it would be beautiful, the American house did not maintain what we have known well since Euro 80.
The classic is what we want to find in the albums of Europeans as well as those of the world championships, here is everything. It is not in these collections that we expect big changes and, honestly, we tremble at the very idea. Not only that, in its small way, this Women’s Euro 2022 is better than the men’s Euro 2020, just as Women’s France 2019 was better than the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
The first pages are a little limited compared to the beautiful albums of the 80s and 90s, but the calendar is always present and next to it the stickers with the logos of the cities that host the matches. Since the stadiums are not the usual ones in men’s football, the sports facility stickers would have been a nice addition. All special silver stickers, certainly intriguing page with the stickers attached (yes, we are still among those who attach the stickers ..)
The four groups are then presented, as has already happened, for example, with the men’s Euro 2016, here there are stickers that normally find space on the pages of the national teams. The 16 stickers of the teams are a good choice, the right introduction to the album.
Rest of the album that presents the 16 teams and where we also find the always beloved league titles, with the national team logos. Those are that we always want them together with the players (and players, as in this case). Each national team has 20 stickers (22 stickers, also counting the team and the shield).
There is a lot of information on stickers, having learned geography with “figurine”, we would have put their city of birth in place of the height of the athletes. Nice idea to keep on the sticker the drawing with the role on the pitch that we also find printed on the album, with also the info on the appearances in the international tournament or the announcement of the absolute debut.
16 teams, the graphic choice of giving the same space to the last national team is appreciable and guessed, given the disqualification of Russia for the war which was then replaced by Portugal. These stickers are available with the upgrade set. The coup de class is to provide the stickers to complete the album not only with the 22 stickers like the other clubs but also with the adhesive writings to make the completed album uniform. Gorgeous choice, which we really enjoyed. The Portugal stickers are therefore 26 (number 25, from 241 to 261 and from C1 to C4).
As we wrote, unfortunately the album is not available on Italian newsstands. We have pointed this out in other reviews as well. we understand the very high costs to cover the supply to the many Italian newsstands but the solution, in our humble opinion, is, if desired, simple: through distributors, Panini, like all publishers, can have the sales data of the individual newsstands of the whole Italy, therefore, as it did with the recent Score, could decide to supply only the “virtuous” ones. We hope this is the path they will want to take in the future.
At least, for once, Panini Italia presents a proposal on the web that kills the parallel market. We too have fallen into the “trap” of buying the set from foreign retailers (released 2 months ago, while here in Italy the web offer is quite recent), the offer of the box of 75 packets plus the priced album (english or german, Italian edition dose not exist) and, above all, the Portugal update set as an amount to 80.00 euros, which must be purchased separately abroad, is an advantageous economic proposal, given the times. Certainly more attractive than the prices found on the international market, at least until, it happens soon, the special pack will be sold out. Of course, everything is fine if it will also be possible in Italy to buy the missing stickers.
We thank Panini for the proposal and for main part of the choices on the album, but not having brought it to Italian newsstands, the house of stickers, even more so than the Modena factory, we just can’t accept it.
(EN)