A few months after the launch of the rather excellent Topps Euro 2024 Match Attax cards the brand finally introduced the much-anticipated Euro 2024 stickers.
On sale here now, the stickers are the highlight of the year for football sticker collectors who have patiently waited for the first look at the official tournament album and the associated stickers. However, the Topps Euro 2024 looks like a big miss.
It all started so well. Topps secured the license from UEFA to launch the official Euro 2024 stickers for the first time in its history, battling out football sticker royalty in Panini in the process. It was a big deal at Topps, who signed up Jose Mourinho to market the new album and help pick some of the teams.
READ MORE: BRILLIANT PANINI ENGLAND TOURNAMENT STICKERS ARE MILES AHEAD OF TOPPS’ EURO 2024 SET
However, the album is absolutely riddled with strange decisions and low quality. But more on that later.
The album itself is standard fare. A thin booklet will soon feel bulked out with a hefty 728 stickers and it feels some of those are filler. Each team comes with local landmarks that actually look a bit pixelated on some stickers and these could have easily been left out to slim down the album.
The stickers themselves are small and feel a bit cheap. That’s not always a bad thing – classic Panini albums from the 1980s and 1970s favoured smaller stickers and in a big tournament album it does add a sense of nostalgia. However, when Panini’s Premier League stickers have such high quality design and a real heavy, premium feel, the Topps Euro stickers do feel a bit flimsy and delicate in comparison.
The decision to go horizontal is a nice nod to older sticker albums and does help to differentiate the set however, and a full page will look fantastic once complete.
And the disappointment does not end there. Topps does not actually have the rights to a handful of national teams including France and England and that means those stickers have unusual close ups of the players compared to a more visibly appealing head and shoulders shot including national badges and kits of the rest of the album.
But the real disappointment with these stickers, priced at £1 for a pack of 6, are that the selection of players is absolutely crazy at times. Kyle Walker, Ben Chilwell and John Stones are absent while uncapped Leicester full back, currently on loan at Middlesborough (although the album says he is still at Sheffield United despite ending that loan in January) is bizarrely included.
There’s no Phil Foden but Mason Mount makes an appearance, no Ivan Toney but Callum Wilson is included. The whole squad is a baffling mismatch and not representative of the players who will appear at the Euro 2024 tournament.
It’s also some of the smaller details that could have been updated after the January transfer window. Jordon Henderson is not down as an Ajax player, for example.
Then there are the strange decisions to include a whole host of parallel, golden and golden autograph stickers. These hidden extras are a great idea for premium collectable cards but just confuse casual fans of sticker collecting, add extra cost to those who want the full set and, according to some early reports, are not actually appearing in packs where the buyer has been promised one of these premium cards.
The Topps Euro 2024 sticker set is a bit of a disaster. It’s not particularly great to look at, it’s expensive to buy and is one of the biggest collections ever released. Add in a lack of some licenses and bizarre squad choices it just feels a bit poor in comparison to previous tournament sets.
Collectors will still love the chance to collect some of Europe’s top players and the golden autograph stickers will be in high demand. There is still fun to be had in buying the Topps stickers but overall the album is just not very good. You can buy them here.
Panini is set to launch its rival set – an England ‘tournament’ edition featuring a handful of international teams and promising real kits. That may be a better bet for those who want a more premium collection in time for the Euros.
READ MORE: PANINI’S CHEEKY DIG AT TOPPS AS ENGLAND 2024 STICKERS REVEALED
