Euro 2024 sticker album: Why Jordan James is from Birmingham but Kylian Mbappe is not

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Imagine a European Championship without Kylian Mbappe, the biggest football star in the world.

Imagine without Premier League player of the year Phil Foden, Germany legends Manuel Neuer and Toni Kroos, or defending champions Italy’s kit or badge.

For one group of football fans, this tournament is already a reality — at least in the world of sticker books, where a business battle between the two biggest companies in the sector has taken place at Euro 2024.

Panini, the Italian company that has produced the official Euro album for every tournament since West Germany won in Italy in 1980, lost the rights for Euro 2024 and 2028 to Topps, owned by US-based Fanatics.

The immediate problem for Topps was that although it had won the rights from UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, and the organizers of the Euros, it did not own image rights to four of the event’s most prestigious national teams.

Panini still holds contracts with the English Football Association and the football federations of Germany, France and Italy, meaning Topps is prohibited from using the official badges or kits of these nations.

It also means Topps had to scramble to strike individual image rights deals with players from those nations before completing their first Euro album.

Some players signed up, so Topps was able to include England stars including captain Harry Kane and midfielder Jude Bellingham, but others, including Foden, Manchester City team-mate John Stones and Germany star Jamal Musiala, declined to sign up. register and miss.

Kylian Mbappe is one of the big names missing from the Euro 2024 sticker book (Ozan Okse/AFP/Getty Images)

A Topps spokesman said The Athletic: “While we are disappointed that a small number of players are missing, this is due to the tournament’s former sticker partner blocking certain parts of the collection to the detriment of fans.

“Unlike our former sticker partner, we’re committed to the fans and believe the sticker and card offering – and the lineup of current and former players – will get everyone excited for the tournament.”

The episode brought a battle on a European stage that was already intensifying in the United States. Among those switching from Panini to Fanatics are the NFL Players Association and wrestling company WWE, while the Italian firm scored a major win by extending its contract with FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, for World Cup rights until 2030.

Panini sued under antitrust laws over Fanatics’ entry, but Fanatics countersued, saying Panini’s case was “not only legally baseless, but hypocritical.”

Meanwhile, in Europe, the refusal of some star players to sign over their image rights to Topps has led to some unexpected appearances.

In the England pages, AC Milan’s Fikayo Tomori, Manchester City’s Rico Lewis and Manchester United’s Mason Mount are all players who failed to make Gareth Southgate’s squad – and looked like long shots from a while – but they’ve made it into the England squad in the Official Euro 2024 Sticker Book.

However, it was the presence of Leicester City left-back Luke Thomas, who spent last season on loan at Sheffield United and Middlesbrough, that raised the most eyebrows. Thomas was a regular for England Under-21s between 2021 and 2023, but was rarely, if ever, mentioned as a candidate for the senior team.

With England short of left-backs and Luke Shaw and Ben Chilwell among the players who have not accepted rights deals with Topps, the company has been forced to look deep into the England top order to find an option.

“It was a surprise when I opened a package and got Luke Thomas,” says Mike Lawrence, a West Bromwich Albion supporter from Solihull and a regular collector. “I really didn’t know who he was.

“I put it in a WhatsApp group of my football mates, ‘Why is this?’ So when I got it, I looked at it and realized that other players are going to be missing.”

In addition to the absence of big names, generic flags (the alternative Topps opted for when emblems weren’t available) are mixed in with official badges, leaving fans feeling short-changed.

“UEFA conducted a fair and competitive bidding process for the rights to the official UEFA EURO 2024 sticker album, which was awarded to Topps,” UEFA said. The Athletic in a statement. “However, please be advised that official licensed products that include National Association IP (intellectual property) and individual player IP require a large number of individual contractual agreements.

“Sometimes these are not possible due to existing exclusive agreements with other competing parties, which is why if you look back in the history of the sticker albums of major football tournaments, some players or IP related to national associations are often missing. in the official albums.”

Lawrence says players have been missing from previous albums, but the problem seems more acute in 2024. “We’ve collected sticker albums in the past and we’ve done Premier League ones in the past,” he says. “I think it’s happened before, but it was more evident in this edition.

“When I looked back at the England page for the France 2016 sticker book, there were six or seven players who didn’t make the squad but there were players who could very well have been in the squad but they just didn’t joined the team, so it wasn’t nearly as obvious as that.

“There were players like Leighton Baines, Phil Jones, Theo Walcott and Danny Welbeck – England players but people who didn’t really make the team.”

The problems for Topps went beyond a lack of players.

With the tournament qualification play-offs continuing until the end of March, stickers and albums had to be printed before the final 24-team line-up was finalised. So the album contains quarter-page sections for each team to make the playoffs. That means nations like Wales, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Luxembourg, who fell at the final hurdle of qualification, are in the album despite not making it.

That means there is a sticker of Birmingham City’s teenage academy graduate Jordan James playing for Wales, but not of Real Madrid’s big summer signing Mbappe.

Wales’ Jordan James is in the sticker book for Euro 2024 (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

Topps is confident the problems will not be repeated when it takes over the Premier League’s official sticker album from 2025 in a deal announced earlier this year. Premier League clubs enter into collective commercial agreements, so obtaining image rights will not be a problem.

And with four years to resolve the issues before the next European Championships, there is optimism that a similar problem can be avoided on the international stage in the future.

“UEFA remains committed to having the most authentic licensed products possible for fans and will continue to encourage open dialogue between the respective IP holders in relation to future competitions with the aim of achieving this,” the governing body said.

However, Lawrence doesn’t seem to mind too much: “I still enjoyed doing it. With the other nations, I haven’t really noticed that because I don’t know their teams either.”

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(Top photos: Adam Pretty, Joris Verwijst – Getty Images)