You can’t help but notice, it is World Cup time once again. More importantly perhaps, for some anyway, it is Panini sticker time.
I have to fess up here, that the very mention of the World Cup and sticker albums, brings up a terrible memory. One which scarred me as a young football fanatic for years, in fact thinking about, I think it is a life sentence, because I still get the horrors at the very thought.
Let me explain. It is World Cup year 1970. I would be aged seven and just getting into football in a very big way. My first live game was at Millwall in late1968 aged six and I fell in love instantly with the noise and the excitement of seeing the game at that level first hand.
1970 would be my first real introduction to the World Cup. Yes, I was about for that glorious 1966 tournament, but in all honesty, I was too young to have any clear recollections of it from the time.
Anyway, one day a few months before the kick of the 1970 tournament in Mexico, my old man comes home with a slim book. Emblazoned across the cover were the words – ‘World Cup Soccer Stars Mexico 1970’ – it was that years sticker album. ‘Ere ya go boy’ he said ‘that’ll keep ya busy.’ He was right, it did. From that moment on, I spent every penny I could earn or find, on the packets of stickers of players from all the participating countries.
I became fanatical about it and day by day, gradually filled the pages. There was a double page spread for England, the holders of the Jules Rimet trophy of course. Then there was Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, El Salvador, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Ruminia (their spelling) Sweden, Uruguay, West Germany and…
Now here comes the painful bit, Morocco.
Day after day, I bought stickers on the way to school, did ‘swapsies’ at break time once there and bought more, once home on my estate. Old Flo, who lived at Number 2 in my block, was by then using me to get her fags fromPaul’s our local newsagent. The tuppence wages I got for going at least once a day, would normally be spent on a quarter of white mice, but that was before the sticker frenzy and now I was coming back and urging her to smoke more and faster, just so I could get another tuppence from yet another fag run, and so pay for another packet of the flaming stickers.
And then, one day, I noticed I was close to finishing the book. In fact, I had every sticker, bar one.
That ‘one’, was the Moroccan player Mohamed Hazzaz. No matter how many packets I bought, or looked through the ‘swaps’ available, he NEVER turned up. The space where his sticker should be was a daily reminder of the pain I felt in not completing the book.
I read and then re- read his biography written there, It stared at me in the face every day, the empty area tormenting me.
It said…’Competent goalkeeper who has been regarded as the recognised deputy for Allal, appearing in several of the World Cup qualifying matches, including all three games against Tunisia. Custodian for the MAS Fes Club.
‘Allal was Kassou Allal, the first choice Moroccan keeper and I had three of him, which of course made it all the worse.
And then the games at the World Cup started and the packets suddenly became harder and harder to find, until eventually they were no longer being sold. I still hadn’t got Mr Hazzaz. I had EVERYONE else. But he was nowhere to be found. I was simply devastated.
Time shift to many many years later. I’m at a boot sale and whilst rummaging through the odds and ends I spy the cover of the very same World Cup sticker book from 1970 as the one I had. By this stage, I was no longer able to remember who I was missing, but quickly checked inside the book and noticed it was only half full.
Obviously an amateur had been doing this one. But for 50p, I bought it in the desperate hope that my missing player would be among the ones stuck in there.
I rushed home and got my original copy out (yes reader I had kept it all these years) and you know what?
He wasn’t in this new purchase either!
That’s it I thought, I’ve had enough of this. Nothing left for it. I Googled the fella, I just had to. I mean, by this stage I was wondering did he even exist?
I typed in his name and bosh, there he was and what’s more, there he was pictured as the football sticker I had never found. The photo was in black and white, so I immediately ‘saved the image’ and printed it off. I then added a bit of watercolour paint and bosh, in he went to the book. So 40 odd years or so since I started it, I finally finished it, well sort of.
Obviously, if someone out there has got the real sticker of Mohamed Hazza, I can do you a swap for one of my three Kassou Allal’s…
The Mumper of SE5
