The most exciting part of any major football tournament is, of course, the sticker collecting. Just as controversial as this year’s World Cup was the accompanying Panini sticker album, which Cardiff maths professor Paul Harper suggested could cost collectors £773.60 to complete!
Fear not penny-pinchers, self-proclaimed artistically challenged duo Panini Cheapskates are back for another major tournament, drawing every single player on their own. What began as a “cost saving exercise gone wrong” at the 2014 tournament has now raised over £2,300 for charities including Stonewall Equality Limited and Nordoff Robbins. The pair known only as Alex and Sian began their feat as the tournament kicked off on 14 June and aim to draw each of the 680 stickers by the final 32 days later.
When the official album was released in April, the makers had to take a stab at who would make the 23-man squads. But inevitably got a few wrong. With a total of 254 World Cup players missing from the official sticker album, the MIFA Project brings together 200 artists from across the glove to illustrate the missing players. Designer Dave Will hopes to collate the final results in a book after the World Cup to raise money for a mental health charity in Liverpool.
