An old football sticker book turns pub night into a nostalgia fest

On an extremely hot Tuesday evening in late July, I found myself part of a small gathering in a nicely air conditioned pub beside the Thames. With me were my best mate, Ollie, a man I have known since I was four years old; a newer pal, Rory, who is roughly the same age (we’re all in our 50s); and my 13-year-old son, Lenny.

It was a mixed bag: my two friends had never met before and the only thing they appeared to have in common was me. My son was probably fretful that he would have to endure one of those tedious evenings in the company of adults, nursing a Coke while listening to us talk about work. It was all impromptu and I didn’t think any of us would hang around for long. But then something truly magical happened.

From the orange Sainsbury’s carrier bag he had mysteriously arrived with, Ollie produced a vintage Panini sticker album, featuring the teams and players of the 1986 Fifa World Cup in Mexico. A brief hush fell on the group as he placed it in the centre of the table. Despite the generational gap, we all shared a common bond: a visceral passion for football and stickers. Suddenly, this evening had taken on new, tantalising possibilities.

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Ollie had bought the album on eBay for a not inconsiderable sum. Why? Because he had owned the same album when he was 11 years old, and had almost completed all of the stickers. The fact that he had been just a few short had always frustrated him. Along the rocky path of adulthood, he had lost his original album. One morning, shortly after his 50th birthday, he woke up with a sudden determination to replace his lost treasure.

And so here we were, three men and one adolescent, gingerly fingering the pages with all the awe and respect with which Indiana Jones might have prised open the Ark of the Covenant.

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As we leafed through, reminiscing about legendary matches of yore, laughing at the preposterous hairstyles of the day, eulogising about footballers we hadn’t thought about in decades, we were engulfed by a sense of shared joy. Even my son, an obsessive consumer of football facts and history, became fully immersed in nostalgia for a time before he was even born.

We all laughed, we all marvelled, and some of us came over a bit wistful. By the end, as we said our goodbyes, we all agreed it had been the most enjoyable evening we’d experienced in months.

I’ve written here before about the challenges of male friendship, particularly in middle age. Men tend to let their social life wither a bit. As a result, many become isolated, lonely and a bit grumpy. There is also the much-discussed male inability to discuss our feelings. The solution was evident in my sticker night: you don’t always have to discuss feelings or pry into a mate’s emotional life in order to offer support.

Male friendship can be rooted in the same stuff it was when we were young: immersing yourself in the intoxicating minutiae of beautiful trivia, and just making each other laugh. The football stickers were jumping-off points for wider conversations. Football fans can segue from recollections of matches to reflections on their life at the time: ‘I kissed a girl from the year above on the night England beat Paraguay;’ ‘My dad made us go camping in Wales during the final so I had to listen to it on a badly tuned radio…’ Etc.

The point is, if you want to maintain friendships or create new connections, tap into some nostalgia. Don’t like football? Try going through an old Argos catalogue. Or watching old episodes of Top of the Pops on YouTube. Nostalgia is beautiful, soul-enriching and brilliant fun.

We have now turned sticker night at the pub into a semi-regular event. I have recently purchased a completed 1990 Italia Panini album for less than the price of an hour’s psychotherapy. Best money I’ll spend all year.

Read more from Sam Delaney on his Substack.

His new book Stop Sh**ting Yourself: 15 Life Lessons That Might Help You Calm the F*ck Down is out now (Little, Brown, £22) and is available from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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