OK, so the recent thrill of encountering & then acquiring the
aforementioned Belgian ‘Football 88’ Panini album collection was pretty
special, but imagine, if you will, the stratospheric excitement generated by
the discovery of the existence & availability of, initially on ebay but
subsequently tracked down, more affordably, from a seller on the new-to-us
Catawiki online auction site, a 1970s Belgian sticker album, but, not only that,
the ‘Football 75’ edition, complete, depicting the teams/players from the very
season, 1974 – 75, that the mighty & our favourite (from an early ‘Shoot!’
encounter with their ineffably romantic name, as originally recounted here) RWD
Molenbeek won their one & only league championship: an opportunity to take
ownership of an essential artefact simply too enticing to pass up, you might
well agree, & so the purchase, inevitably, giddily, was made, & the
arrival eagerly anticipated.
The album, of course, has proved to be filled with the most delightful
delights, with each of the First & Second Division clubs represented by their crest, a team group photograph (a large-scale four-sticker composite
image in the case of the former), & a squad of twelve players (half-sized
stickers in the case of the Division II clubs), a veritable treasure trove of
the characters & styles (kits, hair & facial accessories) & such
exotic (then, at least) details as sponsors’ names emblazoned across shirts
(this was what separated some European clubs/leagues of the time from the
plain-fronted domestic & UEFA competitions norm, & made them more
attractively special, although all sport them nowadays, of course, with various
other logos peppering the shirts too, & such ubiquity renders them humdrum.
Anyway, admire, for instance, Club Bruges’ ‘49R Jeans’ logo that we didn’t get
to see during their UEFA & European Cup Final appearances against Liverpool
in, respectively, 1976 & 1978, & those orange shirts are another never-seen-before
look).
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