Marks & Spencer teams up with Panini for Wales sticker collection

Sticker giant Panini has teamed up with Marks & Spencer to launch a Wales football sticker album.

It is part of a collaboration which will see Marks & Spencer giving away collectable football stickers in a partnership with the home nation teams.

From today, shoppers can claim a pack of four stickers with every £20 spent in an M&S Foodhall. Exclusive Panini sticker albums are also available to buy for £3.

Each home nation team has its own album and stickers, in a promotion running in M&S Foodhalls across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

There are 50 stickers to collect per album, made up of the men’s and women’s players and managers.

M&S is also encouraging shoppers to use their local store’s Facebook page to swap cards with people in their area, by posting what they have and what they need.

M&S has partnered with the England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales national football teams since 2022. The sticker album promotion is part of M&S’s Food’s ‘Eat Well, Play Well’ campaign, which uses the partnership to encourage healthy eating.

The sticker albums are also “packed with quizzes, facts on your national heroes and their favourite M&S Eat Well food products, as well as nutritional advice for budding footballers”, according to the retailer.

It is an attempt by the famed sticker manufacturer to hit back against rival Topps, who won the battle to publish the official Euro 20024 album, which will be held in Germany this summer.

Last month we told you how when the official Euro 2024 sticker album went on sale there was much puzzlement when it was revealed that Wales were amongst the teams to appear in the album.

After suffering Euro playoff heartache, losing to Poland in a gut-wrenching penalty shootout, Wales missed out on the opportunity to take their place amongst the teams competing at Euro 2024 in Germany.

However, the Welsh squad still feature in the pages of the sticker album, which went on sale nationwide in April.

The reason for this is quite simple. The truth of the matter is Wales only appear because of publishing schedules.

The album had to be printed prior to the playoffs, so all those teams – including Wales – who competed in the Euro 2024 playoffs appear in their own pages.

For some keen Welsh sticker collectors this might be great news, a chance to be involved in a tournament by proxy, for others, well it might just be rubbing salt in the wounds.

There is also an appearance for Gareth Bale who appears as a Euro Master, while Brennan Johnson also doubles up with a Player to Watch sticker.

Ironically, this is not the first time Wales has actually appeared in a tournament album they didn’t qualify for having previously appeared as ‘an excluded nation’ in the Panini Argentina 1978 World Cup album.

The stickers featured a Wales shiny badge, as well as Terry Yorath, Joey Jones, John Toshack and Leighton James.