CHILE PANINI FIFA WORLD CUP 1998 ALBUM

Ahead of this World Cup, we talked about Panini stickers and the problems they have encountered over the years, with a special emphasis on the story surrounding the Spanish Football Federation and the Spanish national team stickers for the 2002 World Cup album in Korea/Japan. The story of photoshopping stickers is nothing new. It happened in the past, and it still happens today.

On the blog you can find stories about photoshopped stickers of Mauro Silva, Ante Rebić, Roberto Firmino...

The story is very simple. Panini, like the example with Spain in 2002, did not have the rights to the photos, or rather the use of the official jersey of the Chilean national football team, nor the emblem of the federation. The rights or license were held by the local Chilean company Salo. The technical sponsor of the Chilean national team at that time was Reebok. So what Panini did do to have the stickers for the 1998 World Cup album? They photoshopped the heads of the Chilean players onto Adidas tracksuits. We know very well the story of the Iranian national team from the same album, where the stickers did not came out at all, but were printed later. In this situation, the famous Italian company received permission at the last minute to use the players' images, and in this way they came up with a solution to this problem. There have been other such examples throughout history.

If we look at the 1998 World Cup album and turn to the Chile pages, we can see that Panini used several basic Adidas tracksuit designs and photoshopped the players' heads onto them. As we can see in the example of Tapia, Margas, Rojas and Zamorano. The tracksuit is the same, only the head has been replaced. It is the Adidas Classic Beckenbauer tracksuit. Named after a very famous German footballer, it made its debut back in 1967. Adidas was the technical sponsor of the Chilean national team from 1978 to 1984, 1988-1989 and 1993 to 1994.

-same Adidas tracksuit but different heads

-Adidas Classic Beckenbauer tracksuit (or something like that) which Panini used for the Chilean players for the 1998 WC album

Salo S.A. was a Chilean company founded in 1962. Interestingly, at that time Panini had already released its first album of the Italian Serie A. The story begins as written in 1962 when Chile was preparing to host the best football players in the world. Don Salo, the owner of several pastry shops in downtown Santiago, decided to turn his business around because there was a sugar shortage in the country and his shops were on the verge of bankruptcy. He came up with the idea of publishing and album with stickers for the World Cup that was taking place in his country. It was a combination of stickers and sweets that you could buy in his shop, and you also got stickers with them. The album was so successful that even five Citroens were given away to collectors. In 1974, Salo was taken over by professionals, and their main preoccupation was album stickers and later on cards. They were present, apart from Latin America, in various other countries like Germany, Belgium, England, Spain... Throughout their history, they have released many albums of the Chilean championship, the Copa America, the World Cup... The company disbanded in January 2010 when Panini took over in June. The following year, they released their first album of the Chilean league. 

-1998 World Cup album by Salo

Below you can see the Chile national team from the 1998 FIFA World Cup album by Salo. As we can see, the football federation's emblem was used, not the national flag. They players are also in their original jerseys.

Something that caught my eye while writing this text is that some of the player photos are the same in both albums. And here with Salo we can see some of the profile pictures (stickers) where we have the original jersey with Reebok markings while some have it repainted in red (except for the collar). I used the legendary goal scorer Ivan Zamorano as an example.

-same picture but Panini used Adidas tracksuit to cover an original jersey

Here's another example of Chile for the World Cup album. The year is 1982. It should be noted that Panini had a partial license at the time. All the football player stickers in the album were released in Adidas tracksuit, which was the official manufacturer of equipment for the Chilean national team at the time. All except one, and that was Mario Galindo. Obviously, they didn't have or didn't get a picture of Galindo in an Adidas tracksuit, so they had to use their Photoshop skills and color the aforementioned players' jersey in this way. It seems they didn't really succeed. 

-Galindo Panini World Cup 1982 sticker

And finally, the Chilean edition of the album for the 2010 championship does not contain the classic player profile pictures, but rather they are "in play" format. The rest of the world had the classic stickers that all the other national teams had in the album. The Salo company went bankrupt in 2010, but they still had a contract with the Chilean football federation, which still caused problems for the Italian Panini. 

Panini is lucky that Chile only qualified for the World Cup finals four times between 1974 and 2010. Who knows what other creations they would have.

-Collages of the Chile team from the 1998 Panini WC album. Marcelo Salas' sticker was not published in the regular edition of the album, but Panini later published it in some kind of a book or similar. Also, in the original edition of the album, there is no team sticker.