By Alice Wright
One Saturday last December, as Arsenal were preparing to take on Tottenham in the North London derby, Emma Oldfield was given a sticker album. She’d vowed not to be sucked in, but this was a thank-you gift from a close friend.
That was all it took for the 28-year-old Arsenal fan to be engulfed in the addictive universe of Panini. But this is more than just an arduous quest to fill a sticker album. The purpose is bigger. This was a Panini Women’s Super League album. The growth of women’s football and visibility for young girls is at the heart of it.
Emma’s obsession with football started at a young age. With this came a love for collecting Match Attacks.
“I used to get match attack cards and stickers and things like that at school and you’d be swapping and trading them. So, it was very nostalgic. Very nice in that sense and I found it quite therapeutic as well.”
At 16 years old she was forced to choose between trialling for a football academy or focusing on her studies. The choice was almost made for her as focusing on her studies was the only viable option.
“A career in football just wasn’t feasible. To see the visibility for others to see football is actually a real full-time job and not just a hobby that you do.”
After falling out of love with football Emma returned to it in her early 20s. This time she turned to women’s football.
After being able to swap stickers of your favourite players from the top division of the men’s game for over 50 years, in October 2023 Panini announced the launch of the first Women’s Super League collection. The stickers hit the shops on the 15th of December and were flying off the shelves. Retailers such as Argos, WH Smith, and Panini itself sold out of stickers within the first month of circulation.
The WSL Panini series was so rare to find in stores that the Daily Mirror even created a competition in January for five winners to receive a mega multi-set pack that includes 18 packets of stickers.
“I think seeing those side by side with the Premier League stickers is a really nice moment for women’s football, especially when you see the WSL ones sold out.” Emma says. “I’m a huge women’s football fan and I have been for years, so it was a really nice moment to have a women’s sticker book.”
Apart from already being a huge women’s football fan, Emma started collecting the stickers because of the Match Attack nostalgia from her childhood. Another reason was the therapeutic nature of them.
“I’m quite pedantic and I’ll take my time to stick them in very neatly, it’s quite therapeutic,” Emma says. “There have been a few occasions where if I’m losing the wheel or I’ve done quite a few back-to-back then I feel less precious about it.”
There was one occasion when Emma was so tired that she accidentally stuck Manchester City goalkeeper Ellie Roebuck onto defender Ashleigh Neville’s spot on the Tottenham page. She didn’t realise until the day after when she returned to stick more in.
“Not only is she a goalkeeper that was in the defender’s section but also was on the completely wrong club page,” Emma says. “It still makes me laugh now that Neville is just laying on top of Ellie Roebuck on the Spurs page.”
Despite the stickers being priced at 90p per packet it’s daunting to consider how much money has been lovingly spent on completing the book. With 347 stickers to collect in the series and five stickers in each pack, it’s no easy feat. Each sticker is worth 18p and to complete the collection would cost £62.46 – if you got a new sticker each time. Which is almost impossible. Especially when you end up with five stickers of Aston Villa striker Alisha Lehmann.
“I’ve bought quite a lot of them, but I have been quite fortunate as well that a lot of the doubles that I’ve had, I’ve swapped with people, so I haven’t had to buy extras,” Emma says.
“I’m hoping that lessens the blow a little bit, but I think I’ve spent more than is probably acceptable for someone my age.”
Emma started her collection before Christmas, and it has taken just over two months for her to get anywhere near completing the series.
“My friend Gracie bought the book for me as a gift because I made her a WSL edition foosball table for Secret Santa,” she says. “I would’ve had a bit of FOMO with everyone else doing it and not me. I don’t think I would have bought it for myself because I can’t not finish something, I’m very much an all-or-nothing person.”
Emma took the dedication to completing the book to the next level. The final square on the underside of the front cover is reserved for your personalized sticker. She recorded the process of creating her sticker via her TikTok where she has over 6000 followers.
After downloading the MyPanini app Emma entered into the tough decision over which shirt to wear for the picture. The three in question were the classic red Arsenal home shirt to go for a ‘squad pic’ vibe, the black training top, or the funky Stella McCartney shirt which blends geometric patterns with electric pink and a soft blue. She concluded that the classic shirt was the best. If she wants to be in the squad she has to wear the home kit, right?
Although her sticker was priced at £9.90 for 10 copies she did not back down. She even named it ‘Emma Oldfield signs for Arsenal’.
“If I hadn’t made the sticker I would’ve been like ‘Well it’s not finished until it’s finished’ especially because there was that little space for your own sticker. It’s not something I envisioned myself doing but once I got the idea in my head there was no going back.”
Trading friendship bracelets isn’t just something done at Taylor Swift’s ‘The Eras Tour’. Enter the women’s football community. Trading stickers and making bracelets personalised with players’ names has helped to bring the community together and allowed people to make new friends.
“A lot of what I do is to make people laugh and provide some kind of entertainment,” Emma says. “With posting on TikTok a lot of people have been invested in the journey of completing my sticker book and having that little community around it is nice.”
Emma finally completed the book, very appropriately, on International Women’s Day. Chelsea midfielder Sophie Ingle was the final sticker to complete all the players. The absolute final and most important sticker was of course Emma Oldfield herself. In her final TikTok video on the sticker book saga, she said “Thank you to my favourite women and thank you for joining me on a journey that probably could rival climbing Everest.”
With her book completed Emma Oldfield will retire her well-loved sticker book to her memory box that lives in a suitcase under her bed. It will be in good company tucked away with Emma’s childhood books and other notable memories. Maybe she will rediscover it in 20 years to reminisce or maybe it’ll just be an unpleasant memory and the reason she doesn’t have enough money for a pension.
Panini’s Barclays Women’s Super League book is not just a book. It has the power to draw a community together with trading stickers and friendship bracelets. For Emma and many Women’s football fans, the visibility for young girls and the future of the sport is what’s most important.
“I think it would be sick to be a kid looking at that and be like ‘I could be a footballer one day or I could have my own sticker, or I could be playing for the top club in the UK or the WSL.”
“It shouldn’t be undersold of how monumental this is,” Emma says. “It’s nice for it to become the norm for a young kid and to see that as being normal.”
“But I think it shows how incredible it is the changes that have happened and also if this is the difference between when I was a kid to now what will it be like in another 10-20 years.”