Cards
Having been fortunate enough to go to the three Socceroo group matches at the 2006 World Cup I thought I would enjoy collecting cards of the “Golden Generation”. At the time I was thinking that it was a bit different to the popular club or individual player collection. I defined the Golden Generation as any player that played at least one match in the World Cup Qualifying matches against Uruguay or the 2006 World Cup. Those players in alphabetical order are: John Aloisi, Mark Bresciano, Scott Chipperfield, Jason Culina, Brett Emerton, Vince Grella, Zeljko Kalac, Joshua Kennedy, Harry Kewell, Lucas Neill, Tony Popovic, Mark Schwarzer, Josip Skoko, Mile Sterjovksi, Archie Thompson, Tony Vidmar, Mark Viduka & Luke Wilkshire.
Initially I was only aware of English Topps Match Attax Trading cards. With many of the Socceroo’s playing on the Continent I soon discovered a wide range of Panini cards, rare Futera One of One Autographed cards and that Australia’s premier card company Select were producing a Socceroo & A-League set. The biggest and best surprise was the strong tradition of many clubs on the Continent producing cards for all players in their squads. The cards are larger than those of the commercial card manufacturers with the standard being portrait and 10cm x 14cm. The major advantage of these official club cards is that for players not usually in the starting XI or even regularly in the match day squad, there is still a club card produced. It is also worth noting, with the current focus on Rookie cards these official club cards are also likely in many cases to be a players original “Rookie” card. Some of the clubs also took the opportunity to have more innovative designs, but certainly Scott Chipperfield’s Basel club didn’t! However given the cards sometimes lack dates, his receding hairline has helped determine the year of production (Pictured Left).