It's the World Cup, and for children around the world it means collecting stickers to fill your Panini sticker book. I remember doing one for the 1990 World Cup when I was eight, and I think also for the 1992 European Championships (back when Scotland were still actually good enough to be in these tournaments) and like any dad, I find it necessary to inflict this rite of passage on my children.



I have two daughters and no sons, but no matter. My eldest, aged four, already plays football on Saturday mornings and loves stickers of all sorts, so has embraced the concept of the football sticker book from the off. At the National Football Museum in Manchester last month they held a swaps party for children to exchange their duplicates, and obviously I went along.



It was quite the occasion. The room was full of older boys (mostly in the sort of 7-10 range) with dads who seemed rather more into the whole thing than they were. It was also fairly serious, with huge wads of swaps and diligently compiled lists of stickers needed to complete albums. Being the youngest one there and the only girl, G wasn't really as into it as some of the others, but she enjoyed doing a few swaps anyway.