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A thrifty couple are hand-drawing an entire Panini sticker album for this year's World Cup.

Alex and Sian Pratchett, both 34, will doodle all 736 footballers appearing at the tournament - from Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo to Iran's Mehdi Taremi.

They began drawing players at the 2014 World Cup to avoid paying for the official Panini sticker album.

This year's sticker book costs an estimated £773.60 to fill - with the price of a pack of five stickers now at 80p.

That's a 60 per cent increase on its cost of 50p at the previous tournament.

The pair, dubbed Panini Cheapskates, expect their latest venture to take 170 hours.

Alex Pratchett, 34, says the task is complicated this year by the birth of nine-month-old son Nye.

(Image: Sian and Alex Pratchett / SWNS) (Image: SWNS +44 (0)1179066550)

But Alex feels his artistic skills aren't improving - despite drawing more than 1,500 player portraits so far.

He said: "If we were better at drawing I think we would have a tenth of the support we do. The attraction for most people is in persevering with severe shortcomings.

"Our aim is to make them vaguely recognisable without being completely offensive.

(Image: Sian and Alex Pratchett / SWNS) (Image: Sian and Alex Pratchett / SWNS)

"Players with distinguishing features like a big bushy beard or afro makes the job a lot easier - but we really struggle with the generic-looking ones.

"It turns out having a baby is quite a lot of work so we ummed and ahed about whether to do it again, but we had so many people encouraging us that we thought we'd have to give it another go."

(Image: Sian and Alex Pratchett / SWNS)

Money raised from their venture is donated to Cancer Research UK, learning disability charity MacIntyre and LGBT rights group Stonewall.

They raised £4,500 hand-drawing stickers for Euro 2016.