FIFA Women’s World Cup Stickers

Women’ World Cup stickers PIC via Facebook

Womens World Cup stickers PIC via Facebook

Looking for attention for women’s sports can sometime feel like rolling a square rock up a very steep hill. But one Swedish women’s football fan has managed to change her sport just a little.

This week the football (or soccer depending on where you are) Women’s World Cup takes place in Canada. Bad news is FIFA is torn apart with scandals, and the women are playing on astroturf. That second thing is pretty awful to be honest, you would ever hear of a similar men’s tournament not on grass.

But in one corner of football something good happened thanks to Elin Bjarnegård.

Have you ever seen little kids sitting in the playground avidly swapping football cards? You might have noticed they’re usually male players.

On July 5^th 2014 Bjarnegård started a Facebook group with this post:

“Collector cards featuring football stars are very popular among young football fans. Consequently they are produced for every major football event - except for when the players are female. The company Panini has no current plans to produce cards for the FIFA World Cup taking place in Canada the summer of 2015. They have also indicated that they may be willing to reconsider, should there be an interest in collector cards featuring female football stars.”

Almost 2000 people joined with many others advocating in their own countries. And now the stickers exist.

Hilariously the FIFA/ Panini statement made zero mention of the pressure they were under. Just this sideways acknowledgement:

Panini’s Peter Warsop said: “We have already had many fans of the game reaching out to us from all over the world in anticipation of a sticker album being launched and we are delighted to be providing this to them.”

You can find out where to buy the cards and read back on how the campaign developed on Bjarnegård’s page simple called: We want collector cards for the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup

Thank you to the Norwegian reader who sent me a link to that page!