A brand new collection on Maltese football players was launched last Thursday at the Malta Football Association’s Centenary Hall at Ta’ Qali.
It is known as the Adrenalyn XL Maltese football collection which includes 200 players’ trading cards as well as 50 logo trading cards.
It is another brand from the world famous Panini, whose agent in Malta is Dominic Anastasi, well known for introducing in Malta the very popular Panini albums and cards for the World Cups and European Championships. This has been going on for the past 40 years.
Anastasi said during a news conference that the collection will also include the pictures of 20 national team players, 13 Premier team players from each of the 10 clubs, five first division players each from all the 10 clubs. All the clubs will include a goalkeeper, defenders, midfielders and strikers.
The national team will include 10 star players, while the Premier teams include a champion and a star.
Anastasi thanked everyone who helped in this new initiative for Maltese football, especially Louis Micallef of the MFA. He added that the collection is already on sale and so far, there had been quite a good response from local football enthusiasts.
He also thanked Dominic Aquilina, the professional photographer, who took all the pictures of the players for the collection.
Also present for the news conference was national team captain and striker Michael Mifsud. He has become the only Maltese player to figure twice in these albums – the one just launched here, and the English one, which was launched when he was a player at Coventry City.
Chiara Chiantore, the export area manager of Panini of Modena, said the whole company was very excited about this launch adding that such collections had attracted millions of enthusiasts all over the world thus making Panini a world leader in this sector.
She thanked the Anastasi family for the great dedication they have shown during the past 40 years since they started representing Panini in Malta.
MFA president Norman Darmanin Demajo also attended the launch. He said this was a very positive initiative which the MFA will continue to support.
He added that for the local players this will be great. “It is an honour for them to be forming part of such an album. They are the heroes for our grassroots football. Such an initiative will certainly help to motivate our youngsters – the footballers of the future,” he added.
After taking a look at the album, Darmanin Demajo described it as ‘a really fantastic product’ which should be successful.
Later he was presented with the album by Ms Chiantore on behalf of Panini, while Dominic Anastasi presented him with a special picture of himself dressed up in a modern national team jersey with the number 10 printed on it.