The Most Awesome Soccer Cards In The History Of Forever!!!

I got these cards at a show back in 2009, and my jaw nearly hit the ground when I saw them.

To be fair, these aren’t technically soccer cards, but rather 1975/76 Topps Footballer cards, specifically from the Scottish (blue back) set. For crass Americans like myself, they’re soccer cards… and completely incredible!

I can’t assume that every reader is from North America, so I’ll point out that these cards are incredible to me and other baseball card collectors because the design is the same as the one Topps used for 1975 Baseball, a set I grew up with and have images of all 660 cards permanently embedded in my brain cells.

…Well, the designs are nearly the same except for the back… and the soccer ball and little footballer drawing… and the fact that instead of teams like “Yankees” or “Dodgers”, we’ve got “Partick Thistle”.  For most American and Canadian collectors, these cards might as well be from an alternate universe.

According to Nigel’s Web Space, which seems like a very informative site devoted to English and Scottish Football cards, this was Topps’ first entry into the Footballer market after taking over A&BC Gum in 1975.  There are 88 cards in the 1975 Scottish set, and 220 cards in the 1975 English set.  Both sets have identical designs, other than the English set having red backs instead of blue.

This was not the last time that Topps would use one of their American designs for UK Footballers… The 1977/78 Footballers set uses the 1976 baseball design, the 1978/79 set uses the 1977 Football (as in American Football) design, and the 1979/80 set uses the 1978 Football design.  I’d like to get some of those cards next;  It’d be fun to put a 1978/79 Footballer card next to a 1977 Topps Football card and a 1977 Topps Mexican card.

This card amuses my tiny, little mind because it looks sort of like Pat Gardner could be an extra from Star Trek.  “Phasers locked on target, captain…”

These two cards above are interesting because there isn’t a purple/red combination in 1975 baseball… In that set, purple got combined with pink and green, but never red.

For a full-on Scottish Footballer experience, here’s the front of Ian Sneddon’s card:

…and here’s the back:

Ian Sneddon weighs 11 stone and likes nothing better than overlapping down the wing with his great speed and ability to cross accurately!  I can only guess what any of that means (well, other than knowing that 11 stone = 154 pounds).