Panini football sticker collectors face £1,000 outlay for 48-team World Cup

• 112-page album will require 980 unique stickers to fill

• Individual packets of seven stickers cost £1.25 in Britain

Soaring prices at the pumps, grocery bills on the rise, and now it seems inflation will be hitting hard the pockets of those football fans for whom no World Cup would be complete without the thrill of opening a packet of Panini stickers.

Since the Italian company’s first sticker collection at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, striving to complete the set has been an obsession for young fans around the globe with swapping of “doubles” and the search for rarities mandatory.