So our first clue was of Edgar Davids, who suffered a severe head injury in 1995 and was diagnosed with glaucoma four years later. The important link to our story is that after his surgery he was not told to stop playing football, but advised to wear protective sports goggles when he was on the pitch. The only problem was that this was not in the rule book, but, staggeringly, FIFA agreed. Now it is said that this made him the first player ever allowed to wear glasses during a game, but I`m not so sure about that. Maybe you know of some though, and can tell me!
Edgar Steven Davids was born on the 13th of March, 1973, in Paramaribo, Suriname, which is in South America. When he was small his family moved to the Netherlands. At which point we must say that there is a big link between there and Suriname, because it was a Dutch colony from almost three hundred years, beginning in 1667 and only gaining its independence on November the 25th, 1975. Now you might think that's a good thing, but it seems to have caused a lot of people to move to the Netherlands, almost certainly including the Davids family. And this move continues, making the Surinamese population of the Netherlands almost as large as it is back home.
Football entered Edgar Davids` life early, and we know he was twice turned down by AFC Ajax for being too young. The third time, in 1985, when he was twelve, they relented. It was a good move on their part, and they moved him straight into the senior team in 1991. It seems that his rookie card came not long after this, in 1992, part of the Shooting Stars issue of Dutch League players. He is card thirteen. And he also joined the Netherlands National team during that time, in 1994.
In 1995 he suffered eye injuries which led, four years later, to the diagnosis of glaucoma. However it seems that this was not an outcome that was predicted at the time, it was only discovered later.
In 1996 he was given a kind of free transfer to AC Milan, in Italy, due to a new ruling that banned the former quota restrictions on the number of foreign players in any one team, at least within the European Union. His time at AC Milan was not a happy one and it ended with him breaking his leg in February 1997. However though that lost his spot at AC Milan, it did get him an offer from Juventus FC, whom he joined in December of that year.
In 1999 the glaucoma was diagnosed and he had to wear the glasses. Juventus were happy to let him play on, but he was eventually loaned out to FC Barcelona, in Spain, in January 2004.
He did not last there long though, returning to Italy after an offer from Inter Milan, a three year contract. Sadly, this was fated not to run its course, and in August 2005 the club cancelled it. Once more, however, a rival club was waiting in the wings to snap him up, and that was a British one, Tottenham Hotspur.
He played in England until the end of January 2007, and then was offered a gig back at AFC Ajax. He loved that club, and happily accepted, but fate would again see him leaving the pitch with a broken leg, in a friendly match in 2007, which kept him out for three months. He also decided during that time to leave the club.
After that he seems to have been unsettled, though he did briefly return to England and join Crystal Palace, as a kind of freebooter. He left them in November 2010, but stayed in England, becoming manager of Brixton United and, from 2012, player-manager of Barnet FC. He resigned from this in 2014 and moved into coaching, presumably moving back to the Netherlands, as his last three coaching roles have been out there, including for the Netherlands National Team.
Our sticker was not his first appearance in a "SuperCalcio" set, that came in 1995. And it looks like his first appearance in glasses comes in the year 2000, as part of another Calcio, "Planeta Calcio", issued by DS, a company I cannot trace.
Our sticker comes between these two, and there is a kind of parallel set, as apart from the 377 football players and managers there are eighteen club name stickers, which were for the poster included in the centre of the album. These name stickers are very scarce.