We start our celebration of June not with a card issued in that month, but with a country that has good reason to celebrate it. You see, Morocco made their World Cup debut with a match against West Germany on the 3rd of June 1970 - though they lost 2-1, and did not advance to the second round. But in 1986, even though their first match, on the second of June, was against Poland, and ended with a no score draw, they ended up at the top of Group F, with one more score draw than England, and in the process they became the first African team to reach the second round, and only the second nation from outside Europe and the Americas to do so. And, as I`m sure you are wondering who the first was, I looked it up and found out it was actually North Korea, in 1966. As far as Morocco, though, their luck ran out on the 17th of June, when they lost 1-0 to West Germany. And, just to tie a loose end, North Korea lost to Portugal in the quarter-finals.
As for our men, Abdelmajid Lamriss was born on the 12th of February, 1959 at either Marrakesh or Rabat, though his senior career started in 1975 with a team called Mouloudia de Marrakech which seems to point to the first birthplace. In 1980 he moved to FAR Rabat, which may be where the confusion set in, and also joined the Morocco International squad, with whom he took part in forty-eight games. He seems to have retired in 1990.
Hamou Fadili was bornon the 26th of October, 1957, at Mohammedia and his first senior side was also FAR Rabat, in 1981. He stayed with them until 1992 and then joined Union Tuarga Sport. From 1985 he too played for Morocco.
As for our set, it is also known as "FIFA World Cup", though the album and packets firmly calls it "Mexico 86", albeit with a "World Cup" at the very bottom. There is no idea of how many stickers you got in each, or of the cost, on the packet, but we do know that the packets were twelve pence each in the UK, and, according to the back cover of the album, different prices, depending on which country you were in - and what this means is that there was only album. it was sent to all the countries.
- Austria - five schillings
- Belgium 10 francs
- France - 3 francs
- Germany - 0.50 deutschmarks
- Greece - 20 drachmas
- Italy - 500 lira
- Morocco - 3 dirhams
- Netherlands - 75 cents
- Spain - 50 cents or 50 pesetas
- Sweden - 3.50 krone
- Turkey - 200 Turksh lira
- United Kingdom - 20p
There is also a box for Norway, but the price square section of that box is blank.
We also know that an album, and a packet of six stickers, was given away with every copy of "Shoot" magazine on the 24th of May, 1986. That must have been a lot of stickers, and technically those are cartophilic, but sadly it is impossible to tell which ones they were.