Card of the Day - 2026-07-04

2018 Panini France World Cup Stickers Fiers d'etre Bleus
PANINI S.p.A. [trade : stickers : O/S - France] "Fiers d`etre Bleus" (2018) 6/102

We started our week with this stadium, the Stade de France, because of a rather bizarre incident that occurred during Euro 2016, in which a swarm of hundreds of moths flew around the stands, all over the pitch, and even on the players and officials, most notably Cristiano Ronaldo, who sat bemoaning the fact he had been forced to leave the pitch due to injury. 

To this day nobody knows what caused the moths to gather. Some say it was the heat, some the fact that the stadium lights had been left on the night before and it had confused them.

We do know what sort of moths they were though - they were "Silver Y", which are actually the most common non-resident moth seen in the United Kingdom.

Look out for them on nettles, as well as peas and cabbages. You will easily spot them because they are named from a "Y" shaped mark on their forewings, in a kind of metallic silver, and they are around from summer into autumn, until the temperatures start to dip.

As for the Stade de France, that is in Saint Denis, and it is not just a football stadium, it also accommodates rugby and athletics, plus other non-sporting events, including concerts. It was built between 1995 and 1998, and its "Rookie" card is a sticker, number one of Diamond`s "World Cup", issued in 1998 - though it also features on card two. 

Stade de France pair

 Our card is another sticker, from a set called "Fiers d`etre Bleus" - but it was issued twenty years after the Diamond set.

As for what "Fiers d`etre Bleus" means, it literally translates to proud to be blue, but in popular parlance it has come to mean proud to be French, probably even more than proud of their national team, which wear blue strips. 

It has a companion, the other half, which you can find on card seven. And to save you hunting if you put them together you will get this image. I will say that, as demonstrated here, there seems to be rather a shift in colouration between the cards, but I suppose only the purist cares.