Akaş Akbalık - Champions (Blue back)

2001
Champions (Blue backs)
Akaş Akbalık
Turkey
54 cards

Ali Murat Atay has sent information on some more card sets issued in Turkey that feature famous footballers from around the world. I'll let him explain about these sets...

Akaş produced these playing card format series roughly between 2001 and 2009, with each set made up of 54 cards. They were first called Champions , followed by Football Stars and finally Shoot Stars. But as you know, there are colour variations on the reverse side. So there were 

1. Champions – blue, green, yellow
2. Football Stars – blue, green, yellow, red
3. Shoot Stars New Season
4. Shoot Stars New Season -2
5. Shoot Stars New Series

• The 'Champions' green/yellow and Football Stars green/yellow seem to be the same. Akas just changed the card series name on the back and reissued them.
• The 'Shoot Stars New Season' and 'Shoot Stars New Season 2' are mostly the same card series with same players, but with different images of the players, only 10 cards show different players. When I looked for these at the time I always found the 'Shoot Stars New Season' cards.  I think 'Shoot Stars New Season - 2' were all sold outside Turkey. 'Shoot Stars New Season - 2'  is a reissue of the Football Stars red series, again with just the reverse side changed.
• 'Shoot Stars New Series' were issued around 2009; and 10 bonus cartoon cards were included. For example you could get a regular number 38 card with a photo of Frank Lampard or you could get a number 38 card of a cartoon of him. So this serie was really 64 cards but again only numbered up to 54.
• The 'Champions' yellow series seem to be the rarest. I have full or almost full series of all, but from 'Champions' yellow I have only one card.

So you see there were 10 different card series, each of 54 cards!

1. Alessandro Del Piero
2. Gary Neville
3. Filippo Inzaghi
4. Oliver Kahn
5. Raul Gonzales
6. Phillip Cocu
7. Christian Vieri
8. Michael Owen
9. Paul Ince
10. Patrick Kluivert
11. Luis Enrique
12. Hakan Şükür
13. Youri Djorkaeff
14. Fernando Hierro
15. David Beckham
16. David Trezeguet
17. Luc Nilis
18. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
19. Miklos Molnar
20. Gheorghe Hagi
21. Clarence Zeedorf
22. Henrik Larsson
23. Zinedine Zidane
24. Ibrahim Ba
25. Celestine Babayaro
26. Rui Costa
27. Oyvind Leonhardsen
28. Alan Shearer
29. Ali Daei
30. Brian Laudrup
31. Davor Suker
32. Dino Baggio
33. Nwankwo Kanu
34. Les Ferdinand
35. Jari Litmanen
36. Luis Nazario de Lima Ronaldo
37. Hidetoshi Nakata
38. Predrag Mijatovic
39. Jay Jay Okocha
40. Dennis Bergkamp
41. Saeed Owairan
42. Pavel Nedved
43. Karel Poborsky
44. Roberto Carlos
45. Stephane Chapuisat 
46. Thomas Hassler
47. Javier Zanetti
48. George Weah
49. Oliver Bierhoff
50. Christophe Dugary
51. Paolo Maldini (Manchester United kit!!!!!!)
52. Vitor Borba Ferreira Rivaldo
53. Joao Pinto
54. Dan Petrescu