It really depends from which perspective you look at things… From a perspective of a football fan, which is looking for correct lineups, correct kits, etc., then yes it's too soon…
But unfortunately Panini is not in the business of predicting the right lineups, etc., but they are in the business of making money. They pay huge amounts of money to obtain a license from FIFA (you can look how the revenue of FIFA increases in the year of the World Cup –
Available here – Page 15) and national teams, so they have to start selling before the World Cup starts. If I would have to guess the collection will go to print by the end of February so they are making the designs and predicting lineups now (December, January and February).
If they would wait until the official lineups and kits would be announced the stickers/cards would be in stores at the end of the Group phase. Once the World Cup starts the hype is over and Panini’s sales go down…
Look at this chart of Google searches in 2014 for example, which could simulate the demand for stickers/cards. On the other hard Panini knows that people will buy the collection no matter what, as true football fans that know all participating teams/players are a minority among the collectors.
If Panini would issue the collection later the lineups would be correct but the sales might suffer, so that’s the tradeoff they work with. It was probably a rhetorical question from your side, but that were my “2 cents”.
They could maybe push the date to May, but that would make little difference as the collection would still need to go to print in Mach/early April. So the best we can hope for is that they will have luck with selecting the lineups
But to keep the discussion going I would like to know if this February/March schedule was also the same in the 1970’s and 1980’s when football was not such a huge business? Was somebody here already involved in the hobby at that time and can remember when the World Cup collections were issued then?
If this is off-topic maybe the admin can move it?
