Luke Taylor (@luke16taylor) on the misappropriation of football culture
The World Cup brought in many new fans of the game, as the tournament usually does. It’s good for the sport. Seeing more and more people become invested in this game is beautiful. As a culture, we should welcome new people putting their interest and emotion into the game.
However, with a movement like football where we are seeing it infiltrate the mainstream cultures and becoming increasingly popular with more and more people, we do have a few anomalies that jump on the hype for personal gain, whether that be social or financial.
I don’t want to seem like I am giving off a vibe where new fans are not accepted within the game because they haven’t been a fan from the start, as that’s not true. The point I want to make is, people like Virgil Abloh, and now ASOS, seeing that they can make a profit from football content and jumping at the opportunity is not good for the culture. It limits the chance of deserving success many more creators could gain from the time and effort they are devoting to the cause.
Honing the point in on specifics, take a look at Virgil Abloh and his Off-White x Nike World Cup pieces. Awful. Truly awful. If you have followed me on my socials, you will have seen me complain about this throughout the summer. A horrible checkered home shit, with an unattractive font on the front and weird shapes down the arms. Not only that, it seemed like they remixed the Holland crest and whacked it in orange on the shirt.
Alongside this, some random blue dots and voila; you (apparently) have a streetwear x football hype piece. I don’t get it. The fact is, this is so annoying because this Off-White stuff sold out swiftly and then had a higher resale price than it did retail, despite how unattractive it was. I get annoyed by this sort of thing because I see so many creators doing stupendous work but don’t get the profit or recognition as people like Virgil Abloh or ASOS will.
As a culture, we need to be looking at people who aren’t doing it for a financial gain and jumping at the opportunity to benefit from a hype. I personally believe we should channel all our efforts into people doing it for the love of football and the culture. Raise the profiles of those creating stuff out of sheer love for the game and those driving the culture.
ASOS have now climbed on board. Splurging out some eminently substandard designs in an effort to get involved with the creative phenomenon that is football. Albeit, the pieces are affordable and will not be resold for more than they go for retail, like the Off-White stuff. But why would a brand like ASOS look to create their own football style shirts?
One reason is that with football culture permeating the norms, they can keep up with trends and make money off it. It’s not like the designs are even any good. There is a massive effort to be edgy, to stick out from the crowd but it is a wasted endeavour and the shirts have turned out mediocre. They’ve even put the model in shinpads and boots to finish it off nicely…
I am not saying that all the creators I follow within this culture are not in it to make a financial gain from it because this would be exceptionally naive of me to do so. For many, creating products/content is their living and I respect the hustle. This is why we have to support them because they are valuable to the game, culturally, societally and financially.
I call for you to ignore. Ignore Virgil Abloh when he comes with his horrible football stuff, ignore ASOS’ stuff and head to brands that are creating cool stuff on the regular. Nivelcrack. CityBoys FC. Golaso. Guerrilla FC. Providence City. TensClub. And more. Go to these brands and leave all that other shit for the hypebeasts.
You can read Luke's Wordpress blog here.
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