Where The Game Actually Lives

Growing up in the US, I’ve always been envious of the culture of football in England. It’s just bigger there. Something I’ve always wanted to be a part of.

While the MLS was establishing itself in the background, the Prem was easier to find on TV. I don’t even remember exactly how I landed on Chelsea, I just know I did and I never looked back. Lampard. Drogba. Ashley Cole. Fabregas. Hazard. I was mesmerized by how they moved and worked off each other. Why did they move that way? Why did they make that pass? Why did they choose to hold the ball there rather than advance the play? That curiosity is still with me every time I pick up a camera.

I don’t often go into the deep end on Instagram captions. I tell myself nobody wants to sit on their phone and listen to me ramble. I bounce between “it’s not that serious, it’s just social media” and knowing that actually, it is that serious. It is that deep. And connection is the whole point.

This is where the game actually lives.

I always wondered how football gets built into a place. In England you have cages and stadiums woven into neighborhoods, hallowed grounds where their communities orbit around them. There’s a gravitational pull. The game is just there, constant, unavoidable in the best way. I didn’t grow up finding the nearest cage in the streets of London or walking past somewhere like Luton’s ground sitting in a sea of row houses. But I had places like this. Somewhere you can show up any night and find a game.

I read constantly as a kid, and one of the things I love most about reading is learning to hear what’s being said between the lines. Watching football does the same thing to me. The movement that looks simple to some is everything. Fluid, intentional, quiet. A run off the ball. The weight of a pass. The subtle hand motions of the manager. The shifts of magnets on the tactical board, playing chess. It’s a story unfolding in real time, protagonists and antagonists all chasing something personal and something much bigger. Stories of redemption, pain, sacrifice, and glory. A dream formed in front of a TV watching Maradona at age six. A dream to escape a past they had no control over.

I’ve seen kids as young as three at this place, pros coming back, new ones coming up, and people decades into it, all sharing the same patch of ground. I once played a pickup game with a man who didn’t speak a word of English. We never needed it. The game was the language and we understood each other completely. We’ve become friends.

That’s always been what pulls me to football. It crosses borders, cultures, languages. It cuts through the noise and the division in ways almost nothing else does. As a photographer, as someone who grew up playing, it has brought some of the most remarkable people into my life from all over the world, each carrying their own story, their own culture, their own relationship to this game.

That’s why this felt like the right place to shoot, not just the Astray kits, but these vintage pieces from all over the world. Everyone showing up in their country’s colors or the shirt of a childhood hero. Different backgrounds, different paths, different cultures, all speaking the same language.

This is where the game actually lives.