World Cup Fever: Where Music Meets Football and Fashion

Before music, before anything really, there was football. It has been my longest and most consistently depressing passion. Most of my earliest memories revolve around football, from smuggling vaguely spherical objects into primary school (where proper balls were inexplicably banned) to attending my first match in November 1990. Like most British boys of the era, I dreamed of playing professionally—and like the vast majority, I wouldn’t come close. But to paraphrase the effervescent Ted Lasso character Dani Rojas, football was life. And for a few hours every week, when Sheffield United are playing, it still is.

As a young football obsessive with a collector’s mindset, football shirts were an important piece of the puzzle. My first shirt was a 1988/89 Liverpool home shirt—the first to feature Italian appliance manufacturer Candy as sponsor—and over the next few years, I amassed a collection that included, quite bizarrely in retrospect, rival clubs such as Arsenal (the yellow JVC away kit), Blackburn Rovers, Rangers, AC Milan, and Fiorentina. My most provocative purchase, however, was a 1990 Germany home shirt. Yes, the very same one worn by the side that broke my heart in Italia ’90. I totally stand by 8-year-old David’s opinion that “it looked pretty cool.”

In my teens, music took over, and the football shirts were gradually phased out in favour of band t-shirts. Indeed, I didn’t buy a single football shirt between 1998 and 2023. But as the world emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic, I started to see football shirts everywhere, on the backs of people who weren’t young children, five-a-side players, or middle-aged diehards. I noticed young people, invariably wearing retro remakes or original vintage kits, at gigs and music festivals. In fact, at Primavera 2024, I felt positively left out of a conversation I felt extremely well-equipped to participate in.

What I was witnessing was the emergence of ‘Blokecore’—a TikTok-originated fashion trend combining vintage football fashion with more traditional streetwear. Keen to capitalise, luxury fashion houses joined the party, with exclusive shirts, such as Gucci’s venture with streetwear brand Palace, retailing for close to £1,000.

I have little interest in that type of opportunism. But I am very curious about the emergence of music-themed football crossovers, and New York design studio Full Kit’s latest collaboration with venerable indie label 4AD—and, of course, the actual World Cup—provided a timely opportunity to dig a little deeper.

Full Kit did an inspired project with 4AD’s Future Islands in 2024, and this time round, they’ve incorporated a national kit theme especially for the 2026 World Cup. Scott Walker’s Bish Bosch provides the inspiration for a reimagined U.S.A shirt, while Cocteau Twins’ Heaven or Las Vegas iconic cover has effectively been tartanised to commemorate Scotland’s appearance in the tournament—their first since 1998. Alongside the shirts, there’s also a limited edition Air Miami x Colourbox scarf, which ties in with a special double A-side 7” single that brings together football-themed tracks from each band.

For Air Miami’s Mark Robinson, the fusion of football, music, and fashion makes perfect sense:

“I’ve always been into the fashion aspect of football. From the three-stripe font that we used for the Unrest logo to wearing long-sleeve shirts with shorts like all the goalkeepers wear. The whole thing with the “World Cup Fever” 7” split single with Colourbox and the football scarf has been a ton of fun.”

Curiously, although 4AD has a longstanding relationship with football, Mark was unaware of this at the time of “World Cup Fever.”

“It didn’t seem like a sports-centric record label—there aren’t too many out there—when I started paying attention around the time of In Camera and Modern English and Bauhaus,” he admits.

“I think resurfacing 4AD’s connection to football has been a surprise to many,” suggests Amy Krawcyzk, Catalogue Project Manager at 4AD. “One of the best football and 4AD connections is via the late v23 designer Vaughan Oliver who was a keen football fan, a licensed FA coach and lifelong supporter of Sunderland AFC. Vaughan managed to do some design work for the team’s 1992 FA Cup single “Roker Rave/Ain’t No Stopping Us Now.” He was even tipped to redesign their crest, but this sadly didn’t end up happening. The Complicated Opposition 7” we put out this year was in memory of Vaughan, so we worked with fellow v23 designer Chris Bigg and The Douglas Brothers on the artwork.”

For Full Kit founder Robbie Laing, this project was particularly personal:

“The Scotland Cocteau shirt is especially special to me since my Granny is from Elgin and my Grandad is from Aberdeen, so I have strong Scottish roots. And Cocteau Twins are also a bucket list artist for me.”

Full Kit’s products evidently sit at the premium end of the football-related artist merch market, but as Robbie clarifies, the company didn’t begin as “an effort to enter a “space” per se. There wasn’t really business intent.” Full Kit developed during the pandemic, a result of the type of self-reflection that characterised the period.

“Vicente, Alex and myself (all friends from our high school soccer team) weren’t creatively satisfied with our careers and wanted an outlet,” Robbie explains. “From my perspective, I used to work in music, booking festivals, but the company I worked at sold its main festival properties to pursue pop-ups for TV shows. I wanted to get back into music, but didn’t want to search for a new job and start over mid-pandemic. My old boss Jon Mayers instilled the belief in me that I could start my own thing, just as he had with Bonnaroo.”

There was also a sense that they could do things better. Robbie continues: “We found that soccer-related artist merch usually wasn’t very good—low quality fabrics, screenprinted graphics, low-effort designs; nothing that felt true to the sport or inspired me to buy—and I love artist merch. We wanted to just make stuff we would wear—show people how we thought artist jerseys should be.”

Full Kit also strives to work collaboratively with the artists. For this project, Robbie confirms that “their teams / estates all had final say in design and approvals.”

“I think we started off with like 5 or 6 concept directions before narrowing it down. We’ve got several other Cocteau Twins + Scott designs that will never see the light of day,” he adds.

On the pitch, the 2026 World Cup has been a huge hit. While there has been controversy behind the scenes, with FIFA and Donald Trump predictably at the heart of it, the football itself has been thrilling at times. But what do Mark and Robbie think of the official kits on display?

“Japan’s training range is my favourite,” says Robbie. “Algeria’s walkout jackets are rad. Germany’s is very classic. Sweden’s are also rad. I think Adidas did a really good job with most of the pieces.”

Mark, on the other hand, likes the look of the tournament favourites, amongst others: “France’s home jersey with that Statue of Liberty mint green is classic. The Japan away jersey with the colour stripes is great, and even though a lot of people don’t like it, I think the USA home kit is pretty unexpected and fun.”

With only eight teams left, our thoughts naturally turn to who will take home the coveted trophy. Mark is rooting for England and underdogs Switzerland. Robbie had an inkling that Germany might triumph, but they are out of the competition, so I’m choosing to embrace his second pick: “it would be poetic for England to win on American soil.”

We’ll find out on 19 July, when the final takes place in East Rutherford, New Jersey. But as 4AD and Full Kit’s collaboration highlights, it isn’t all about the winning—wearing something fun, not taking yourself too seriously, and showing support for your favourite artists is perfectly fine, too.

Special thanks to Mark Robinson (Air Miami), Robbie Laing (Full Kit), Amy Krawcyzk and Erin Christie (4AD) for their time and support with this article.

For further information: 4AD | Full Kit | Air Miami