A chief creative officer’s quest to document NYC soccer culture

Soccer is best played in the grass. Or is it the mud? The concrete?

Wherever it’s played, the sport is inherently grassroots. And while soccer is on display at the highest, most professional level this summer during the World Cup, the majority of play around the world is much more casual. Think Adidas’s World Cup campaign film, where Timothée Chalamet tells the fictional tale of a 3v3 street soccer team that’s been undefeated since 1996—even against legends like David Beckham.

That’s the vibe Malcolm Buick, executive creative director and partner of Brooklyn-based branding agency Athletics, is celebrating with his project “&friends,” a digital archive that documents New York City’s soccer culture.

The project was not made for a client, though Athletics has done work for brands including Nike, Google, IBM, and MLS Go. It’s not funded by—or has raised money from—any investors. It’s simply a passion project for Buick, who grew up playing soccer in a small town on the east coast of Scotland.

“That’s where football was less about the football and more about your pals,” Buick told Marketing Brew. “We would play anywhere—find a patch of grass, jumpers for goalposts, a battered ball…What stayed with me was the friendship.”

Archival footy

The archive primarily lives on a dedicated website, along with an Instagram page. On the site, visitors can scroll through a list of 14 local clubs and navigate through to learn more about them, including their backstories, kit designs, rivals, and other fun facts.

Some teams are quite official: Chinatown Soccer Club has played together since 2002 against clubs from around the world, while First Touch Football Club has been together since 2012, gathering at 7a.m. every weekday. ManChestHair United has an official sponsor (and a killer name). Other teams in the archive, though, are much more casual, like Parade Ground Football Club, a self-described “pick-up group” with a rotating roster.

As a lifelong player himself, Buick has plenty of connections in the soccer world, and his team partnered with adult rec soccer league NYC Footy to help spread the word and build the roster, which Buick said he hopes will continue to grow. Players can submit their teams for inclusion by filling out a form, and they’ll be automatically added to the site, with some curation help from Buick and his collaborators, he said. Design agency Dress Code also helped with the project.

Though the site certainly looks crafted by branding and design professionals, Buick said working on &friends has been a nice break from the corporate agency world.

“We don’t get to do things that are quote-unquote ‘wrong,’ textural, a little bit scrappy, and unmeasured,” he said. “That is not really our world anymore, and to do stuff that’s a bit more [free] and spirited is rad.”

A little help from my friends

The archive officially debuted on June 10, with a party at Honey’s bar in Bushwick, Brooklyn. NYC Footy has promoted &friends in its member newsletter, Buick said, and bigger-name teams in the archive have helped to spread the word, too. There’s also been a bit of a PR push behind the project, he added.

Nothing official is in the works yet, but Buick said he hopes the project catches the eye of New York institutions like art museums or even the mayor’s office. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an Arsenal FC fan, has been a proponent of soccer in the US, offering low-cost World Cup tickets to residents and hosting watch parties around the city; more recently, he announced a limited-time initiative to keep five soccer fields around the city open overnight to facilitate pick-up games during the World Cup.

While the slogan on the site reads “no turf, no sponsors, no problem,” Buick acknowledged the fact that finding space and opportunity to play soccer in the city can often be challenging. He hopes &friends can connect at least some of these local teams and fans—and, eventually, contribute to the overall growth of the beautiful game.

With the excitement around the World Cup reaching a fever pitch in North America, the timing couldn’t be better.

“Soccer’s here, and it’s not a flash in the pan,” Buick said. “It’s not a trend. North America has its own version of the game. It has its own DNA, much like England, or Scotland, or mainland Europe. It has its own flavor. North America’s found its feet. We’re here.”