Bands F.C are great and we love them - here's why you should too

Remember when you needed that terrible Romanian centre-half to complete a page in your Panini World Cup sticker album and the desperate nine year old you would’ve done anything and everything to get him?

Take the concept of ‘got, got need’ and apply it to your favourite bands and solo artists and you’re left with the genius creation of Bands F.C – a truly unique project where you’ll find: ‘bands as football teams and football teams as bands’.

The kick-off:

It’s nearly a year since the entire nation united for a two-month long sun soaked and beer infused footballing festival. Gareth’s three lions very nearly brought it home, there were alcohol shortages around the country, a record number of ‘sickies’ were pulled the morning after England matches and Danny Dyer called David Cameron a twat on live television. It was all a bit weird.

But somewhere in the middle of the summer 2018 mayhem, Manchester designers Nick Fraser and Mark Liptrott set out on an adventure which would see musical entities from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to Loyle Carner, mixed with badges from football teams which may or may not have anything to do with them.

“As a designer, my interest in football came from the badges” explains Mark, speaking at a ‘night in conversation’ with the projects’ two creators in March 2019. “I loved collecting the stickers as a kid, but I was happiest when I pulled out one of the badges because they looked the best and were always the shinies”.

And it was out of this admiration for footballing aesthetics, combined with the pairs innate love of music in which Bands F.C were born.

“With the 2018 World Cup rapidly approaching, we knew that if bands were to stay relevant over the next eight weeks or so, they’d need to become more ‘footbally’” added Nick.

“On a train home from a Charlatan’s gig we both realised that there are a lot of similarities between football teams and musicians branding.

“We decided to combine the two and before you know it we’re sending each other pictures of badges from the South Korean second division saying ‘ I wonder what we could do with this?’”

Players from South Korean team Gwanju reel off in celebration

Having originally posted a collection of early designs to social media, the response was incredible, with the Bands F.C Twitter page amassing over 10,000 followers in the first two months.

The design philosophy:

Behind religion, there probably aren’t two more partisan past-times than football and music, so ‘how not to piss people off in a world where people get pissed off very easily’ was a question which wrestled with the two.

“Some are very simple” pleaded Nick. “You just know not to put the Gallagher brothers on a Man United badge, but even then Bonehead (the guitarist from mostly City supporting band Oasis) was a red, so there can’t be a way to please everyone”.

There are those which work well because they make sense, like Oxford rock band Radiohead, whose typeface and iconic bear logo have been merged with, yes you guessed it, Oxford United.

Then there are those bands and football teams which share no intentional links, but by coincidence it makes sense for them to be paired too.

It’s hard to imagine French football giants Olympique Lyonnais and American alt-rock band Kings of Leon had ever been mentioned in the same breath before the amalgamation of their brand identities, but the result is a sleek and unique design which makes you go ‘ahhhh that’s clever’.

But buried deep within the 600+ designs in Band F.C’s collection, there are a select few which no matter how long you sat pondering and scratching your head for, you just wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the football team used in the artwork. Why? Because it doesn’t exist.

Salford Lads Club gained international recognition when Manchester born post-punk group, The Smiths, posed outside the joint for the inside cover of their 1986 album, The Queen Is Dead.

For Mark and Nick, this reference was too much to ignore, thus the two sampled the colours of the now world famous Lads Club to create a completely made up badge. There are no limits to the brilliance behind Bands F.C.

Gaining support:

“It was a proper ‘fanboy’ moment when we were contacted by the lead singer of the Coral” revealed Mark, a long time lover of the Liverpudlian band.

He went on: “they sent us a message on Twitter saying how brilliant they thought the idea was. I was proper chuffed and I’m now good mates with them”.

The Coral’s Band F.C design is one of the more obscure in the collection having been based off non-league semi-professional outfit AFC Liverpool, a club set up as a refuge for fans that had been priced out of Premier League football, and they weren’t the only big name that wanted a piece of Mark and Nick’s work.

Heavyweights in the music world like The The, Franz Ferdinand and The Charlatans have all shown their support towards the artwork, with britpop group The Lightning Seeds taking it one step further, reaching out and asking for some Bands F.C inspired shirts to perform an upcoming gig in. Unsurprisingly it was an England shirt – ‘it’s coming home’ et al.

Bands F.C have also seen endorsements come from unlikely sources like Barcelona FC and their 25 million plus Twitter following, purveyors of ‘fake news’ CNN and award winning sports journalist Henry Winter, who in what is probably the weirdest thing you’ll ever read, has agreed to perform a DJ set during an upcoming Bands F.C exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall.

“We’re 2-0 up and it isn’t even half-time yet”:

Speaking about what’s next for the project in a 2018 BBC North West Tonight interview, the Band F.C creators claimed that “we’re 2-0 up and it isn’t even half-time yet”.

Having already completed an exhibition tour of the UK, gained over 50,000 Twitter followers, produced artwork and football shirts for some of music’s leading stars and convinced the biggest name in sports journalism to perform a DJ set at one of their events, it’s hard to imagine what more the two could possibly come up with.

But whilst they hinted that they’ll “probably do something” for next summer’s Euro 2020 tournament" – despite only finding out it was happening moments before – there is one thing that Mark is hoping to come out of the project:

“Wherever Bands F.C goes over the coming years and whatever we do with the project, I’ll be really disappointed if I don’t have a Nando’s black card by the end of it”. Watch this space for a cheeky Bands F.C and Nando’s collaboration coming soon.

There you have it, you can have a look at all the brilliant work Bands F.C have done on their website. Had you heard about this truly unique story before? Let us know your favourite Bands F.C design on Twitter and Instagram.