As soccer continues to surge in New York City, Saturdays Football has been key to soccer’s popularity surge not only in the Big Apple, but in the United States.
The lifestyle brand, which sells its own line of streetwear and merchandise alongside its vintage soccer jersey collection, opened its flagship store doors in mid-August on 45 Crosby St., in the middle of Soho. Saturdays had another brick-and-mortar store in the Rockefeller Center in 2023, but closed it to make space for the Soho location.
In addition, Saturdays has permanent locations in Los Angeles and Chicago and pop-up stores all over the country year-round.
“The original mission is creating a home for football fans here in the United States,” founder, CEO, and creative director Mathew Davis told amNewYork. “You’ve got to have LA and New York to be able to do that, so what better place than in Soho?”
LA-native Davis started the brand in 2018 in his garage, heat-pressing his designs onto shirts and named his brand after the day when “we celebrated the game, we played, we hung out, and we watched matches,” Davis said. “The whole week’s anticipation was up to that day.”
Then, fans started asking about vintage jerseys, and Davis obliged. The brand became “half-vintage, half-lifestyle,” but Davis acknowledged the brand is slowly moving back to his lifestyle roots.
Davis designs all the merchandise, from the club-specific caps to city-specific Saturdays Football hoodies, which have patches of local amateur teams sewn onto the hood. The designs are minimalist, matching Davis’ personality.
Racks of jerseys hang on walls everywhere inside, and Saturdays’ line of merchandise, from caps and hoodies to socks and Diego Maradona-inspired t-shirts, greets customers when they enter the store.
However, all the lights in the store point towards two sprawling leather couches around a coffee table stacked with soccer books in the middle, and a massive TV on one side playing match highlights. A foosball table is just behind that, while another match-day setup is further behind.
Photo: Jonathan Mak/AMNY
The store has been the place for soccer fans to not just find fashionable soccer streetwear pieces and grab their favorite jerseys from yesteryear, but also hang out, surround themselves in soccer memorabilia, and meet passionate, like-minded fans of the beautiful game.
“Our permanent stores — especially here in Soho — we very much want it to be an experience where people could walk in and feel like they’re home,” Raul Navarrete, the New York City store manager, said. “The number one goal is for this to be the hangout spot for everybody to be comfortable. For people to have a safe space where they could call [fellow fans] friends, crew members, and down the road, long-term friends.”
Plastered all over the entryway walls are posters of models in Saturdays’ clothes with the brand’s slogan: Always Play Free underneath each one. It takes a jab at the U.S.’s pay-to-play model at the youth level — a shoehorned, convenient reason when a fan takes a jab at the quality of soccer in the U.S. and at the national team level.
The store has been used for free events and watch parties for some of the biggest European games of the season. John Shin, better known as GoodVibesJohn online, has hosted watch parties at Saturdays for his team, Manchester United’s Europa League final loss in May this year, and a Q&A with Brazilian legend Zico during the Club World Cup this summer.
The Korean-American has also collaborated with the store to host its first two Kitted Out parties, which celebrate the city’s soccer community.
“A lot of the [free] elements that have to do with these events, it’s because it’s not every day that these people who come visit us have them back in where they’re from,” Navarette said. “So for us to provide a place where they feel comfortable, feel like they’re one of us, we’ll continue to do [these events] as much as we can.”
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