We always start these things with a little update of where we’re at and where we’re heading. This time, we’ll keep our powder relatively dry. You’ll see where we’re at next week when we launch something we’ve been working on for a year with some of the coolest brands and people in the shirt space. We’re buzzing to share it with you.

But before we go forward, sometimes it’s wise to look back. And we wanted to do that with one of the OGs of the shirt game: Neal Heard. He was flogging shirts long before there was any kind of scene and he’s still going, largely responsible for the most talked-about shirt of 2025. It felt right that as we get set to properly enter the shirt space, we speak to the man who helped pioneer it.

So keep an eye on our socials over the next week. We’re about to shake things up.

📋 Team selections - Our January cultural picks
🍻 Pre-match interview - A Pint with…Neal Heard
💥 Showboaters - Those peacocking in our community this month
👕 Post Match Clobber - Shirts we can’t get enough of
🔊 Singing us off - Let it goooo (no, not that song)

↣ Selling A Vibe by The Cribs - More than the return to form many are claiming, rather the second brilliant album of the decade from Wakefield’s finest. LK.

↣ Marty Supreme - Relentless, dizzying, disorientating. Forrest Gump on speed. A sports film like no other. Worth the price of a ticket. RL.

Neal Heard is nothing if not an entrepreneur. He’s founded labels, written books, fronted documentaries and done more creative directing than Don Draper. But he’s also one of the soundest people we’ve met since launching Showboat a year ago. And, boy, can he talk. We were buzzing to sit down with him recently to chew the fat. To be honest, we can’t wait to do it again. A genuinely top bloke.

When did you first become aware of the football casuals movement and did you recognise its significance at the time?
You’ve got to remember I’m old. I’m 56. And the lads who really started that thing, the ones I still know, they’re coming up 62 now. People don’t grasp how old that movement is. It started, it ran for a while, then it got ignored, and now it’s become “in vogue” again with social media. But to me it’s almost like talking about Teddy Boys now. It’s a long time ago.

Down in Newport, we were always in the lower leagues. We weren’t running into the big mobs all the time. Everybody knows it started in Liverpool, Manchester, London and places like that. But I remember it arriving. One moment everyone is wearing tasselled loafers, cardigans, different cuts, then all of a sudden it changed. I always remember a boy at school - Dave Redmond, I still know him - coming in wearing a deerstalker hat. He had a pair of jeans where he cut the side seam. He looked like an alien. Imagine that. Even now, you only see those on Sherlock Holmes. It was like punk in that sense, genuinely disruptive at first.

And beyond the obvious brands people mention now, what really hit me was the early appropriation of English classics. Burberry, Aquascutum. Nobody talked about those back then. My gran wore Burberry. She used to go to town in full Burberry. Burberry mac, hat, scarf. Then suddenly these kids were wearing it and it felt revolutionary. I loved that movement. Back then, it was really forward thinking, not the sort of cliche it sort of became. 

What brands were you drawn to as a kid?
Well, I was just following them. Do you know what I mean? I didn’t have money. I wasn’t one of the main dressers or the main knuckle draggers. I was around it, but I wasn’t the guy whose whole life was the labels. I was probably more square than any of them. They were all scally wags. Even though I went to school with all the scallywags, I wasn’t one of the proper scallywags. People like me, we were friends of the firm, which meant you sort of knew every fucker. 

The terraces were properly violent then. Proper dangerous. Not the Mickey Mouse stuff now where people taunt each other and go through the motions. I mean, it was quite a dangerous place to be back in the old days, believe me. That atmosphere, and how people dressed in it, drew me in.

In my time, this scene was seen through a different lens.
By the time you’re talking, early 2000s, it became embarrassing to be seen as a football boy. Everyone looked down on it. Me and my mate had a label, White Riot, doing casual tees when you couldn’t really do that. We’d do stuff like an Adidas box logo tee, and things that feel obvious now but weren’t then. We used to sell a lot to shops all over including up your way in Boro, places like Psyche and Triads. I’ve got one hanging over there now - a casuals tour of duty, with all the firms around the country but like a tour of duty jacket from Japan. We took Rupert Bear and turned him into Riot Bear.

And then I did the trainers book. To this day, all the old football boys love me to death for it. Because when I brought that book out, no one was doing anything for them. Everybody ignored them. They were like a lost tribe, in my eyes.

It’s very British too, isn’t it?
I don’t want to bore you, but everybody just forever looks to America. Music, fashion, whatever. It’s bollocks. We don’t need to constantly look to America for what’s cool. For me, I was like, no, we’ve got our own movements. This country can punch its weight with anybody for starting fashion trends and youth movements. And so I wanted to celebrate that, and I saw them as part of that.

But at the same time, now you see blokes stuffing themselves into Fila jackets at 60, and it’s just frightening.

When did you realise you weren’t just interested, but actually collecting?
I guess I did the collecting very early on. I’m a history geek. I’m always on YouTube watching stuff about the Neolithic, King Arthur. I came at clothing like that too.

Me, Fraser from YMC, and some other friends used to go around old sports shops looking for deadstock trainers. Adidas Originals didn’t exist then. If a trainer was out of production, you couldn’t get it unless you went and found it in a dusty old sports shop. And so we used to round these sports shops clearing their back rooms, finding what we could. We sold most of it to Japan and what you’d call London fashion people. But any of the old football stuff or the stuff I was raised on - ZX, Trimm Trab - I’d keep. Same with shirts.

People call me a collector, and I’ve got a big collection, but I don’t think of myself as one. I’m not the “I must have that” guy. I buy what I’m into. I’ve got a Coca Cola section because it turns me on. I’ve got loads of big hitters because I came across them before people started spending big money, and because it earns me a living. But I don’t chase.

How many shirts do you have now then?
I’ve probably got a couple of hundred left now. I sold all my English recently because I’ve never been into British shirts. There was no romance in it. I’m into my Serie A, all exotic and foreign and lovely. But you know what I think the thing is with me, right? I was a bit of a show off. So when I went to a stadium or a pub and I was wearing a shirt no one’s seen for years, everyone would go ‘where did you get that?’ or ‘when did you go there?’ But this whole retro shit… 

I know what you mean about those.
The whole off-the-shelf retro shirt trend has really killed the whole scene for me. It’s taken something really special and curated and made it into a kind of mass marketing throwaway hell. They don’t even bother to use the real brand maker’s marque!

I’m with you there. So, on that subject: favourite shirt?
Honestly, show me almost any Sampdoria shirt and I’ll say it’s beautiful. Not saying it’s the one I’d run into a burning building to save… but their shirts are just special.

Lover’s FC. How did it start, and where did the name come from?
The book originally came out as A Lover’s Guide to Football Shirts. That was the self-published version, the rare one. It’s probably the last pure thing I did, because nobody had done a football shirt book like that. I was obsessed with Japanese mags like Lightning and Boon, that vibe.

I’d done the trainers book in 2003, it went well, but publishers left a bad taste. Then social media arrived, I suddenly had a following, and realised: I can reach people directly. I went to a local printer, found someone who could lay out the pages, and it became achievable without dealing with a publisher who doesn’t understand the culture and wants to ruin it.

The book poured out of me. I called it A Lover’s Guide because I loved the subject, and I thought I’d do Volume Two, Volume Three… rugby shirts, other stuff. Then I thought: I’ll start a label, Lover’s FC, tied to that idea.

And when I wrote that book, the world was different. I did a music-and-shirts section and you could barely fill it. Happy Mondays on the beach, the Gallaghers wearing the City shirt in the alleyway… that was about it. I could have done Watford and Elton John but I didn’t want to do anything that was shit [laughs]. If you did that section now, the book would be full. That whole crossover didn’t exist the same way. I spotted the shift early: football shirts were going to become lifestyle, like trainers.

You’ve made shirts for some of the biggest brands in the world now with Lover’s FC. Tell us about the process. How collaborative are the collaborations?
Well, we wouldn’t make anything we didn’t like. If I’m honest, there’s a constant battle against doing retro shirts. You do have to remind them sometimes. Look, you’ve hired us to make these shirts. Shut the fuck up and let us do it.  

Where do you think all this is going? Every brand and band has a football shirt now.
There are two sides. On one side, it’s like trainers - Nike reissued Jordans, Dunks, whatever - and you think it can’t get bigger. It’s done. It’s going to end. And then it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. That’s where football shirts are now. They’re lifestyle. Clubs won’t do those old “players lined up” shoots anymore, where they’re all sat in a line like they were 15 years ago - everything will be a lifestyle campaign, forever. Big teams are working with designers. That’s the new baseline.

But the oversaturation will create kickback. The originals - and I include me and people like you - we’re already a bit off it. It makes you want to go quiet and have your own little clandestine meeting with the OGs, because you don’t want to talk with all the muppets.

Tell me about the shirt of 2025, your Bilbao number.
It couldn’t have gone any better really. I mean, thank fucking god it did. I’ve got a 19-year old boy and my daughter’s 21. They live in a different world to me but they’re constantly looking for authentic shit. They’ve been so done over by brands that they hate it. I think what I want to do is put authenticity back into it. Athletic Club are authentic. There’s so much noise nowadays, you’ve got to do something good, haven’t you?

↣ Our friends at Stunner dropped their film on YouTube this week about having to leave Ukraine and build a new life in Macclesfield. It’s really quite special.

↣ Kit Launch have been slinging some of the finest shirts on the market for years. They’ve now opened a cracking physical space in Barcelona. If you’re there, check it out.

↣ Similarly, The Soccer Archive have added to their growing roster of stores. They’re now in Milan after hitting it out of the park in London. Olivier Giroud, eat your heart out.

↣ Portland Hearts of Pine dropped this gorgeous number at the start of 2026, and we think this could make quite a few end-of-year lists when it’s all said and done.

↣ ES Tunis dropped this blinder last week, and it ticks about every box you want when buying a shirt. Kappa. Long sleeved. Sponsorless. Club you’ve never seen kick a ball.

That’s Issue #10 in the books and even though it’s slightly late, we’re wishing you all a very happy New Year. Keep your eyes on our Instagram too, for a massive announcement in the next seven days.

As we get ready to take our own plunge into the unknown and launch something quietly terrifying, we thought we’d sign off with this early 00s gem - one of the best tracks about letting go and one of the best music videos to boot.

Cheers!
Lee, Rob & Antonio