London Design Museum recounts the history of football with an immersive exhibition

Football has far transcended the banner of just being a sport. The essence of the sport lies in notable moments, for instance, the legendary footballer, Cristiano Ronaldo’s hat-trick against Spain for Portugal in 2018 FIFA World Cup, or Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal that left the audience in complete awe. “Football feels very familiar to most people and yet we know very little of what goes on behind the scenes. I suppose that’s what makes unpicking the design story of football so interesting,” shares Eleanor Watson, curator of the Football Exhibition. Football has brought people together to cheer through its technical and emotional limits over time and to commemorate the sport, London Design Museum unveils a major exhibition - Football: Designing the beautiful game from 8th April 2022 till 29 August 2022. “The memoirs for the exhibition capture the incredible degree of care that goes into making football what it is,” she shares.

Leading up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the curation ponders upon the subtle interlinkages between football and design. It pays homage to the cultural significance of the beautiful game, with a display of over 500 different objects. The exhibition spans over five zones – performance, identity, crowds, spectacle and play, where each of the objects is a telltale of football’s legacy. “When I started doing research for the exhibition I was astounded by the number of designers, architects and engineers who are dedicating their careers to developing the sport, whether that be graphic designers working on kit typefaces or sound engineers working on stadium acoustics,” says Watson. These exhibits range from the design owing to team badges, innovative kits, models of the world’s most significant stadiums, and a variety of unique objects from star football players to video narratives and monumental photographs among others. The exhibition also stands unique for commemorating women’s football clubs across the world. “It was really important to me to make sure that women’s football was properly platformed throughout the exhibition. I made an active decision not to create a separate section specifically about women’s football, which often happens at football museums, and rather to make sure that there was content relating to the women’s game across the whole exhibition. I think sharing stories from women’s football clubs helps people realise that there is a long-standing and proud history to women’s football, and hopefully this will contribute in some small way to making women and girls feel ownership over the sport,” asserts Watson.

The rush of the entire stadium soaring high in sports spirits upon a significant goal or the intensity of bittersweet emotions as observed in the FA Cup 2022’s final death penalty, football directly involves the structure and the audience as sponsors of a memorable experience. The structural essence of a good football stadium is just as important as any club’s skill set and the museum honours it with a set display of the world’s most significant stadiums. It ponders upon various elements of a stadium’s architecture from a player’s tunnel, to the stands and the perfectly lawned green field, with an immersive set design, creatively reliving the commotion of a crowd-filled stadium on a match day. The audience also comes across set designs for the world’s most complex stadiums like Wembley, Stamford Bridge and San Siro alongside future proposals from famous architects including Zaha Hadid Architects, Herzog & de Meuron and Populous.

London design museum worked in conjunction with the National Football Museum in Manchester for weaving a visual interplay of football’s developing history. Packing the pedestals of the exhibition are the two footballs from the 1930 World cup final and match-worn boots from George Best and Lionel Messi, the keepsake jerseys worn by star players like Pele, Diego Maradona and Zinedine Zidane, the oldest surviving FA cup as well as memoirs of club kits, posters and programmes.

Football is effectively the most popular sport internationally and to mark the completion of 150 years of the United Kingdom’s Football Association, the exhibition dives into its history and explores the ever-developing nature of the sport. It displays how the media and the extensive global viewership helped the football fraternity to reach every corner of the world, commemorating freedom, high spirits, imagination and inspiration to play.

“Ultimately I hope that people will leave feeling surprised, feeling that they saw something about football that they hadn’t expected. Perhaps they might think about the game a little differently in the future, see it as something more open, more joyful than what we usually see in the media,” shares Eleanor on the audience for the exhibition. As one of the leading platforms showcasing design in all its glories, the museum leaves no stone unturned in gracefully establishing the cultural significance of the sport. Football is and always will be a sport so beloved for its sheer plurality, inclusivity and an undying attempt at bringing communities together.