Making a House a Home

We’re still figuratively knee deep in renovations and, for a moment during that cold snap a few weeks back, we were literally ankle deep in water after a pipe burst. Don’t worry, minimal damage was done and it’s already fixed! 

As we focus on the work required to get the building ready, it’s impossible not to think ahead to the details that will turn Soccer House from just a bar that shows matches into a real home for the game and the people who love it. 

The Familiar Look of a Soccer Bar

Decorating a soccer bar comes with a familiar set of assumptions. Visit enough of them and a pattern emerges: scarves everywhere, a few jerseys in frames, photos of famous goals or starting XIs, and a scattering of soccer-related bric-a-brac. This classic aesthetic isn’t wrong or bad. Many of those objects arrive organically as gifts from regulars, souvenirs from trips, or artifacts that carry real meaning. We’ve already been given several amazing items by friends who want to see them displayed where they’ll be appreciated among fellow supporters.

But classic can easily slip into cliché. What feels authentic in one place can feel borrowed in another. A bar in Chicago doesn’t have to look like a pub in London simply because London got there first and the same is true of copying the feel of Buenos Aires, Naples, or Munich.

The Game as Culture, Not Branding

There’s also the assumption that a soccer bar has to declare its loyalties loudly and immediately. It must be flags everywhere, crests on every surface, and branding at full volume. Sometimes less is more and the culture of the game runs deeper than just crests and colors. 

Umberto Boccioni’s ‘Dynamism of a Soccer Player’ hangs next to Picasso in the MoMA. Andy Warhol’s portrait of Pelé sold for $775,000. The scale, effort, and collective creativity required to produce a tifo that can be both subtle and spectacular is something magnificent in its own right and never the result of “branding.”

Choosing Intention Over Imitation

Challenging the expectations doesn’t mean rejecting them outright. Will there be scarves on the walls? Of course. Are there signed jerseys we can’t wait to frame? You bet. Our goal, however, isn’t to build a soccer bar that “looks like a soccer bar.” The goal is to build a place that feels true to the game, to the city it lives in, and to the people who gather there week after week. We don’t want to replicate what already exists, but reflect the multifaceted, local, communal, and always unfinished beauty of the sport. 

Leaving Room for What Comes Next

So while we have some things we know will go up (check them out on Instagram this week), some walls will stay empty by design. We’ll keep space for supporters’ banners on matchday. We’ll leave room for future stories. Posters from big matches yet to be played will get framed and hung later. Scarves will accumulate and jerseys will appear. Ultimately, we hope the décor doesn’t just tell our story, but slowly starts collecting everyone else’s, too.