Football culture isn’t what it used to be; it’s continually evolving, expanding, and crossing borders with stark abandon. As fans, players and clubs ride the wave, is it time for brands to take yet another leaf out of the fashion world’s book and seriously consider bringing in a Creative Director to steer the ship?
The image of a brand is everything. It’s the currency, the credibility, the distinction. Without it, there is no brand — just a logo drifting in the noise. Fashion has long known this truth, and sport is now catching up.
Enter the Creative Director. More than just a stylist or a campaign overseer, this role is about authorship. It’s about vision, tone, and coherence — stitching together product, storytelling, and identity into something that resonates beyond function. In fashion, a creative director isn’t a luxury; it’s the heartbeat of the house. (Fashion not your thing? Think Kevin Feige in the MCU, seamlessly stitching together characters and storylines from across the universe to form one cohesive and engaging narrative). In football, where culture now moves just as fast as the game itself, the potential is seismic.
This is no longer about kits and boots in isolation. It’s about how a brand (or club) exists in the wider world: how it speaks to fans, how it collaborates, how it presents itself at the intersection of sport, music, and fashion. A creative director has the power to elevate the everyday into something iconic, to turn a training jersey into a symbol, a campaign into a cultural moment. For sport, the role is more than overdue.
In 2023, Crystal Palace shook up the status quo by naming Kenny Annan-Jonathan as the club’s first-ever creative director — a move that married football with culture in a way no English top-flight side had done before. Across the channel, FC Como Women introduced Ines Rovira into a similar role, as part of Mercury/13’s long-term strategy to align with the wider world of fashion. Two statements of intent. Two acknowledgements that football’s image is no longer confined to the pitch.
But what about the brands? The real giants. The kit makers, the boot builders, the institutions that shape football’s look on a global scale. Not one has yet made the leap.
Yes, there have been close calls. PUMA pulled Jay-Z into basketball back in 2018, but it was more about headlines than holistic creative oversight. Pharrell dipped into adidas with his Human Race project in 2020, but he’s now running the show at Louis Vuitton. adidas themselves were ahead of the curve in 2016 when they appointed Kerry Speak as Global Women’s Creative Director, but that move never expanded into a football-first remit.
The Three Stripes have maintained an enviable roster of creative collaborators. Guillermo Andrade of 424 brought a streetwear pulse to several projects, including MLS’s Leagues Cup in 2023, shaping capsule collections that gave the tournament cultural weight. Jerry Lorenzo’s Fear of God imprint has been instrumental in adidas Basketball, with the designer appointed to lead the creative and business strategy of the adidas' basketball category. PUMA have had a lasting partnership with Colm Dillane, aka KidSuper, for collections that pushed boundaries but remained collaborations, not commitments.
The question hangs heavy: who will be first to hand over the reins? Who will be bold enough to install a football-exclusive creative director and let them rewrite the rulebook?
Nike? Probably not. They’re too vast, too ingrained, too corporate in their rhythms. They’ve just reset their compass ahead of the 2026 World Cup, steering things back into balance between heritage and innovation. adidas? They’ll keep doing adidas — dominating boots, owning kit design, blending archive inspiration with progressive disruption. Both giants are comfortable.
Which leaves PUMA. A brand that hits the heights on one hand, but can equally feel directionless on the other. One look at Rihanna’s work with FENTY shows what can happen when you let a visionary rewrite the script. The superstar’s role as Creative Director of FENTY x PUMA marked a turning point—not just a sneaker drop, but a cultural handshake between sport and fashion. With the Avanti silhouette, she reworked PUMA’s own King football boot, and the result was a football-infused sneaker that dressed the street in sport’s legacy, not just function.
This wasn’t mere nostalgia. Rihanna mined PUMA’s archive with intention—melding King’s heritage with running’s Easy Rider outsole—creating something simultaneously rooted and radical. She returned later with the Avanti LS, featuring turf-inspired gum studs and design cues from heritage kicks like the Speedcat and Mostro—another homage, but seen through her style prism. These releases underline how a singular creative voice can elevate PUMA’s football narratives—making them feel luxe, iconic, and culturally urgent. If Rihanna can reinterpret PUMA’s heritage through fashion, imagine what a football-focused creative director could do with the entire brand.
And that brings us on nicely to Colm Dillane. Under his KidSuper label, the designer turned football kits into living art. His collaborations with PUMA aren’t just designs—they’re expressive, painterly statements. The Club World Cup capsule (2025) dropped in June was a kaleidoscopic fusion of football, fashion and pure imagination. Managing aesthetics across major clubs—from Manchester City to Palmeiras, Dortmund to Al Hilal—Dillane layered watercolour graphics, hand-drawn motifs, and club heritage into a vibrant, bold narrative on pitch and off.
Before that, Dillane’s special edition King boots and earlier collections brought playful art to the heritage silo—embroidered doves, KidSuper-branded form stripes, and bespoke visuals that blurred football, streetwear, and imagination.
KidSuper’s output isn’t about embellishment—it’s about rewriting what football gear can be: wearable stories. And Dillane’s pure passion for the Beautiful Game is evident for all to see. These collaborations show that PUMA is already flirting with identity, visual language, and cultural commentary beyond performance. A football-dedicated Creative Director could harness that energy across product, campaigns, and brand expression—not just boots, but strategy.
PUMA, arguably more than anyone right now, could benefit from that level of injection. They’ve got the heritage, they’ve got the platform, but they lack a singular voice steering their football identity and strategic orchestration from someone embedded in football’s rhythm, steering both culture and commerce. A Creative Director could solve that overnight.
And then of course, there are the challengers: New Balance, Under Armour, Skechers et al. Smaller players, hungry for disruption. For them, a creative director isn’t just an aesthetic decision, it’s a weapon. An opportunity to carve out cultural territory in a landscape dominated by juggernauts. And if they were bold enough to be the first, it could well act as the much needed stepping stone that would potentially see the big three become the big four.
Football has always flirted with fashion. From Dior suiting up PSG to Moncler and Zegna tailoring clubs for European nights, the crossover has been constant. High or low, luxury or street, the dialogue is alive.
All that’s missing is a brand brave enough to elevate its football identity into something authored, not assembled. The first to hand the mic to a creative director and let them rewrite the script.
Because once it happens, the game changes. Suddenly, kits become collections, campaigns become cultural events, and boots become artefacts. The lines blur further, the stage expands, and football — the world’s game — finally gets a voice that sounds as good as it looks.
And maybe that’s the point. Football has always been more than ninety minutes. It’s ritual, identity, expression. It deserves a storyteller at the helm.
The question isn’t who will do it. The question is who dares to go first.
