Meet the Outsiders Rethinking American Soccer

The founders see no contradiction. "Our mission is not only to design a new system for the game of football to be played in America," they tell me over Zoom, "but to also design the culture surrounding this new system."

It's a big claim, and it makes more sense once you know how the pair met. Omorogbe, from Albany, New York, and Ruja, from El Paso, Texas, were both recruited at 16 to Shattuck-St. Mary's in Minnesota, a boarding school whose academy side played MLS youth teams.

Neither had felt at home where he grew up. Omorogbe was often one of the only Black kids in his classes. Ruja, who is half Black and half Romanian, grew up on the Texas-Mexico border, where he rarely saw anyone like himself. "I was always an 'other' in that community," he tells me.

That shared feeling is what became the brand's founding idea: "To be offsides is to be an outsider," Omorogbe explains. "And we believe that being an outsider is a strength, because only the outsider can really feel that a system is broken and find the solution to create a new one."

The system Omorogbe refers to is American soccer's pay-to-play model. Without a parent who has money and time to spend driving across the state, they argue, pursuing the sport seriously is almost impossible.

Their answer? Play OPHSIDES, a one-on-one game built to need almost nothing. "You need a roll of tape and a ball," Omorogbe says. "It can be played anywhere, at any time. And if you get good enough, we'll actually pay you to play."

The rules are deliberately simple, borrowed from the mechanics of four square and basketball's HORSE. Mark out two boxes and take turns returning the ball into your opponent's. You get three touches. Take more, miss the box, step on the line or let the ball bounce twice and you earn a letter. Spell OPH and you're out. In a final, players play to the full word: OPHSIDES.

Simple, though, doesn't mean easy. The pair say even seasoned players assume they'll be good at it, then discover how much the game rewards first touch and close control, and how much of it is played in your head.

They tell of a 12-year-old who came up through LA Galaxy's academy playing a 30-year-old and holding his own. "It's actually a good match," they say. Their first tournament, held at a car wash, was won by a player who has since been called up to a U.S. national team camp.

For Omorogbe and Ruja, that's the point: the best 11-a-side players are the best at OPHSIDES, and the game should make them better.

The stakes are also real by design. Tournaments carry cash prizes, and the founders say that's what has been missing from American football. "Anytime you're creating a sport, there needs to be stakes," says Omorogbe. "People need to feel as though this game can change their immediate situation."

They contrast it with a path in which a young player makes the pros, earns modestly for a few years and then finds the career is over. The local events running now are a test bed for a format that official partners could host in other cities. LA, Miami and Atlanta are on the list, then London and Paris. They compare the model to the UFC and the gyms beneath it, with OPHSIDES slotting into existing soccer communities rather than replacing them.

Then there's the Michael Jordan comparison, which they return to often. Basketball, they argue, went global when a player's style spilled into music and fashion, and fans could follow him from high school to college to the pros. A one-on-one format, they say, makes players easier to follow and easier to love.

Having themselves come up in academy football alongside names like Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie and Tyler Adams, they believe American soccer is closer to the global conversation than most people realise. The World Cup came and went, they say, partly because no American player has yet crossed from the pitch into the wider culture.

And that's where the clothes come in. Ruja, who leads design, studied biochemistry before moving to New York during the pandemic. He spent four years working for a contemporary Nigerian-American label that sat between streetwear and tailoring, handling styling, production and shoots.

Fashion, he tells me, was how he communicated his identity to others without actually having to say anything. He and Omorogbe were roommates when OPHSIDES began as a creative duo four years ago, and they noticed a gap. Football fashion, they felt, was mostly about reissuing old kits, and the people doing it rarely understood the industry.

Ruja's references are those of a first-generation American kid: the Joga Bonito era, basketball, skateboarding, Kanye West and Pharrell. He keeps the loudness and colour of American streetwear and uses tailoring to refine it into something anyone can wear.

He also shoots much of the brand's photography himself, favouring portraits with the stillness and saturated colour of paintings. Growing up, the founders say, American players looked to Europe for style.

They believe that's starting to flip as more Americans play abroad, and they want to give those players something of their own to wear. "We've created a sport that we believe is going to platform the next big soccer name in America," they say, "and we're in tandem creating the uniform for them too."

The brand came first, built around identity, including that of former players who left the game after college and felt they'd lost part of themselves. The sport followed once the founders realised the problem was bigger than clothes.

Their next test comes on 5 November, when their OPHSIDES league officially launches at an indoor skatepark in Brooklyn, turned into part stadium, part party. They call it a historic moment.

What happens next depends on who turns up, who comes back and what grows from it. The founders are clear that it can't be built by two people alone. "Every single individual who loves this sport and wants to see the sport grow in America has an ability to take a piece and build it themselves."