HOMME FC
Homme FC is a transmasc football team and creative community where people can find empowerment through sports, movement, and friendship. We are a team where trans people of colour are not only participants but are actively leading and shaping its growth.
artwork by Areena Ang
What inspired you to start Homme FC? Tell us about how it started and what it is now.
I started playing football for fun in October 2024 with a few Asian mixed gender teams in London, at the same time when I was beginning to feel like my gender was shifting. What I found really inspiring about those teams was that they were led by creative people: artists, designers, writers, and chefs. I had never thought that was a possibility. I ultimately didn’t feel comfortable playing in women’s spaces - and while there are a lot of trans inclusive clubs, I realised there wasn’t a transmasc club! The idea sat in my head for months and in May, I bit the bullet and started it.
I loved playing with those teams, but I ultimately didn’t feel it was my space. I had this joke that there were 3 trans people in that team (myself included), and and this butch trans girl would find each other at the pub after every session and gossip over our love lives. I think trans people naturally have that kinship with each other, so why not make something just for us?
As an artist, how do you see the connection between football and art? Do you bring your artistic practice into the way you organize the team or envision Homme FC’s presence?
I don’t know if I would go as far as to say it’s a socially engaged practice, but it definitely came at a time when I wanted to do something more collaborative. It’s something I do because I want another project to put time and effort into. I also love being around people. As a painter, you’re working yourself to the bone, by yourself most of the time.
There’s an aliveness to football, specifically the relationship between the spectator (the audience) and the ‘performing object’ (the player), that mirrors the transformative experience of looking at art. Football, being the most famous and culturally relevant sport in the world, has actually captured the interests of many artists. Eddie Peake’s ‘Touch’ explored masculinity, Tino Sehgal and Juan Mata collaborated on a performance called ‘This Entry’, Miguel Calderón’s fictionalised film ‘México vs Brazil’ looks at football and its role in the construction of national identity.
My artistic practice is interested in heterogeneity - intentionally bringing diverging concepts and atypical stylistic choices together. That’s where all my work exists, in that overlap. I take a lot of inspiration from Jana Euler’s approach in that way. Conceptually, football, contemporary art, and transmasculinity is kind of random. But I’m invested in finding a relation in that randomness. That’s where creativity can truly spark.
It’s a football team, but this is also a jumping-off point. The possibilities are endless. I saw what my friends did with Athene Club and Muslim Sisterhood, how they evolved into other things but kept the mission at the heart. I was calling my friend Zeinab [Saleh] the other day, who was giving me some advice, and she said that Muslim Sisterhood started off as a photo series - but now it’s an agency, they do workshops and programming etc.
When you’re coming out, you’re trying to figure out how to be a boy - what feels exciting and right for you, the things you find sexy and want to emulate, what you don’t. There’s an aspect of this where I’ve built up skills in drawing and image making that I can use. I wanted to make cool stuff for transmascs that I haven’t seen before. I have a constant flow of ideas: for animations, posters, and campaigns. It’s about building something in our imagination.
You mention the desire for kinship among transmasculine and butch-identifying people. How have you seen that play out on and off the field?
This has been a soul-changing experience. I sound really dramatic - but being from the art world, you often see examples of really fractured forms of community, predicated on the direct exchange of social or economic capital. It was really important for me to make a space where the premise was simple, free, and about having fun. Living in the world right now is hard as it is - and it’s especially hard as a trans person to feel like you belong anywhere.
It’s crazy to me that in 3 months, we’ve already seen people form real friendships and even go on dates. Like I’ll be watching Instagram stories and see people hang out outside of football, and be like whoa! I mean, I feel really lucky to have even made real friends from this, too. I barely had any transmasc friends when starting this, and I started this completely alone, which was daunting. Then Reuben, Kri, and Maya were like, “Hey, I’ll help”, and they became really integral to building and shaping the team.
We have a full team now that just works on grants, we have people who stepped up to coach, and we’re building a creative team. It’s fully volunteer-run, so the fact that people believe in it and want to build this together is reason enough for me to give it all that I've got.
I think my dream is to eventually do events and actually fundraise for people. Begin to help people in material ways if they need that help. I want to start putting people on too, like, if you wanna DJ, do a reading, a workshop, or design a poster, let’s help you do that.
How do people get involved?
Follow us on @homme_fc, sign up in our bio if you’d like to play. Message us if you’d like to do something creative, contribute a poster or whatever!