- Asbury Park FC is a clothing brand disguised as a
soccer team. - It serves as a clever take on how modern soccer is as much to do with image as it is the game itself.
- Insider spoke to founders Shawn Francis and Ian Perkins about the club's past, present, and future.
- This story is part a multi-part series from Insider profiling some of the world's most unique and interesting soccer teams.
Asbury Park FC has many of things you'd associate with a top level soccer team - a loyal fanbase, meticulously designed kits, and slick promotional materials.
One thing it doesn't have, however, is a team that actually plays soccer.
Founded in 2014 by marketing guru Shawn Francis and musician Ian Perkins, APFC is in fact a clothing brand disguised as a soccer team in New Jersey.
It serves as a clever take on how modern soccer is as much to do with image and merchandise as it is the game itself, and it has fans all around the world.
"The whole thing is an absolute joke," Perkins told Insider. "It's not that it's we don't take it seriously. But it makes us laugh.
"We make stuff that we want to wear, and we crack jokes that make each other laugh," he added. "But the whole thing is such a joke. And it's fun. Like we have so much fun doing it. That's the most important thing."
"Where the f--- is the park in Asbury Park?"
To answer that question: there isn't one.
At least that's according to Francis and Perkins, who told Insider that their brand was born due to the lack of any actual space to play soccer in the New Jersey city of Asbury Park, where the team is nominally based.
"For a place called Asbury Park, there wasn't any place to play. There wasn't a pitch," said Francis, who was at the time on a mission to start a local soccer team that actually played the sport.
"There's like a patch of grass with a bench and a fountain, you know, but, there's no place to be a playground superstar, so to speak."
Asbury Park's most famous attraction is its beach, while the city itself is best known for its rich musical history.
It has ties to artists like Count Basie, and Blondie's Debbie Harry, and of course, the one and only Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen's debut album is even titled "Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J."
"Where the f--- is the park in Asbury Park? Because it's a beach," Perkins recalled thinking. "Everyone was like, 'Well go and play on the beach.'
"I was like, 'I'm not going to put my boots on and go and round the f---ing beach like I'm Neymar or something."
No place to play wasn't going to stop the pair starting their own soccer club, however.
"We kind of had this idea is like, well, what if we just started this team," said Francis.
"We will do the jerseys, we will do the watch parties, we will get sponsored, we'll do the whole thing, everything that modern football entails, we just won't actually play the game."
The "joke" snowballed quickly
First on the checklist for Francis and Perkins was creating an elaborate - and often comical - backstory for Asbury Park FC.
"Asbury Park Football Club is Asbury Park's most-storied
"Best-known for a string of trophies and hit singles in the 1950s, the club's culture is built around putting the performance art into the art of football," the website reads, while also stating that the club was founded in 2014.
Next on the list was designing an eye-catching logo, which features a famous painting on Asbury Park's boardwalk known as "Tillie."
From there, a kit deal with Umbro followed. Umbro produced home, away, and retro kits that flew off the online shelves.
Joke plans for a stadium known as "Samesong Park" were also announced. Samesong, a play on Samsung if you hadn't guessed, is the "sponsor" for a number of Asbury Park FC's jerseys.
"Obviously a club with our history deserves a ground of equal stature," read a press release from 2016. "Our tens of supporters worldwide deserve as much."
-ASBURY PARK FC (@AsburyParkFC) July 11, 2016
But it wasn't "tens of supporters." Asbury Park FC had created itself a global fanbase which continues to purchase the club's unique and ever-growing collection of merchandise to this day.
"It's gone so much further than we ever thought," said Francis. "I mean, we've sold stuff on every continent except Antarctica at this point, which is amazing.
"It still cracks me up when we get like a little notification on the web shop and it's like Brazil. Why Brazil? Who in Brazil gives a s--- about this? That's still like, a really, really funny thing for us."
The club has also earned itself a number of celebrity fans, including actor Danny DeVito, Bad Religion guitarist Brian Baker, and Stranger Things star Gaten Matarazzo.
"When you see anyone holding this kit, it is absolute nonsense that people think it's funny, or they want to want to get in on the joke, or they don't understand it's a joke, it's just so funny to me," Perkins said.
"Whoever it is, [even] if it's the kid from Stranger Things holding the shirt. It's so ridiculous."
It might have gone global, but APFC's heart is still at home
While Samesong is the usual sponsor on Asbury Park FC's jerseys, local businesses are also a staple on the front of its various kits.
Among those to have had the honor are cat cafe Catsbury Park, Asbury Park's indoor amusement park Palace Amusements, and family-owned luncheonette Frank's Deli.
The collaboration with Frank's, which was launched just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, Francis says was his favourite ever, not only because of its sleek design, but because APFC was, in its own way, able to help the local deli through what was a difficult period.
"What we had decided we were going to do, this was right before COVID, instead of partnering with someone or selling the jersey sponsor, let's pick some of our favourite Asbury businesses and just give them free publicity," Francis said.
"And so we picked Frank's because Ian and I go there for breakfast and board meetings, board meetings over sausages and breakfast foods, you know."
"So we made the kits," he added. "Two weeks later, right before we're gonna launch them, COVID hits. And so we're like, this is weird. Frank's, like a lot of restaurants, had to basically close off the dining room and they were takeout only.
"And all the servers there, they work only for tips. They get $2 an hour plus tips. So what we decided is like, alright, we'll make this a charity play, we'll pay our costs and all the profit we put in the tip jar, just for all the servers."
As well as being able to help out a local business, Francis said, the team also just really liked the kits.
"That's probably my favourite one. I mean, the jersey looked great, black and white, which is our thing, a little bit of that seafoam green accent.
"It was like a really cool kit, great local sponsor, but then the fact that we could just like you know, throw $600, $700, whatever it was, just throw it in the tip jar and say you guys, you know, take care of yourselves. That was a really cool one."
As for the future, Asbury could yet go full circle
The closest Asbury Park FC has come to ever having an actual soccer team is on its Instagram, where in 2019 it released profiles of a number of its supposed former players, Francis and Perkins included.
Francis, known in his profile as Boudreaux Thibodeaux, was "kinda slow" and had "negligible match fitness due to a high gumbo intake." Perkins, or Omarian Winters Sr., was the "Tillies number one offensive threat in the late 70s."
Rocco Baggio - real name Alex Rosamilia, a member of rock group The Gaslight Anthem - was "Giorgio Chinaglia and Carlos Alberto rolled into one."
Though Thibodeaux, Winters, and Baggio have, of course, never really taken to the pitch, that could change in the future.
"It's a card we can only play once," said Francis when asked if Asbury Park FC could one day take the field for a "Soccer Aid" type event.
"We've had a couple of great opportunities. There was a charity football match that was happening last year in New York, outside of New York City, but it was like upstate New York, and it had either four or five Premier League players that were playing in it.
"But it was just one of those things where it was like, it's not in Asbury Park. It's not even in New York. It's in the Catskills. Who's gonna go to this thing?
"If we're going to do it, we can only do it once. So it's just got to be most perfect opportunity. But we're certainly not opposed to it. It's just got to be great.
"It's just got to be unimpeachable."