The story of the legendary Pink Floyd football team
Imagine them, on a mangy field in 1970s London. Roger Waters in goal: one of those slightly philosophical goalkeepers, more head than instinct. David Gilmour wide rightelegant wing, clean technique, a bit like the one with which he performs his solos, few jerks but a lot of class. Nick Mason in the middle of the field dictating the tempo: a life as a midfielder, to put it in the words – rock purists don’t mind – of Luciano Ligabue. Because ultimately it’s always a question of rhythm. AND Richard Wright, finally, a little more secludedperhaps busy on the wing, silent but essential. Welcome to Pink Floyd Football Clubor if you prefer PFFC Not an official team. But something more than a group of friends who organize football matches in their free time. There are stories that seem to have been invented on purpose to be suspended between myth and reality, and that of the Pink Floyd football team belongs exactly to that category.
Football as an escape during the golden years
In the ’70s while redefining rock with records like “Meddle”, “Obscured by Clouds” and the masterpiece “The Dark Side of the Moon”, Pink Floyd founded a team of their own. Not a professional club registered in official competitions, let’s be clear, but an amateur team whose history has something irresistibly surreal. A bit like the image of Waters with goalkeeper gloves, Gilmour with the number 7 on his back, Mason sorting the balls in midfield and Wright going up and down the flank, which completely overturns the myth: gthe architects of some of the most sophisticated records in world rock who for ninety minutes forget synthesizers, magnetic tapes and artistic tensions to chase a ball on an English lawn. And yet it really happened. There were no rankings to climb, championships to conquer or contracts to respect: only matches to be played from time to time together with technicians, roadies, collaborators, friends and figures who orbited around the Floyd universe and who in those matches stopped being simply staff to become teammates.
A relief valve between tensions and creativity
The matches of Pink Floyd Football Clubsoon renamed “First Eleven”were born during recording breaks or empty days of tours, when the pressure accumulated between studios and stages became almost unbearable. Waters and his companions needed football for exactly this: release tension, bring relationships back into balancecreate a parenthesis away from everything. The field thus became a neutral space, a free zone in which the band’s conflicts were dissolved in a run, a tackle, a laugh. For a few hours, the weight of success or internal cracks no longer existed: only the game existed. Football, moreover, was not at all foreign to Pink Floyd’s imagination. In 1971, in “Meddle“, they had sampled the famous choir in the song “Fearless”You’ll never walk alone”, forever linked to Liverpool (no big deal if both Gilmour and Waters were visceral fans of Arsenal, a team from north London). A detail that told how the popular language of football could coexist with their sonic refinement.
The iconic photo and the legend
Few testimonies remain of that team, but one above all ended up consigning it to the collective memory. On the cover of “A Nice Pair”, an anthological double album which included the reissue of “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” and “A Saucerful of Secrets”, published in 1973 in the USA and in 1974 in the United Kingdom, appears precisely on Pink Floyd Football Club deployed on the field. A photograph that has become iconic, taken by historic collaborator Storm Thorgerson, in which musicians and technicians pose together after a four-nil defeat against a team of “Marxists from North London”, as told in the biographies dedicated to the band. An almost grotesque scene, and for this very reason perfectly Floydian: the most cerebral group in rock that badly loses a football match and involuntarily transforms it into a fragment of its own legend.
From legend to collaboration with Inter
For years the history of Pink Floyd Football Club it remained a curiosity for enthusiasts, a small short circuit between music and sport kept by those who knew the most hidden details of the band. Today, however, that past re-emerges in a completely new form thanks to the collaboration between Inter and Sony Music Italy, created to celebrate fifty years of “Wish you were here”. A collaboration which, on paper, might seem surprising, because there is no direct historical link between Pink Floyd and the Nerazzurri club. None of the band members have ever been associated with Inter (in Italy the band instead has a connection, all true, with the Salernitana fanswho in the past have created beautiful choreographies inspired by Pink Floyd’s masterpieces). Yet the project works precisely because it starts from that ancient photograph, from that improvised team born for fun. «This collection fully represents our vision: to make Inter a global brand capable of authentically communicating with different worlds, creating products and experiences that go beyond football and speak not only to our fans, but also to a wider audience. Music is an integral part of our identity and, over the years, we have built a path that has made us increasingly protagonists in this area. The collaboration with Pink Floyd, one of the bands that wrote the history of world music, marks a fundamental stage in this evolution”, he says Luca Adornato, Brand & Marketing Director of FC Internazionale Milano. AND Luca Fantacone, Catalog Director Sony Music Italyadds: «Music and football often connect in surprising ways and what links Pink Floyd, Inter and Sony is a brilliant demonstration of this. It is an honor for Sony Music Italy to celebrate the legacy of an immortal band and a historic club through a one-of-a-kind collaboration.”
A shirt between two worlds
In fact, at the center of the collection there is one sweater which reinterprets the aesthetics of the Pink Floyd Football Club. The acronym PFFC it stands out on the chest as in the historic 70s image, while on the back appears the fiftieth anniversary branding of “Wish You Were Here”, reinterpreted for the Nerazzurri world. Around the jersey they take shape scarves, tote bag, plectrums, drumsticks and a series of objects – the products of the collection are available not only on the Sony Music Italy website but also onofficial online store and in the Inter Stores in Milan, Castle and San Siro – which merge two worlds apparently distant but always capable of touching each other: the soccer and the music. The special bundle consisting of personalized t-shirt and from vinyl will be available from April 30th (pre-order is already active, at this link). Ultimately, this is precisely the charm of the story. Pink Floyd’s football team was born as a private parenthesis, almost a marginal detail in the history of a gigantic band. No one could have imagined that, decades later, that fragment of everyday life would become the starting point for a dialogue between one of the greatest bands in history and one of the most iconic clubs in European football. It is the ball that enters the rock, but perhaps above all it is the rock that, half a century later, returns to the field once again.
