Money and business, haves and have-nots, might seem to command the modern football landscape. Yet away from the numbers it is still the people’s game and in them its soul remains intact.
Philosophy Football, 25 years on from producing its first T-shirt, remains a determinedly hands-on, labour of love for its founders, Mark Perryman and Hugh Tisdale, who have sold shirts around the world in tens of thousands.
Philosophy Football was founded in December 1994, quite by chance and with no grand plan. Under the tagline “sporting outfitters of intellectual distinction” it has produced 702 designs and sold more than 70,000 shirts. Perryman and Tisdale run it with one member of staff.
As the designer Tisdale explains, it has a been a journey born of a love of the game. “A one-off T-shirt turned into a career, without us realising,” he says. “We began as hobbyists; some say we still are. We are not typical entrepreneurs – it still feels like a hobby because we get such fun out of it.”
That one-off shirt defined their brand and caught a moment as football was changing, two years after the formation of the Premier League. Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch had broken ground in writing about football and on TV Fantasy Football was proving a major success.
Perryman had watched a documentary on the philosophy of goalkeeping. The next day, returning from a Tottenham v QPR game, he had the idea of taking the Albert Camus quote: “All that I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football” and putting it on a T-shirt, designed as a jersey, backed with Camus’ name and number.
The intent was to print up 25 shirts. “We won’t make any money out of this but we’ll get a few Christmas presents,” Perryman recalls. Within weeks they had to make 100 to meet demand. More soon followed: Bill Shankly and Eric Cantona alongside Jean Baudrillard and Simone de Beauvoir.
The concept expanded into producing an XI of shirts and with it demand that proved it was no flash in the pan. Every shirt is still produced by the two men. “There is something about Hugh’s design and my thinking that moulds together really well,” says Perryman.
The Lev Yashin shirt is a perfect example. The Soviet goalkeeper’s words: “The joy of seeing Yuri Gagarin flying in space is only superseded by the joy of a good penalty save” are illustrated by a white rocket launching from a red star. Tisdale used imagery from a Soviet cigarette packet. Without official licensing they have to be inventive and a unique style has emerged.
They created a way to express an appreciation of the game in an original way while fulfilling their own desires. “I didn’t want to go round wearing a replica shirt with ‘bargain booze’ or something on it; I find it undignified,” says Tisdale.
Others felt the same. John Peel called just before a Glastonbury Festival asking to buy the Shankly shirt. He wore it every day in the TV coverage and Perryman and Tisdale were inundated with orders.
Baudrillard’s fiancée contacted them requesting their shirts with his quote for the ushers to wear at the wedding: “Power is only too happy to make football bear a diabolical responsibility for stupefying the masses.” They did so and Baudrillard responded with a picture of himself wearing his own shirt, on his honeymoon.
Remarkable diversification followed. One-off-event shirts became hugely popular. The day after England won the Rugby World Cup in 2003 the shirt they put out sold 10,000 in a fortnight. Now themes also include cycling, cricket, military history, anti-fascism and music. This ability to grow has kept their output fresh and original, and their success can be measured by the volume of other companies that make similar products that were unheard of 25 years ago.
It is far from the financial behemoth the Premier League has grown into, yet Philosophy Football is a success story of which the game can be proud and not something taken for granted by the men in charge.
“We realised there were a lot of customers and we had a responsibility,” says Perryman. “The reward is we don’t work for anybody else. Freedom has absolutely come with it but not great wealth. We ride a company bike rather than a company four-wheel drive.”
