Asbury Park Football Club

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About

Asbury Park Football Club, often stylized as Asbury Park FC or A.P.F.C, is a fictitious soccer team based in Asbury Park, New Jersey and founded by two residents of the city, Shawn Francis and Ian Perkins, as a parody of modern European professional football culture in 2014. Due to their internet-savvy marketing and branding efforts on the social media, the nonexistent sports club has become a notable subject of ironic fandom.

Origin

In 2013, Ian Perkins, a lifelong soccer fan and New Jersey-based British guitarist for the American rock band The Gaslight Anthem, began asking locals on Twitter about the location of the town's titular park, hoping he may be able to find a pickup game with the Americans. In response, Shawn Francis, then a stranger and social media professional who had run a number of Major League Soccer (MLS) accounts, chimed in by saying that "soccer isn't for playing anymore, but only for consuming." Shortly after this cheeky exchange, the two men decided to entertain the idea of building the joke further into a convincing facade of a professional football club, beginning with a Twitter^[1] account launched under the team name Asbury Park on January 7th, 2017.

Founded in 2014 for Modern Football, Asbury Park Football Club (colloquially known as "The Tillies") is Asbury Park's most-storied sports franchise and New Jersey's second-best football club.

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.

Spread

Using Francis' professional network and contacts, the duo continued to add layers of realism around the joke, complete with all the hallmarks of a well-established European football club, including a logo featuring Tillie, the city’s unofficial mascot of a smiling face on a famous mural near by the Asbury Park boardwalk, and a jersey deal with English football gear supplier Umbro, subsequently releasing more than 100 kits in both retro and modern style, which quickly sold out as the joke spread across the city and on Twitter.

In July 2016, Francis and Perkins hired an architecture student in Sri Lanka to mock up 3D renderings of a small soccer stadium named "Samesong Park" atop Asbury Park's waterfront landmark, Convention Hall. Upon the release of the renderings on Twitter^[2]^[6], a number of local news outlets mistakenly covered the prank story as if it were a real plan for development.

On May 24th, 2017, the co-founders of Asbury Park FC tweeted a faux-press release^[3] claiming that they had signed Benjamin Geaux-Homme, a fictitious "27-year-old right-winger" who had been on trial with the State of New York, in reference to the city's long-running catchphrase "Benny go home." On May 30th, 2017, a week later, Asbury Park FC abruptly announced via Twitter^[4] that it had released the player in the wake of "a bust-up" with fan club members outside a bar.

Media Coverage

On July 19th, 2016, online football culture magazine SoccerBible^[15] highlighted Asbury Park FC's vintage "Heritage" merchandise collection. On October 9th, football culture publication Kicks to the Pitch^[16] ran a piece showcasing the Jersey Shore football team's official home kit designed by Umbro. On June 14th, 2017, the New York Times^[12] reported on the growing popularity of the nonexistent football club across the city and beyond, in an article titled "This Soccer Club Has Everything You’d Want Except…" On June 16th, UK news publication Evening Standard^[13] ran an article profiling the New Jersey-based sports club as "the most unbeatable football team."