Nacho Asensio and Pablo Alzaga lead MATINAL, a creative studio working at the crossroads of football, fashion and culture, with Asensio as CEO and Alzaga as Creative Director. The studio has built campaigns for brands including Adidas and Airbnb and worked with artists including Aitana and Duki. Matinal first worked with WFS at WFS Madrid 2025, hosting a panel on how brand value now extends beyond the pitch into culture, fashion, music and the street.
That collaboration has now grown into a partnership: Matinal joins World Football Summit as its Creative Partner, helping WFS evolve at the same pace as the industry it covers, starting with a refresh of its own visual identity and extending to the conversations, perspectives, brands and cultural figures that WFS brings onto its stages. For Asensio and Alzaga, creativity in football has become a business model in its own right.
In this edition of The Pundit’s Seat, Pablo and Nacho talk about the idea of post-football, how the meaning of being a fan has shifted over the past decade, what brands consistently miss when they try to connect with football culture, and where they see the relationship between football and culture heading next.
Tell us about MATINAL, what are you, what do you do, and what sets you apart from other studios, specifically in your approach to football?
MATINAL, as it exists today, is a creative studio focused on the intersection of football, fashion, and culture. We offer creative, design and production services to all projects combining these three disciplines, from football clubs to lifestyle brands.
Our greatest strength comes from our own context. Before structuring MATINAL as an agency back in 2022, we had already been exploring the idea of decontextualising traditional football formats. In 2018, we founded a creative collective around our lifelong team. We designed jerseys with Adidas and LATIGO, a local brand we were working with at the time, where we had already experimented with football-meets-culture activations. We produced fashion shootings with pro players. We organised informal matches for creatives and began engaging in cultural conversations with clubs and professional players.
MATINAL responds to the need to connect what happens on and off the pitch and to facilitate dialogue between both worlds.
One of MATINAL’s central concepts is “post-football” — the space that goes beyond victory and results. What does that mean exactly for you, and what is it you’re trying to communicate with that idea?
Historically, football has overly romanticised the shut up and dribble ethos. Players have been taught to leave their interests and passions aside and focus exclusively on performance. Think about what happens when a striker shares an artistic interest on Instagram but hasn’t scored in three months, or when a club activates a cultural project while flirting with relegation. We’ve always believed that a certain separation between culture and performance is beneficial for the industry –that’s the meaning of the idea of post-football. Hopefully, it seems this view is finally gaining traction in some areas of the football ecosystem.
A decade of transformation (2016–2026)
Since World Football Summit was founded, in 2016, the way people experience football has changed significantly: what it means to people, how it’s consumed, who today’s idols are and why. From where you sit, how would you describe that shift?
Football, as a cultural and social phenomenon, has always been part of its essence. When it comes to identity, style or aesthetic, the influence of the fan has grown in recent years compared to clubs and players, who had always set the tone. Over the last ten years, the football fan profile has diversified: it’s plural, directly connected to culture, and develops a sense of belonging through everything that happens on and beyond the pitch. Now we’re asking sports to carry a purpose that extends beyond the stadium. Football no longer belongs exclusively to players and clubs –and the current challenge lies in mastering the conversation both on and off the field.
Is there a specific brand, campaign, or deal you’d point to as the moment football started openly speaking the language of lifestyle and culture?
The introduction of creative direction in the football industry – as normalised as it is in other industries such as fashion or music – has allowed to generate a sense of belonging through new paths. Over these past ten years, we’ve been learning to use storytelling, places and cities, sub-culture, fashion or social debate to forge new bonds for supporters. Though widely replicated and used as an example, the Venezia FC case set a new standard for the industry, and it perfectly illustrates how one can become a fan of a team even without watching a game.
If you had to pick two or three milestones or reference points from this decade that best capture that transformation, what would they be?
Some hot takes: the adoption of the fashion-first formula amongst teams big and small (i.e. Arsenal, Athens Kallithea), the rise of DIY clubs/grassroots creative team concepts (Solosé FC, Secret Football Club, Scenesny), or the investigation of deeper forms of fanship around a team via indirect creative outlets (i.e. FC Barcelona x Spotify).
Your panel at WFS Madrid 2025 was one of the most talked-about moments of that edition. What conclusion stuck with you most from everything you saw, and what are you preparing for this year?
A: The intersection between football and creativity is no longer a niche approach, it has become a business model. We’d like to keep pushing this idea on how creativity is generating real value to the industry.
You’ve worked with brands like Adidas and Airbnb, with artists like Aitana or Duki, and on projects blending football with gastronomy and streetwear. What do these seemingly distant worlds have in common with football?
Being creative in football today is all about discovering new interpretations of the concept of being a fan. Music, gastronomy, fashion or football have a deep sense of belonging and community embedded within them. Few disciplines share these values so strongly and that’s why their relationship has always felt natural for Matinal.
As an example, thinking in terms of product, the concept of merch as a cultural artefact is essentially the same in music or football worlds: we see no difference in the feeling of crossing paths with someone wearing your team’s jersey or your favourite artist’s t-shirt.
Brands need to start thinking like fans
What does a club or brand need to understand to genuinely connect with football culture, beyond the obvious marketing play?
They need to start to think like a fan, ask themselves if a fan would resonate or care about what they are creating. Clubs and brands need to propose a future for how football can be celebrated in different areas that organically coexist with the sport, but have always been overlooked.
Looking at the next decade, what do you expect comes next in this relationship between football and culture?
Fans and players are becoming increasingly plural and diverse. Clubs have turned into complex ecosystems. Leagues are no longer just competitions, but festivals. In short, the value of football as a brand now lives both on and off the pitch. It needs to develop its own lore: a narrative thread that keeps fans engaged between seasons, not limited solely to results. Rooted in their own cultural value, connected to the sporting context yet able to stand independently. What happens around the pitch is now just as relevant as what happens on it.
MATINAL is joining as World Football Summit’s creative agency. How will you project your vision on football and culture through this partnership — what will you build together that didn’t exist before?
We both share the same vision: MATINAL and World Football Summit don’t just talk about football’s future, we actively want to shape it. That’s the reason why our partnership feels so organic.
In these times of industry evolution, where creative football has become a business model, creatives have more influence than ever on the global identity and awareness of the game, and we believe this willpower will keep growing. Taste As Strategy.
With this MATINAL/World Football Summit powerhouse we feel fully prepared to keep playing an active role in the what’s next of football.
