Football

The difficult thing about buying for a football fan is that the easy stuff is already spoken for. They have the shirt. They have the scarf. Aunt Mildred bought them the mug with the badge on it three birthdays ago. When you’re scrolling/waiting in line/wandering around aimlessly hoping inspiration will strike you really don’t want to consult the generic football aisle. We built this with you in mind. We picked everything on this list because we know and love the game, and recognize the difference between a gift that’ll get used and a mug that ends up in a drawer. There’s no need to bulk it out with every loosely football related thing we can find. Real fans deserve better than that. They deserve gifts that make them stop scrolling and think ‘someone actually understands.’ That meant we had to draw a line. If something doesn’t meet our bar for great gifts for football fans then it doesn’t appear. A worthwhile gift will either speak to someone’s love of their club directly; the history, the tradition, the matchday ritual. Or it’s going to help them celebrate the game they love in a totally genuine way. Atmosphere, nostalgia, obsession. We accept either currency. Just not a keyring. We spent a long time thinking about who you’re buying for. The guy who’s supported their team for thirty years and could draw you a map of the stadium blindfolded. The girl who’ll watch every game regardless of timezone or weather. The kid who still gets told about the goal their dad scored when they were born. For a lot of fans football is more than just a sport. Bumper stickers. Dorm rooms. Traditional rivalries. Crazy season ticket prices. The fan. Football is inherited. It’s tribal. It’s irrational and absolutely serious in equal measure. If you love football then you’re one of these people. Or you know one of these people. Either way we’ve narrowed this list down to gifts that we would confidently hand over to them; gifts that we’d wrap up ourselves. Gifts that show you were paying attention. So if you want to treat a football fan right, start here.

Arsenal

Buying a gift for an Arsenal fan shouldn’t be difficult. Right up until you find yourself staring into the depths of the official club shop pondering if yet another scarf is really the best idea. Spoiler alert: it’s not. The difficulty with football gifts is that they are obvious. And obvious equals lazy. The shirt they already have two of. The mug that’ll join three others in the cupboard. The keyring that’ll be relegated to a drawer by the end of February. We set out to be better than that. We thought about you, the Arsenal fan in our lives.…

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Aston Villa

When you’re buying a gift for a Villa fan you feel a certain pressure. They’ve seen enough false dawns and empty seasons to scoff at anything twice wrapped in yesterday’s news and wondering vaguely what you’re going at. They can tell when you’ve gone to some trouble picking something out for them and when you’ve just grabbed whatever was flush with their favourite crest on a whim. We get the bar. You’ll notice it hasn’t let us down here. It hasn’t been easy. We went looking for more than just the official or the obvious. We’ve tried to find stuff…

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Chelsea

Once a year, somewhere around May, there’s a slight change in the seasons and suddenly everyone you know is whispering about their borders in conspiratorial Cornish voices. The phenomenon that triggers this moment is Chelsea Flower Show. It happens like mass annual permission to garden bloggers who have been muttering darkly about their borders all winter, and inexplicably turns the entire country into people who have strong feelings about dahlias and precise ideas about what they want from a cutting garden. If you know someone like this, or watched endless hours of coverage last year and found themselves unexpectedly a…

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Liverpool

If you are from Liverpool there is something that you will take with you everywhere. An indefinable sense of pride so distinct and so ingrained that it needs little explanation to another Scouser. Obviously it helps when your city also produced arguably the most important music library of any city on Earth. Football definitely helps too. But beyond that, the accents, the humour, the way it views itself. Liverpool conjures the sense that it knows what it produced was unique, and that it knew it at the time. Whenever you buy a gift for a Scouser, you are buying for…

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Manchester City

Supporting City isn't something you do casually. If you've followed this club for years, through the lean years before the money showed up, through the near misses, through the title races that come down to goal difference on the last minutes of the last day, you know that your connection runs damn deep. That history means something. So when it comes time to picking out a gift for a City fan, we approach it with care. Because they would. Most football gifts aren't thoughtful. They're just lazy. A mug with a badge on it. A keyring from a motorway service…

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Manchester United

We all know a Red Devil Snob. The one who’s got the shirt, got the scarf, got the mug but who always still needs ‘something for home’ for their February birthday/Christmas/the anniversary of some iconic night in 19** that they will not stop referencing for weeks. Shopping for them is difficult not because they’re high maintenance but because anything worthy of their collection is already stuffed into their kitchen cupboard. That cupboard. It’s what we set out to improve. Stocking stuffers featuring a crest are everywhere. That’s not what we wanted to compile. There’s plenty of flimsy stuff like that…

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Newcastle United

Buying a present for a Newcastle fan is different to buying for any other football supporter. They run deep. Not in a ‘ya’ knows when you wanna wear the shirt on match day’ sort of way. We’re talking in your bones, passed down from generation to generation, woven into the very fabric of the city itself deep. Supporting Newcastle United feels more like a statement of fact than a choice for a lot of fans. When you’re shopping for someone like that you know a bog standard mug or fished-a-keyring-out-of-the-service-station-bin present won’t cut it. They’ll know. And you’ll know. We…

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Tottenham Hotspur

We know the type of Spurs fan who doesn’t need convincing. The person who already knows every name on the teamsheet and already feels like they know the result on Sunday morning before they’ve had their coffee. They don’t want a gift that came in a bag and has had a badge stuck on it either. We had them in mind when we put this gift guide together. Not the person who wants any Spurs merchandise. We created this for the person that wants the right Spurs merchandise. It shouldn’t be difficult to source good Tottenham gifts but often it…

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West Ham United

Picking out a gift for someone who supports West Ham feels simpler than it actually is. Of course there’s the club shop. But anybody who has ever opened an official merchandise store knows what you get there. Oversized shirts with somebody else’s surname on the back, seasonal mugs that feel like they were cast on a factory line circa 1997. We all know a Hammas supporter deserves better than that. And the friends and family who love them deserve a better option than that. We’ve scoured the internet to bring you this collection of gifts. We only wanted to include…

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