"Grassrooted", Pro:Direct Soccer movie about Sunday League
The English retailer teamed up with Nike Football to tell all the stories of the amateur football played in Hackney Marshes
Sports
February 28th, 2018
February 28th, 2018
In North London, between the hundreds of acres of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, there’s one of the most renown and beloved places by all football enthusiast Londoners. We’re not talking about one of the superb stadiums of the English capital, but about Hackney Marshes, the biggest gathering of football pitches - like 88 big - that you can find in the United Kingdom and, probably, the World. The pitches come in succession in the muddy field of the Londoner park, easily recognizable by the sequence of football goals. Hackney Marshes, in fact, is the paradise of Sunday League Football, the amateur football league that is played every Sunday all around England.
It’s a proper cultural characteristic of the United Kingdom and the reason why Pro: Direct Soccer teamed up with Nike Football and realized “Grassrooted”, a short movie focused on Hackney Marshes itself. The film is based on Hackney Wednesday FC, an amateur team that plays in the Camden Sunday League, and wants to tell all the stories the surrounds this football universe. Like the reason why this unique and original football crossed generations, or the growth of friendships, rivalries, and epic games in the mud, and also about the problems of modernity, like the increasing costs of football that jeopardize the Sunday League.
The one played in Hackney Marshes is the purest football you can find in England, where the beautiful game is trashed by the incomes and spectacularity-focused logic of Premier League. Not in the Sunday League, though, were the only demanded qualities are the passion for football, a bit of spirit of sacrifice and the will to get up in the cold Londoner mornings.
