Step into the home of transmasc football club, Homme FC

Every Tuesday at a pitch in East London, Homme FC founder Areena Ang and a group of football players meet to play a friendly game. For the most part, all the players are transmasc, and though the club began in 2025 as a casual post-work activity, it’s quickly amassed a committed and growing membership.

Ang, who’s originally from Malaysia but has been living in London for eight years, founded Homme FC after feeling like there was a gap in the city’s football scene, which has seen plenty of trendy teams crop up over the last few years. ​“There’s many trans friendly and queer football teams in London, which is great, but most of them are led by white people,” they explain, calling from their London studio. ​“I think a lot of queer spaces in London lack diversity. Homme FC, being one of the first ever transmasc football clubs in the world, is truly what makes us unique.”

Visit the Homme FC website, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’d landed on a niche zine page by accident. It’s artfully constructed and visitors are welcomed by a sheer digital panel of pale pink with the club’s mixed font logo sitting cheerfully in the corner. ​“I brand the football team in a very artistic way,” Ang says. ​“I think the artist in me was just burning to get out and trying to create this cultural hybridity of sports and the contemporary art world where I practise.”

As an artist from Malaysia – where the social culture skews towards warmth and community – Ang struggled with London’s ​“individualistic and unethical” art world after moving here. ​“Playing this game and just having fun did really important things for me,” they explain. ​“It re-centred my values in terms of what I care about and what I need in my life and in a weird way, brought me back to being an artist.”

This hybridity the founder speaks of has now extended beyond the website, through Ang’s recent collaboration with photographer Indi Setyawan. Together, the pair have collaborated on Homme Apartment, a shoot that considers how it would feel if the club were an actual physical place. ​“We wanted to express the friendships and conviviality we’ve fostered at Homme,” Ang says. ​“As a grassroots club, we don’t have a physical space nor do we even have much money as we’re so new.” Still, Ang’s artist residency at an old guardianship building got them thinking and the idea was born.

Shot last winter in an old hospital wing that hasn’t been updated since the ​’80s, Indi – whose partner Kri was Homme’s first ever player – made use of its retro wood panelling, lino flooring and pool table to create a college dorm, fraternity-esque atmosphere, rewriting heteronormative narratives about who belongs in those spaces and displaying the way queer and trans people experience joy.

More than just a football club, Homme FC has become an important space for players, whether it’s emotional support or resource sharing for things like gender affirming care. As Helly, one of the regular players says, ​“the team has helped me unveil new parts of myself. Along with my love for football, I have learned to love and celebrate my own transness.”

Hi, Areena. Did you play much football growing up?

My friends think it’s really funny I started a football club because I notoriously hate exercise! I’m not a sporty person per se. One of my most formative experiences of falling in love with it was when me and my friends joined the afterschool football club because our school forced us to pick an activity. We didn’t really take it seriously – we were 14 – it was just me and my friendship group meeting up every week to have a laugh. It was one of my happiest moments growing up, I felt truly free and uninhibited for the first time.

Why football?

Football is the most culturally significant sport in England. Most people, in some way or another, have a relationship to it. It’s interesting because through so many conversations in the club, you realise how gender segregation, sexism and years of austerity have affected access [to football]. There are so many stories of people in our team not being able to continue playing past 13 because there wasn’t school funding for women. So many people were forced to stop what they loved prematurely, and I hope Homme FC addresses that need for trans and queer people to revisit and thrive in the things that give them joy.

Football aside, what else does the club do?

We’re currently developing the arts and culture wing of the club. I actually have always seen Homme FC as more of a project that’s constantly evolving rather than solely a football club. We’re slowly going to roll out our programme of events and lectures so that we include transmascs who have other interests.

We just recently started a Trans Artist Forum, where trans artists, writers and creative practitioners meet once every month to exchange ideas and receive critique on what they’re working on or what they’re researching. The work shown can be at any stage of progress – like a mini art school.

Tell us about the references behind the shoot…

I grew up watching so much American television, being on Tumblr, etc. I always found the constructions of fantasy in American college culture really funny and aspirational, especially since it’s so aggressively heteronormative in popular culture. I collect XY magazine, the gay magazine from the ​’90s. There’s so many iconic shoots they did that influenced the styling and mood of this shoot. They were a pastiche of American college culture, so we were referencing them – a pastiche of a pastiche.

What’s next for Homme FC?

Right now, we’re in full force for designing and releasing our first kit. We’re actually looking for a sponsor! I think it would be iconic to get a gallery sponsoring our kit. In the latter half of the year, we’re releasing a small collaboration with designer Ellen Poppy Hill for some tops. She’s one of my best friends and we shared a studio together for almost two years, so it’ll feel like a really cute full circle moment.