Retro Football Culture
At Jay-Jay, we believe football isn’t just about results or silverware. It’s about feelings, memories and emotions.
It’s about how a simple game finds its way into our lives and refuses to leave.
How goals, moments and faces become woven into our own history.
How looking at a Panini sticker can instantly take us back to an emotionally charged afternoon decades ago.
Jay-Jay is a space for everyone who feels that same nostalgic pulse, regardless of club, nationality or generation.
It’s where the cultural side of football meets the rhythm of modern life: stories you can read in ten minutes, podcasts that fit into a walk or a commute, games you can print and play while having breakfast. Its about, for a brief moment, being back in 1995.
But this community only makes sense because of its members.
If you want to be part of it (beyond reading, listening or following) don’t hesitate to reach out.
We’re always open to stories, collaborations, and kindred spirits.
The Founder
Jay-Jay began as a personal archive. A sentimental repository of the stories, players and moments that once defined what football meant to me.
My name is Lourenço Cunha Ferreira, a Lisbon-born creative living in Brussels, father of three, advertising creative director turned communication strategist, and lifelong football romantic.
I grew up captaining my local 7-a-side team - a right-back with more heart than talent - and supporting Sporting Clube de Portugal, though never blindly. I’m no longer the kind to cry over a UEFA Cup exit to Casino Salzburg (though being a Sporting fan remains a masterclass in resilience).
What truly moved me wasn’t victory (thankfully, since those were scarce) but how such a simple game could move so many.
As I grew older, I fell less in love with what football was becoming, and more in love with what it once was. When players weren’t inaccessible icons locked away in penthouses, but ordinary people you might bump into at the cinema.
And that’s what Jay-Jay is: a way to honour the good old days: the beauty of black boots, the squads made out of home-grown talent, the echoes that still live in classic stadiums, and the poetic stories behind the game.
Over the years, football found its way back into my professional life too - through creative ventures like Penalty Quiz, later sold to a German fund; Kampion Card Game, created with hundreds of artists around the world; and Carnabol, an annual retro football tournament now covered by the Portuguese media.
Jay-Jay.club is my latest passion project. A digital space where those memories, affections and curiosities converge, carefully written and illustrated for anyone who shares the same nostalgic heartbeat.
All-time favorite XI
I believe you can tell a lot about a person by their "emotional" XI. Or maybe not. Nevertheless, it's a fun exercise. So here is my all-time favorite XI. Not the best players I saw play - but those players that, by some reason, became special to me.
Dasaev; Ivanov, André Cruz, Cannavaro, Roberto Carlos; Oceano, Gascoigne, Balakov, Ronaldinho; Acosta, Baggio.
Why Jay-Jay?
Well, if you have to ask… you might be in the wrong place.
This platform celebrates football’s most romantic side - free, creative and full of expression - in an era when the number 10 has become an endangered species.
Our name is a tribute to Jay-Jay Okocha, a player "so good they named him twice".
The Nigerian magician embodies some of the values we cherish most: joy, creativity and flair - a reminder of those who played football with soul, long before algorithms started measuring it.
Jay-Jay is our love letter to football when it was still about wonder, before it became obsessed with outcomes and profit.
Join the Club
If retro football lives in your memory, if you get excited by remembering a 1990 starting lineup, if you smile when you come across someone wearing a vintage Butragueño shirt, you are one of us.
Subscribe, contribute, or simply explore the archive.
Because nostalgia is better when shared.
Contact
📧 General enquiries: enquiries@jay-jay.club
📖 Editorial & submissions: editorial@jay-jay.club
🤝 Partnerships: ads@jay-jay.club
🎨 Collaborations: collabs@jay-jay.club