Calaveras del Fútbol

There is a Mexican way of remembering the dead that has nothing to do with sadness. On the second of November you lay out an altar — the photographs, the food they loved, the orange marigolds — and you throw a party, because as long as somebody remembers you, you haven't really gone.

The Calaveras del Rock started there. Calaveras del Fútbol carries the same ritual onto the pitch.

Every calavera is for one great player who is no longer with us. One skull, never a team, never anybody still living: you honour the ones who left, and you honour them laughing. It wears whatever made him unmistakable — the colours of the shirt, the number on his back, the object that carries his story — and around it burn the marigolds of the ofrenda: alive, lit, the opposite of grief.

No name is written anywhere. No crest, no sponsor, no badge. Just a small sign with a place and a year: San Paolo 1984, El Beatle 1966, Democracia 1982, La Farfalla Granata. If you know, you recognise him. If you don't, you ask — and that's where the story starts.

These are not supporters' shirts. They are a way of saying thank you to the men who got us up off the sofa, and of keeping them around a little longer.