- Agency: LOLA USA
- Client: Adidas
- Category: Video Design — Short Film
- Location: New York City, New York, United States
- Project Brief: Create a cinematic football campaign that celebrates street football culture while building excitement around the FIFA World Cup.
A short film built around street football mythology works when it feels like it was passed down rather than produced. "Backyard Legends" gets there by committing to the format rather than borrowing from it.
Casting Timothée Chalamet as a neighborhood recruiter instead of a footballer is the first sign Adidas is making something stranger and more interesting than a standard World Cup spot.
The narration frames the whole thing as "true… probably," which is the right tone for a film holding Doku's car scene and a Messi cameo in the same world. It gives the film permission to be absurd without breaking its own logic.
LOLA USA shoots the street sequences handheld and close, then switches to dramatic lighting when the legends appear. That contrast does the work the script does not need to explain: ordinary people play in daylight, myths get lit like myths.
The 90s visual references hold the film together across its celebrity cameos. Era-specific hair, analog textures and terrace style give the whole thing a consistent folklore quality, so each new face feels like part of the same story rather than a guest list.
