When I arrive at Secret Futebol Club’s multipurpose studio in East Williamsburg, I’m greeted warmly by Ricardo Carlota and Austin Costeira. The two moved Secret, an agency they co-founded, into the sun-drenched space in December 2025 and transformed the former warehouse into their “play” area.
A portable DJ setup sits in the near-left corner, and two couches are stationed in the middle of the room, a TV hanging in front. Customized Secret stickers are strewn across a table to the right, which sits beneath a vast window grid that looks out onto Meadow Street.
Carlota gives me a quick tour, and with each item we encounter, whether a piece of artwork or a storage box, he proudly shouts out the name of a creative friend who produced it.
As we reach a surrealist Secret Futebol Club crest containing an eye with a soccer ball pupil (designed by longtime friend and collaborator Doug Aldrich), we situate ourselves on the couches. The Champions League final from a week prior is playing on the TV.
“We didn’t get a chance to actually watch it,” Carlota says. The two were busy hosting a watch party: ensuring that the vendors were set up, guests were greeted and comfortable, and the necessary content was captured.
Costeira reflects that 10 years ago, even five, owning a studio like this was a pipe dream.
Photo courtesy of Secret Futebol Club
Secret, a community-based creative agency rooted in soccer that Carolota describes as “an experimental open-source playground for art and football,” began with a different intention.
The co-founders met at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Before freshman year, each noted they were Portuguese in their housing applications and wound up rooming together. They bonded over their culture, which included soccer. Costeira played on the school’s team. Carlota did not. But they would frequently unite in alleyways across D.C. to compete in 1 v. 1 and 2 v. 2 contests.
In 2011, after graduating, both moved to New York City. Finding open soccer fields to play soccer is never an easy feat in the city, nor is securing enough bodies.
That’s when the Secret Futebol Community took shape. Carlota and Costeira steadily built a pick-up-footballer network, and they helped organize runs over social media to a group that now includes 160 members.
“We’ve been organizing for so long,” Carlota explains. “We have friends and people we’ve met around all these pitches that we’ve scouted, so we don’t necessarily take out permits like these leagues do. We just have eyes on the fields, and everybody is flexible enough to show up when it’s available.”
At the same time, Carlota and Costeira were both pursuing careers, the former as an editor for 12ozProphet, the website-turned-clothing brand, Costeira as an audio and visual engineer. They didn’t necessarily view Secret as a vehicle for creative expression until they hosted their first World Cup watch party in 2018 at Kinfolk, in Williamsburg.
From there, the duo realized they could tap their community to collaborate on other projects.
They shot videos in underused areas, like the MTA lots in Ridgewood, hopping fences and setting up soccer games to highlight the lack of public green spaces to play. That snowballed into more videos, zines, watch parties, merch drops, and even concerts in Corteira’s apartment.
“We never had any money doing any of this,” Carlota says. “We never [and still don’t] have investors. We didn’t have that kind of support, so we’re just like, ‘Let’s go burn some screens, and then let’s print in my kitchen,’ and we would screen print shirts. Being very experimental, very DIY, very hands-on, I think that that’s kind of opened up avenues.”
Ahead of the 2024 Copa America final, Secret collaborated with Adidas and Lionel Messi to celebrate the Argentinian’s championship moment by designing custom title belts featuring details that nod to his iconic legacy. In July of 2025, they partnered with Meta to unveil Wrexham FC’s new kit. And in the fall of 2025, they “launched” the FIFA World Cup Trionda Match Ball with Adidas and Copa90 at Pier 2 in Brooklyn, which featured a “first touch,” a soccer tournament, and custom-made artifacts (notably, reflective jerseys airbrushed by Juan Diego Prieto and a regulation-size gold Trionda).
With the biggest World Cup of all time kicking off this week, Secret has equally big plans. From June 11 through 16, they’ll host Futcon, an Argentina-based soccer culture festival, at their studio.
Photo courtesy of Secret Futebol Club
The gallery will feature work from comic book artist Emi Utrera and muralist Gordopelota, and on June 13 it will host a bootleg kit battle between Workshop Tiba and OG Drake. They’ll also stream World Cup matches all day every day, culminating in a watch party for Argentina’s first contest of the tournament against Algeria on June 16.
Secret will also offer 16 jersey customization workshops from June 18 to 23 and a multiday fan fest in partnership with Airbnb. USMNT legend Jozy Altidore and NBA great Joakim Noah are scheduled to make appearances on June 27.
For the World Cup final, Carlota and Corteira are hoping to throw a block party on their studio’s street, but that’s still TBD.
“A lot of what we’ve done has been like, how the fuck are we gonna make this happen?” Corteira says, laughing. “Things that we would never expect or never envision happen, they continue to happen.”
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