When the worlds of pop culture and football intersect, viral moments are born that are discussed both by hardcore supporters and by people who only follow the game in passing. Dua Lipa has long since moved beyond the status of just a pop diva: she has become the face of an entire football generation – from the Champions League final to the South American Superclasico and songs that now sound like unofficial terrace anthems.
The Superclasico Where the Main Star Was a Guest
This time the point of intersection was Argentina. During her Radical Optimism tour the singer stopped off in Buenos Aires – and instead of a quiet walk around the city suddenly found herself at the epicentre of the country's biggest derby: the Superclasico between Boca Juniors and River Plate.
The stadium was boiling, and the arrival of a global star only cranked the temperature up further. First Dua Lipa was given a River Plate jersey, then a Boca shirt. Picking a side in one of the most intense rivalries on the planet is too risky even for a self-confident pop diva, so in the stands she chose a neutral but very smart option: the shirt of the Argentina national team.
TV cameras kept picking her out in the stands, the crowd went wild, and photos and videos instantly spread across social media. Juan Roman Riquelme – a Boca legend and now a club executive – added the final touch to her football image: he personally came over to the singer during the match and handed her an official Boca Juniors shirt. In a country where football is part of the national identity, that gesture finally turned Dua Lipa into one of their own.
An Arsenal Fan Who Has Long Lived in the Football World
Dua's interest in football is not a spontaneous by-product of social-media popularity. She has repeatedly admitted that she supports Arsenal – a family choice: both her father and her brother are fans of the London club, so in essence she never really had another option.
The singer also shows up at stadiums: in April she visited the Emirates when the Gunners hosted Real Madrid in the Champions League – yet another proof that football for her is not just a backdrop for shoots and ad campaigns but a genuine passion. But it was social media that turned this passion into a global phenomenon.
One Selfie, and Dua Lipa Was Dressed in Every Club's Colors
In the autumn a meme exploded online, triggered by Dua herself. She posted what seemed like a completely ordinary mirror selfie on social media: a plain white T-shirt with the words Show me your books, which in English literally means: "Show me your books", and a familiar at-home background. For football fans, though, that was enough to launch a mass flash mob.
Users, club social-media admins and designers started "redressing" the singer in the shirts of their own teams – from European giants to more modest clubs. Valencia's social-media accounts were among the first to join in, posting Dua Lipa in the club's new jersey. The trend quickly spread to Russia too: Spartak likewise "tried" its red-and-white kit on the pop star.
At some point feeds turned into an endless compilation of Photoshops in which Dua Lipa was wearing first the shirts of various South American clubs, then the now-familiar Boca top. That innocuous selfie became a global advert for football kits – and yet another proof of how closely music and football intertwine in the digital age.
Jerseys as Part of the Image: From SSENSE to Palermo
The singer's love of football shirts is not just a fan story but also part of her style. Even away from stadiums Dua Lipa often appears in jerseys. On holiday, for example, she chose an unconventional deconstructed T-shirt from SSENSE, laced together with criss-crossing red cords and featuring the Rose Athletic Sportswear logo – a piece that turns a sporting aesthetic code into a fashion object.
Brands, of course, could not ignore that. Kit giant Puma went beyond internet memes: it invited Dua Lipa to a dedicated photoshoot and shot her in the colours of Italian club Palermo. The pink-and-black jersey combined with the singer's signature style looked so natural that the images instantly became a reference point for how a football kit can turn into a fashion statement without losing its football DNA.
A Night in Kyiv That Connected Dua Lipa With Liverpool
However, the main foundation of her current status in football culture was laid back in 2018. The Champions League final in Kyiv: Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool against Real Madrid, Mohamed Salah's injury, Gareth Bale's incredible overhead kick and Loris Karius's glaring errors – a storyline that neither fans nor neutral viewers will ever forget.
Before the opening whistle Dua Lipa had her own part to play. She opened the evening by performing her hits No Lie and the newly released One Kiss, which was already storming the charts. Normally pre-match concerts are wiped from supporters' memories almost instantly – five minutes after kick-off everyone is thinking only about the football. This time, though, things turned out differently.
The performance was so vivid that the same evening social networks were flooded with jokes and memes along the lines of "Only Dua Lipa could upstage Ronaldo and Salah tonight". Tweets and Reddit threads with thousands of likes did their job: despite the lost final, the singer suddenly became part of Liverpool fans' collective memory.
When One Kiss Sounds Like Anfield's Anthem of Joy
A few years later One Kiss became firmly embedded in Liverpool supporters' folklore. In the 2021/22 season, as the team won the League Cup, lifted the FA Cup and reached another Champions League final, the track was heard more and more often at trophy celebrations.
The players celebrated victories to the lines of One Kiss together with the fans, and in the fan zones in Paris before the Champions League final you could hear the melody long before the referee's whistle. Banners carried references to the song: its lyrics paired with an image of Steven Gerrard kissing the Champions League trophy in 2005. If You'll Never Walk Alone is the club's eternal, almost prayer-like anthem, then One Kiss has become the soundtrack of joy and euphoria for the current Anfield generation.
Dua herself has repeatedly said that she is touched by this attention. In an interview with the club's website in 2020 she recalled how nervous she had been before walking out onto the pitch, how her palms were sweating and how the support of the fans helped her cope with the anxiety. What impressed her most were the videos of tens of thousands of supporters singing along with her in unison: according to her, this is still one of the most moving moments of her career.
At the same time British and Spanish tabloids tried to spice the story up by ascribing romances first with Trent Alexander-Arnold, then with Marco Asensio. The players themselves and club representatives later denied those rumours, but the press had already done its bit in building the mythology around Dua Lipa and football.
A Star of Principle Whom Football Still Adores
Since then Dua Lipa has become a truly global artist: sell-out concerts, huge tours, the status of one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. At the same time she is not eager to be the face of every major tournament. For example, she turned down an invitation to perform at the opening ceremony of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, openly stating her disagreement with unfulfilled promises on human rights.
But decisions like that only increase the respect she commands – both in the music world and among football fans. Dua Lipa has long since gone beyond the label of "the star who once sang at a Champions League final". She is now someone whose songs boom out from the stands, whose photos in jerseys are shared around the globe and whose presence at a stadium turns even the Superclasico into an even bigger news story.
In her case music, football, style and principles have fused into a coherent image – and it feels like there are many more brilliant matches still to come in this story.
