F.C. Brickstand

Welcome to the intersection of LEGO and the beautiful game.  Chris Smith, a Crystal Palace fan in Manchester, started out with a goal of building all 92 English football stadiums.  After getting partway through the project his goal shifted to doing something new, and F.C. Brickstand was born.

F.C. Brickstand, aka The Builders, are an all LEGO team that plays in Chris' football pyramid.  This isn't just some fun pictures of some LEGO football players, Chris has a whole ecosystem built around his team.  They play at Brick Lane, a custom built LEGO stadium for the team.  They are currently in the Buildersliga 4 (best team name, F.C. Inter Locking) after winning promotion from the Diorama Conference last season.  They have fans from around the world who show up every week at Brick Lane to root on the Builders.

After following F.C. Brickstand for a few months on Twitter and not entirely getting it I stumbled into this interview of Chris from last year and everything locked into place (pun intended).  For a while I was wondering how some many people were interested in watching somebody stage LEGO players for whatever results he wanted to show, and why the results mattered since they were all made up.  It seems like I could go do the same thing with my soccer pieces and I didn't understand why that would be at all interesting.

What I didn't know, and the article clarified, is that the shots and results aren't made up.  During the week Smith secretly picks an upcoming game to represent F.C. Brickstand's next game, with the Builders taking the spot of the home or away team depending on their schedule.  Then the actual events and results of that game on Saturday becomes the F.C. Brickstand game he reports on Twitter on Sunday.  So not even Chris knows how this week's game is going to go until the real-life game is played and the rest of us don't know what to expect, though I see some guesses as the game goes on as to which game it was.

After seeing the article I shared it with a local Palace fan on Twitter.  Then I decided I needed to jump in as a supporter.  Chris sells annual supporter memberships for 5 pounds (about $7) and for that he'll make a unique minifig of you to place in your choice of seat at Brick Lane every week.  That local fan also joined up along with a couple of other members of Colorado Palace, so now there's going to be a Mile High contingent at Brick Lane every week.  So many people joined that the Builders announced an extension of the supporters stand this week to hold them all!

After this, and the back and forth on Twitter Chris DM'ed me with a picture of my minifig (below) and we got to talking.  I told him about my current aborted attempt to build DSG Park out of LEGO and he showed me his copy of Ewood Park that he took to Blackburn for pictures of it inside the real Ewood Park (also below).  If you're interested in following the Builders follow them on Twitter here.

 Minifig me.  Seems accurate.

LEGO Ewood Riverside Stand in front of the Riverside Stand

LEGO Ewood with the EPL Championship trophy