Football has never been just a game. For generations, it has offered a global stage on which individuals, cities, and nations could project themselves beyond the boundaries often assigned to them. Brazil's 1958 FIFA World Cup win introduced Pelé to the world — then just 17 — and turned a teenager from São Paulo state into one of the most recognized figures on the planet.

“Home and away” traditionally describes where a match is played. Here, the phrase takes on a broader inquiry: what does home mean in a sport shaped by migration and shifting forms of allegiance? Having just led Napoli to an Italian league title, Diego Maradona then captained Argentina against Italy in the 1990 World Cup semifinal — played, by the luck of the bracket, in Naples. That day, the crowd was not entirely sure which team was actually playing at home.

The exhibition opens the private Manzano Heritage Collection to the public for the first time — more than 60 match-worn jerseys, trophies, photographs, and rare artifacts. Six chapters structure the show: movement, belonging, aspiration, resistance, and reinvention, charting football's path from sport to a global cultural force.

The objects on view trace a wide arc: Messi, whose long pursuit of a first World Cup became one of football’s most-watched storylines; Ronaldo, who carried Brazil to the 2002 title, scoring both goals in the final; and Lamine Yamal, whose breakout at the 2024 European Championship pointed to football’s next era.

An installation devoted to the New York Cosmos revisits football's rise from a peripheral sport to a visible part of New York’s cultural and urban identity. The club signed Pelé in 1975, already a three-time World Cup champion. His arrival transformed everything almost immediately. Crowds exceeding 70,000 became routine at Giants Stadium. Franz Beckenbauer and Giorgio Chinaglia soon followed, and a modest regional club became the center of New York's sporting attention. Off the field, its players occupied a city defined as much by Studio 54 as by sport, occasionally sharing headlines with Andy Warhol or Mick Jagger, becoming the threshold through which football enters and circulates within cultural life.

Curated by the Paris-based collective Air Afrique and designed by Harry Nuriev and Crosby Studios, Home & Away, the debut exhibition of Home of Football, traces the ongoing exchange between the game and the societies that embrace it, each reshaping how the other is seen, desired, and remembered across modern history.