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What seems to be important to Georgi is the act of creativity for its own sake, of seizing the chance to do something he's always wanted to do, now that he has the chance to — not for the status but for the feeling.
When it comes to stereotyping a retro footballer's pastimes, owning a racehorse is up there with having Phil Collins' Greatest Hits on the in-car CD changer. From Micky Quinn — the big, round striker who once scored four for Newcastle against Leeds in 1989 — to Micky Owen, whose first winner ran in 2000, from the perspective given through magazine interviews there seemed to be two methods of enjoying the new riches of the Premier League. Some players spent their idle afternoons in the betting shops gambling it all away. Some were down the stables, owning the nags their teammates were betting on. Don't make the mistake, though, of thinking this was a divide of smarts. Wayne Rooney owned two horses, that ran 23 races before he gave up on them: one won one race, the other had to go for the equine equivalent of anger management therapy.
None of these horses, as far as I'm aware, ever had dedicated Instagram and TikTok accounts. And if they did, none were under a name like 'georgi.horses', sounding reminiscent of the legendary Twitter account 'horse_ebooks' ("Everything happens so much"). On Instagram, georgi.horses has one post at the time of writing, and scrolling through the images you see a horse, named Bopedro, being led out to race at Lingfield; a close up of the jockey's yellow and pink racing silks; a photo of the jockey in conversation with Leeds United's forward Georginio Rutter; and an entry from the Racing Post pulling it all together: Bopedro, ridden by Oisin Murphy, owned by Mr Georginio Rutter.
Bopedro finished fourth in a field of five: the Racing Post describes its race as, 'Prominent, edged left and weakened gradually over 1f out'. In his caption on Instagram, Georgi wrote, 'maybe not the best performance but very happy for this first special experience', adding a hashtag, 'enjoy'.
That hashtag is crucial to defining the energy that elevates this enterprise above the endeavours of, say, Michael Owen, who somehow — when you bring up photos of his racing career — makes being around horses look as pitifully boring as he makes anything. If #enjoy is the energy Georginio brings to the world, #HateFilms is the key to Owen, who once made the extraordinary declaration in an interview, in 1999, that "There is nothing going on in the world at the moment that I find distressing or have a view on." When I read that at the time, I took it as an extreme example of a young footballer having his personality media trained out of him until nothing but a kicking husk remained. But there was no longer any doubt that this actually was his personality when, in 2014, he revealed on Twitter that he'd been 'forced to watch' eight films in his life — Rocky, Ghost, Jurassic Park — and hated them all. He saw Cool Runnings aged seventeen, going along with it while trying to patch things up with the girlfriend who later became his wife. "As soon as she pressed play I was in hell," Owen told ESPN, "having to pretend I liked it. I told her a few weeks later that films weren't my thing."
What is Georginio Rutter's thing? Good question. We've got racehorses. When it comes to films, we know he and Joel Piroe have bonded over anime. Then there's the music. Recently Zak Taylor, a producer at Rap Aware Studios in Leeds who is known as ZT Beats, told the YEP about getting a message from Georgi on Instagram, asking if he could come in for a session and record some bars he'd written. There's a fashion brand, too, La Vie Noir, recently featured in onetwo magazine.
"Football is my greatest passion," Georgi writes in the magazine, "the source of my happiness, and the ultimate goal that I'm striving to achieve. However, I'm not a machine — I have emotions, and I believe that there's room in my life for other interests to coexist alongside my on-pitch and training pursuits." He dates the origins of La Vie Noir back to when he was eighteen years old: "I remember working tirelessly late into the night, experimenting with different names and logos on Photoshop, just for fun." Playing football has given him the opportunity to take his late night doodling and dreaming further, sitting in the front row for the Rhude show at Paris Fashion Week, describing himself as mesmerised by the creativity.
Working with Corey Lee Anton — once a right-back at Hoffenheim, now a model — and Tithey Schulz, a German semi-pro player turned brand manager and creative producer, Georgi has learned — "a world of posing, cameras, setups and lighting that fascinated me" — and produced. La Vie Noir's first capsule collection is called 'An Ode to the Night', inspired by "French and impressionist painters, who often depicted the darkness and mystery of night ... I wanted to infuse a sense of classicism into my first drop, but I also wanted to give it a modern twist."
Crucially, while this capsule collection has a launch video on Instagram, showing off a hoodie, two tees and sweatpants, the clothes are not for sale. "We decided to produce limited quantities," says Georgi, "which I'm excited to give to my close friends and family." He wants to "gauge the reaction and see if people are feeling the vibes". Likewise, the music Georgi is making with ZT Beats hasn't dropped anywhere. "I think he's just unsure at the moment with his plans for the music," Zak told the YEP. "I don't know whether he wants to release or not."
What seems to be important to Georgi is the act of creativity for its own sake, of seizing the chance to do something he's always wanted to do, now that he has the chance to — not for the status but for the feeling. In onetwo magazine, he writes of growing up in Plescop in Brittany, a village of 5,000 people: "I would always try to look my best on the field, but the reality was that we didn't have any cool shops, sneaker stores or fashion outlets." How do you look good if you haven't got the clothes to look good with? The same way you make a Hallowe'en costume — you go to the fancy dress shop in Headingley, a fabric shop on Roundhay Road, grab a few bits from Argos. Georginio did that this past October, making a film of it all for TikTok, haunting Elland Road by night like a friendly vampire. Because what else is a footballer from a small French village going to do in Leeds after dark?
'Emotion' pops up more than once in the onetwo article. "The first time I set foot on a football field," writes Georgi, "I was consumed by an intense rush of emotions that still lingers within me today." More prevalent, though, is the night. The first La Vie Noir collection is 'An Ode to the Night', depicting its darkness and mystery. Bold yellow text on a black page announces, translated from French: 'Welcome to The Black Life, where night reigns, and beauty, born in the calm of darkness.' The logo ideas were sketched out on Photoshop, "tirelessly late into the night", eighteen-year-old Georgi leaning into his laptop screen as the village slept around him. When Georgi got in touch about recording with ZT Beats, he asked for "quite a late session, like ten o'clock at night." While La Vie Noir's clothes aren't available to buy, Georgi does hint that, "to add a little excitement, we're going to make the collection available at night ... Follow me on Instagram and keep an eye out during the dreamy hours."
Now, I don't want to snitch on him to Daniel Farke, but I am a little worried whether our Georgi is getting enough sleep. But I am not at all worried about a guy who, a million miles away from Michael Owen seeing nothing in the whole world worth having "a view on", is instead feeling the #enjoy of a mind teeming with restless creativity and the fulfilment that comes from using the dreamy hours to satisfy his urge to learn and make. Often, footballers get drawn into enterprise through fashion or music or horse racing, and we watch them going through the sullen motions of fulfilling contractual obligations of their brand partnerships, waiting for the cheque to clear. Not, so far, Georgi. He's making the music that's in his mind because he wants to hear it, making the clothes from his sketchpad so he can run the photoshoot he's been dreaming up, owning the racehorse that — well, actually, I'm not sure where the horse has come from. But when life is hashtag enjoy, what might be next? ★彡
(Originally published at The Square Ball)