The World Cup is in full swing, with just a few more matches left before the quarterfinals. There have been plenty of feel-good stories and twists and upsets — Cape Verde’s Cinderella story, Norway’s stunning victory over Brazil, all of the controversy over Trump’s involvement in Folarin Balogun’s contentious red card. But in addition to these crazy moments and plots, what the World Cup does every four years is put a bright spotlight on the best soccer players in the world.
A lot of these athletes have had unexpected trajectories and remarkable biographies — even a surprising side hobby or two. This includes players who have hidden musical talents, or who have made careers moonlighting as singers, rappers, and musicians.
Of course, the connection between soccer and music isn’t new. We all know some of the biggest soccer anthems are also some of the most memorable global chart-topping hits (from Ricky Martin’s “Cup of Life” to Shakira’s “Waka Waka”). Brazilian legend Pelé was famously a singer-songwriter who composed in his spare time and released songs until he turned 80. Former Croatian defender Slaven Bilić, who played in the 1998 World Cup, also performed in the heavy-metal band Rawbau. And John Barnes, known for making history as the first Black player to represent England in a World Cup match, in 1986, was a rapper and even made a few guest appearances on official team anthems, including New Order’s “World in Motion” from the 1990 FIFA campaign.
Here are some of the players from the 2026 roster who are keeping the connection between soccer and music alive with their own careers and side hobbies as artists.
Rafael Leão, Portugal
The Portuguese attacker has been playing soccer since he was a kid, and joined the French club Lille before signing a five-year deal with AC Milan. On the Portuguese national team, he’s been a reliable forward, but in between high-profile matches, he’s followed his music dreams as Way 45, rapping and singing through a blend of R&B, hip-hop, and stripped-back trap beats. “There was always music in my house growing up,” he told Rolling Stone U.K. back in 2023. “My uncle was a DJ, and my father used to sing too. Like everything around me was about music, so it really just came from there. It was always hip-hop I’d listen to, and I could relate to the message they’d put across about growing up in the hood.”
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As Way 45, he’s released three albums, including his debut, Beginning, 2023’s My Life in Each Verse, and last year’s 12:12. A lot of his songs chronicle his childhood and upbringing in a small town outside of Lisbon, and also offer an outlet for the soccer player, who calls himself a shy person. “Music means to me love, escaping my troubles, and finding myself,” he said in a video for AC Milan where he performs one of his songs.
Alisson Becker, Brazil
The Brazilian goalie, who grew up in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, started off in youth soccer tournaments before becoming one of the most recognized goalkeepers in the sport. (When he was signed to Liverpool for €62.5 million in 2018, he was then the most expensive goalkeeper of all time.)
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But when he’s not on the field, Becker has also shown himself to be an easygoing, family-oriented guy who likes to sing and play guitar. Though he’s not going after a Grammy, he’s shown off his skills in good-natured videos alongside other musicians and players. He won over fans when he teamed up with English singer-songwriter Jamie Webster for an acoustic version of the soccer classic “Allez, Allez, Allez.” Since then, Becker has also shared videos of himself singing the anthem in the car with his kid and with other players. He’s also posted covers of “Shallow” from A Star Is Born and his take on the viral hit “Dragostea Din Tei” from Moldovan pop group O-Zone.
Memphis Depay, Netherlands
Dutch player Memphis Depay started turning heads among soccer scouts when he was just eight, but he’s always been a massive music head and a huge fan of American hip-hop. In 2017, he decided to go for it and try out his musical ambitions, launching a freestyle video he titled “LA Vibes.” The music video quickly garnered about 150,000 in the first few hours and also included his Dutch teammate Quincy Promes.
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From there, Depay kept ramping up his music releases. He’s dropped back-to-back freestyles and tons of singles, often switching between English and Dutch. He’s collaborated with Dutch rapper Winne, Ghanaian singer Bisa Kdei, and Dutch hip-hop group Broederliefde. His song “No Love,” which he dropped back in 2020, now has more than 20 million views on YouTube. His team was knocked out of this year’s tournament by Morocco, but Depay can stay busy with his music in the meantime.
Luis “Lucho” Díaz, Colombia
Luis “Lucho” Díaz, who plays for Liverpool and the Colombian national team, got people excited when he appeared on “El Ritmo Que Nos Une” with singer-rapper Ryan Castro. “They asked us if we wanted to participate or collaborate. Of course I said yes because I’ve always been attracted to music, I’ve always liked it,” Díaz said in an interview with Tribuna. The song became the adopted anthem for the team’s 2024 Copa América run, and the video included a few of Díaz’s teammates.
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“He came to the hotel with his team, set up a studio there, and in, like, 20 or 30 minutes we recorded our bit, and just like that, very fast, we did our recording and it came out really nicely,” Díaz recalled.
The duo got along so well they also teamed up for a second song: “Dembow Violento” came out about three weeks ago, just in time for the World Cup.
Alphonso Davies, Canada
When he’s not playing for Bayern Munich or the Canadian national team, Alphonso Davies likes to dip in and out of music. A long time music fan, he started dropping a couple of freestyles and songs on the side during the pandemic and showing his flow as a rapper. Canada got eliminated by Morocco in Round 16, but Davies has proved he has more to explore as an artist when he’s not attacking as a left-winger and midfielder.
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In 2025, he got more official by dropping the track “München My Throne” in 2025, which served as a fun way to announce that he was re-signing with Bayern Munich until 2023 (he’s been with the team since he was 18). “I was just doing the ad-libs and talking in between,” he told Billboard Canada. “But it was a cool idea because I love music. I love listening to music, and I dip and dabble in making music as well.” The track currently has about a million views.
Holzman and Hughes at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.Courtesy of Ekko Astral
Holzman and Hughes in Brooklyn, May 2026.Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
There’s no immediate resolution in any of this. There’s no surrender either — and a lot of great escape. White’s slide guitar in “Dollar Bill” sounds like a National Steel on steroids until the solo, when it turns into what seems like a theremin gone postal. “I Can’t Believe What I’m Hearing” has a great pop-wise chorus closer to the Pretty Things than Son House. And don’t miss White’s wry aside to the White Stripes’ old creation myth in the second verse of “G.O.D.,” on the way to the real business at hand. “Well, it’s the beginning of the world now,” he declares at the song’s end. “Let’s do it all over again.”
Jay-Z has turned the 30th anniversary of his classic debut album into a major marketing event
Jay-Z Knows the Past Still Pays
There’s a pleasant absurdity to the advertisements for JAŸ-Z30 that are currently found across New York’s subway tunnels. Their dramatic imagery — a stark black backdrop pierced through the center with a pair of hands, presumably Jay’s, fixed into the famous Roc diamond — invites a kind of religious authority that feels a touch ironic for anyone who’s old enough to remember all types of handwringing over those very hand symbols only a few years ago. And maybe that’s the point. By now, nostalgia’s grip extends layers deep. So much so that you could find yourself waiting for the train, reminiscing on the days when people still made jokes about the so-called Illuminati.
Jay-Z’s months-long campaign commemorating the 30th anniversary of Reasonable Doubt and the 25th anniversary of The Blueprint has indeed resurfaced the rapper-turned-mogul’s success story. Reasonable Doubt, released in 1996, positioned Jay as not only a resonant voice in hip-hop but also in the increasingly lucrative business around it. After major labels passed, the album was released independently through Roc-A-Fella Records and Priority Records, setting the tone for Jay’s career as a business…man.
And in the full-court press campaign around this summer’s anniversaries, culminating in this weekend’s trio of performances at Yankee Stadium, Jay’s business acumen is again at center focus. You’d be forgiven for throwing around buzzwords like “multichannel” or “cross-platform” to describe the slate of festivities. There was a Spotify-backed takeover of the J and Z trains; custom JAŸ-Z30 subway maps and a Google Maps guide; commemorative Brooklyn Public Library cards; and most recently Bowery Station and DUMBO pop-ups with archival footage and merch. (That these Yankee Stadium shows come on the heels of Taylor Swift’s wedding at MSG suggests some sort of mega-rich takeover of cultural institutions, but let’s leave that one for another day.)
The moves come as nostalgia continues to drive a considerable chunk of the music industry’s profits. In an era when old songs can circulate infinitely on streaming platforms, gaining new life in the form of everything from samples to memes, and when superfans are willing to spend on physical goods, limited merch, and live experiences, album anniversaries have become their own product launches. Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt campaign is only the splashiest recent example.
No wonder, then, that Beyoncé already appears to be setting the stage for her own run of commemorations for the upcoming 20th anniversary of her album B’Day in September. Over the weekend, she released her first new song in two years, titled “Morning Dew (Donk),” to tease the upcoming reissue. According to Luminate, older music still dominates attention, with only 43 percent of U.S. on-demand audio streams in 2025 coming from tracks released in the previous five years. This is also one reason why vinyl and physical formats have seen renewed value in recent years, with the RIAA reporting that vinyl sold 46.8 million units in the U.S. in 2025, compared with 29.5 million CDs. Luminate says superfans are 20 percent of U.S. music listeners and spend heavily on live events and physical merchandise; 73 percent of these fans purchase physical merch, versus 26 percent of general music listeners.
In today’s industry, having a major anniversary is like having a new product to promote, a way to participate in an already thriving marketplace for nostalgia. The demand is visible well beyond official artist stores: Vintage concert tees now trade as collectibles, with one 1967 Grateful Dead shirt selling at Sotheby’s for $19,300 and rare rap tees treated as wearable archives of hip-hop history. Anniversary campaigns give artists and labels a way to reclaim that energy, turning the secondary market’s appetite for old symbols into new, officially sanctioned products.
Jay-Z’s official anniversary store turns that logic into a menu of objects: a $1,500 collector’s crate, a $300 cassette box, $400 Yankees jerseys, and four-figure varsity jackets. Of course, Jay is far from alone when it comes to legacy acts cashing in on nostalgia. He’s more like one salient example of a much larger wave of artists and promoters marketing anniversary products that includes the Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness 30th anniversary super-deluxe edition, My Chemical Romance’s Black Parade stadium tour, and the returned Warped Tour, among many others.
Five years before Reasonable Doubt became the occasion for library cards, pop-ups, collector crates, and stadium spectacle, its 25th anniversary was marked by an NFT. In 2021, Sotheby’s and Roc Nation auctioned a one-of-one Derrick Adams artwork tied to the album, billed as the only official Jay-Z-authorized commemoration of the anniversary. Around the same time, Roc-A-Fella was in court over co-founder Damon Dash’s attempted sale of a Reasonable Doubt-related NFT, a dispute that ended with a judgment making clear that no shareholder could sell or dispose of an interest in the album — including through an NFT — without the company’s authorization.
That ownership question is becoming harder to avoid as music enters the AI era, where the archive is not only something to reissue, exhibit, or sell, but something that can be scraped, modeled, and trained on. Last week, SZA took to Twitter to express frustration with AI music company Suno, notably calling out Diplo by name as one of the company’s investors. “DO NOT GIVE AWAY YOUR VIBRANIUM !!! DO NOT TRAIN AI WITH YOUR GENIUS,” she wrote on Twitter. Her complaint was joined by Kenneth Blume, who said Suno’s workers were “stealing from countless struggling musicians.”
For an artist with a legacy as impactful as Jay-Z’s, the current anniversary boom feel like the latest phase of a longer project of deciding who gets to turn hip-hop history into intellectual property. Jay-Z’s legacy deserves preservation; few catalogs have made a stronger case for it. But the more that preservation arrives through limited-edition objects, auction platforms, luxury merch, and authorized experiences, the more it has to answer a harder question: When does protecting the archive become another way of extracting value from it?