In the summer of 2012, George Quraishi and Mark Kirby launched a Kickstarter campaign for a magazine that shouldn't have worked. They wanted to create a big, glossy, oversized soccer publication for American readers — a country where the sport was still widely dismissed as something that happened elsewhere. Quraishi had worked at National Geographic and Condé Nast's Portfolio; Kirby had edited at GQ. They brought in the art directors from Portfolio to handle the design. The campaign raised sixty-nine thousand dollars from nearly fifteen hundred backers, almost twenty thousand over its goal.
Howler published its first issue in October 2012, with a satirical cover of U.S. coach Jürgen Klinsmann, and it was immediately clear this wasn't a conventional sports magazine. The writing drew from literary journalism and the design borrowed from European fashion magazines: oversized pages, bold illustration, infographics that were as playful as they were informative. Contributors included novelist Aleksandar Hemon, New Republic editor Franklin Foer, and tactical writer Jonathan Wilson. A cover depicting Carli Lloyd kicking FIFA president Sepp Blatter's head was published hours before actual FIFA officials were arrested — one of those timing miracles that define a magazine's personality.
Quraishi eventually moved on to lead soccer coverage at The Athletic, but Howler's legacy endures as proof that American soccer culture was always more sophisticated than the mainstream media gave it credit for. The magazine treated the sport the way the best music magazines treat music — as a lens for understanding the wider world.
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