Footballers love their headphones, or at least they seem to. Barely a weekend goes by when we aren't greeted by a pre-match image of our favourite players getting off the team bus, inspecting the turf or psyching themselves up pitch-side, all with a pair of their favourite headphones jammed into their ears or hanging around their neck.
It makes sense. You need those tunes to get you pumped up before a big game, and blasting out a bit of heavy metal in the changing room via a Bluetooth speaker might not make you popular with a roster of teammates who prefer a nice bit of drill or EDM. We're not professional athletes, but it seems obvious that locker rooms are like public buses; it's best to keep your music listening private.
With the FIFA World Cup set to kick off this month, the necessity to get hyped has never been so potent for some of our favourite 'soccer' stars as they head to America. From Beats to Bowers & Wilkins, these are the headphones some of the most famous faces in football are taking to the biggest stage of all.
Kylian Mbappe – Loewe
The greatest players need the finest headphones to match. There's no question that Kylian Mbappé is one of the premier players on the planet, so it was unlikely that he would be heading to the World Cup with a tatty pair of wireless earbuds he found for £20 on Amazon.
Instead, we imagine that Kylian might have a pair of £1500 Loewe Leo wireless over-ears stashed in his hold-all instead. France's talisman is Loewe's big-name brand ambassador, modelling not only the aforementioned Leo but the chunky We. Hear Pro portable Bluetooth speaker.
Maybe the latter will emerge in the changing rooms as and when France start winning their group games.
Lionel Messi – Beats
Beats has a remarkable history of celebrity endorsements, especially from athletes.
The brand's marketing strategy throughout the 2000s and 2010s was centred on inserting itself into the public consciousness by having Beats products appear constantly in music videos, at major sporting events, in TV shows and more.
In fact, you couldn't consider yourself a big-name celebrity or top-level athlete if Beats wasn't courting your attention, with the likes of LeBron James, Shohei Ohtani, Tom Brady, Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka all enjoying sponsorship deals at some time or another.
Beats has repeated the trick by nabbing Lionel Messi as a brand ambassador, so expect to see the GOAT with a pair of cans with a big bold 'B' emblazoned on the side when you tune in to watch Argentina.
Virgil Van Dijk and Declan Rice – JBL
It makes sense for JBL to collaborate with the biggest names in the world of football.
The US company has always been pretty good at knowing its target audience and then catering to it in both the way it makes products and how it sells them to its core demographics.
JBL has snagged the services of quite a few high-profile leather-kickers in recent times, with Liverpool centre back Virgil Van Dijk and Arsenal stalwart Declan Rice being two of its major supporters.
Both will feature heavily for their respective nations, the Netherlands and England, during the World Cup, though we'd be surprised if either actually wears a pair of JBL headphones while on the pitch. They'd fall off when you went in for a header...
David Beckham – Bowers & Wilkins
In case you hadn't noticed, David Beckham is no shrinking violet. The England icon lends his visage to Stella Artois beer, Hugo Boss clothing, Pepsi soda and the Shark Ninja air fryer, to name but a few. Slip him £100 and he'll probably turn up at your child's birthday party.
He appears so frequently in the public eye that we wouldn't be surprised if he's cloned himself in a bid to get to as many high-profile events as he possibly can in a single calendar year.
Air fryers and draft beer aside, he is also the handsome face of Bowers & Wilkins' range of premium headphones, including the five-star Px7 S3 wireless over-ears and the Award-winning Pi8 true wireless earbuds, so he's certainly got taste when it comes to audio.
Whether it's by the pitch, at the stadiums or in the mid-match adverts, you're going to be seeing quite a lot of Golden Balls at the 2026 World Cup. Not bad for a man who retired over ten years ago.
Mika Bireth and Falorin Balogun – Bang & Olufsen
Ok, this might be the coolest partnership in all of sport. AS Monaco have always been one of the most glamorous sides in the French Ligue 1. B&Os' reputation for blending high-end audio with luxury design is legendary. Talk about a match made in heaven.
The team houses four big-name B&O ambassadors. Denmark's Mika Bireth and the USA's Folarin Balogun are two of AS Monaco's representatives playing at the biggest international tournament football has to offer. Meanwhile, their Monaco teammates, Paul Pogba and Eric Dier, won't be representing their respective nations this time around, but they are major names who will also be wearing B&O cans, albeit on the sidelines.
Harry Kane – Our Pure Planet
Bless Harry Kane, he really does seem like one of the good guys. He's also pretty handy at football, in case you hadn't noticed.
The English icon has been banging in goals for Bayern Munich at a near-unprecedented rate over the last couple of seasons. Between matches, he's managed to find some time out of his busy net-ripping schedule to partner with eco-audio brand Our Pure Planet, becoming both a company co-owner and big-name global ambassador.
We don't know how Harry's headphones sound or how comfortable they are, but that's not exactly the point. Our Pure Plant's aim is to, according to its website, "reduce plastic, offset carbon, and minimise paper waste "by using up to 80% recycled plastics and metals in its products."
Eschewing massive audio brands in favour of endorsing an environmentally sustainable newbie? He's a good lad, our Harry.
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