About Us

Last updated: 12 November 2026

Back first

Back Heel sells original art-pattern jerseys for futsal, street and pickup soccer, with your name and number on the back. Plus the stuff you wear around them: futsal shorts, crew socks, a warm-up long sleeve tee and a pullover hoodie. That is the whole shop. No crests, no sponsors, no borrowed badges. Just patterns we drew for the court, and a clean space on the back that belongs to you.

The idea behind everything here is simple. In a 5v5 game, most of the court only ever sees your back. The player marking you sees it when you spin away. The keeper sees it when you drop to defend. Your bench sees it all night. The referee sees it when they need your number. Shop pages usually show the front of a shirt and treat the back as an afterthought. We flipped that. Every Back Heel shirt is shown back first, and the back is designed as carefully as the front.

Turn it yourself

On the homepage and on every jersey page there is a turntable. Drag the drawn shirt, or use the left and right arrow keys, or press the Front and Back buttons, and it turns between the named back and the art front, easing to the nearest face when you let go. It is the same thing you would do in a shop: pick the shirt up and turn it over.

On a jersey page, the name and number you type appear live on the drawn back. Under it, a line called “Read the back out loud” repeats what you typed, for example NAME · NUMBER, so you can catch a missing letter before you order. Your cart repeats NAME · NUMBER under each shirt too. What you type is what gets printed: capitals, a name of up to 12 letters, a number from 0 to 99. There is no separate proof email. The turntable is the preview.

None of the homepage or product-page tools collect anything. No account is needed to use them and nothing you do with them is stored. Our Privacy Policy spells that out.

The calm back panel

Art jerseys have a problem: busy patterns can swallow a number. A referee squinting across a sports hall at a swirl of colour has no idea who just took out the pivo. So every Back Heel pattern keeps a calm back panel, a quieter area where the name and number sit and stay readable from across the court. The “Step back” band on the homepage shows this with a distance slider: slide it and watch the shirt shrink to the size it looks from the far touchline. The pattern blurs into texture. The number stays a number.

If you leave the name and number empty on a jersey where they are optional, the back panel simply stays plain, and the shirt works as an art piece you can wear off the court.

The patterns

Each pattern is an original piece with a title and a one-line motif note. They come from the places small-sided football actually happens: gym floors, playgrounds, blacktops, fences, walls. They also come from the moves people try in those places. The pattern runs round the front, back and sleeves.

• Sole Roll: the loop your foot draws when you roll the ball across your body.
• Panna Arches: arches for the ball going through the legs. A panna is a nutmeg, and in street football it counts for more than a goal.
• Gym Floor Lines: the overlapping painted lines of a school hall where four sports share one floor.
• Mural Bloom: colour that grows across the shirt like paint on the wall behind a city court.
• House Paint Block: flat blocks of colour, like leftover tins on a garage shelf.
• Chalk Map: playground chalk marks, the kind you draw to show a teammate where to run.
• Akka Zigzag: a zigzag for the akka, the trick where you lift the ball over or around an opponent’s leg from behind.
• Rain or Shine: a long-sleeve keeper pattern for outdoor nights that do not care about the forecast.
• Flying Keeper: for the keeper who leaves the box and joins the attack.
• Fence Line: chain-link diamonds, sleeveless, for hot afternoons on the cage court.
• Blacktop Crack: the cracks you learn to dodge on an old outdoor surface.
• Winner Stays On: for the pickup rule that keeps the best team on and everyone else waiting.
• Free Agent sheet: for the player who signed up alone and got placed on a team of strangers.
• The Back Heel house pattern: our own, behind the Custom Back Heel Name Bar shirt.

Every pattern has 2 or 3 colourways named after paint and court colours, such as Clay and Cobalt, Mustard and Ink, Maple and Cobalt, and Clash Mustard. A squad can all wear one colourway, and the keeper takes a clash colourway of the same art, so you look like one team while the referee can still tell who can use their hands. Browse the whole wall in the gallery.

Original art only

We do not sell team, league, club, college, country, player, character or brand names, logos or crests, and we never will. The name field is for your name, your nickname or your squad’s own made-up word. Orders that ask for someone else’s name or mark are refused or cancelled. This is not us being fussy. It is the whole point: you should be wearing something that belongs to you. Our Intellectual Property Policy has the details.

Five on court

Futsal is five-a-side on a hard court with a smaller, heavier ball, and the positions have their own names. The “Five on court” section of the homepage lines up a full squad in one pattern: the pivo (the target player up front who holds the ball and lays it off), two alas (the wingers who run the sides), the fixo (the last player, who reads everything and rarely panics) and the keeper in a clash colourway. It is the easiest way to picture how your team will look when you all walk out together.

Shop by move

Some people shop by colour. Some shop by position. Some shop by the trick they are proudest of. The “Shop by move” section on the homepage groups shirts by four moves: panna, akka, sole roll and back heel. The last one gave the shop its name. A back heel is the pass nobody sees coming, played with the part of your foot that faces away from the action. A shirt built around your back felt like the right fit.

What we sell

The range sits in four groups.

• Court Art Jerseys: seven patterns, short or long sleeves, with an optional name and number included in the price.
• Keeper Shirts: Rain or Shine Long Sleeve, Gym Floor Clash and the Custom Flying Keeper.
• Blacktop and Pickup: Fence Line Sleeveless, Blacktop Crack, Winner Stays On, the Custom Free Agent and the Custom Back Heel Name Bar.
• Shorts, Socks and Layers: Sole Roll Shorts, House Paint Block Shorts, Gym Floor Lines Crew Socks, the Mural Bloom Warm-Up Long Sleeve Tee and the Chalk Map Pullover Hoodie.

Adult sizes run S, M, L, XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL and 5XL on every shirt, short, tee and hoodie, in one size row; 4XL and 5XL cost $3 more. Socks come in S/M and L/XL. Most jerseys come short or long sleeved, and long sleeves add $5. The three Custom shirts require a name and number, and can add a small front chest number for $3; the Name Bar shirt also lets you pick a Mustard or Concrete name bar. Not sure about size? The Size Guide explains how to measure a shirt you already own and how to collect sizes from a whole squad in one message.

Who it is for

The squad organiser

Winter registration opens around September to November and the first game is often in January. You are the one chasing eight people for their size and number in the group chat. Pick one pattern and one colourway, collect name, number, size and sleeves from everyone, and order the lot together. Then pick a clash colourway for your keeper. The “First whistle” tool on the homepage takes your first game date and shows the last day to order, based on our shipping estimates.

The free agent

You signed up alone and the league placed you on a team you have never met. Order one shirt, ask the group what colour they wear, and turn up with your name already on your back. It is a decent icebreaker.

The pickup regular

Same court, same night, same faces, nobody in matching kit. One shirt with your name on it makes you easy to shout at, which in pickup is a compliment.

The keeper

You need to look different from four outfield players, and you probably want long sleeves for diving on a hard floor. Choose a keeper shirt, or a clash colourway of your squad’s pattern.

The person who just likes the art

Plenty of people wear a jersey to the café, not the court. Leave the back plain and wear the pattern. Pair it with the hoodie when the evening gets cold.

The player in Canada, Australia or New Zealand

Shipping is free to you too, with the same 7–14 business days in transit as in the US. Import duties or taxes, if any, depend on your country’s rules, so check what applies where you live before a big squad order.

When the ball takes a bad bounce

Things go wrong in every game. Here is how we handle the usual ones. Typed the name as SMTIH instead of SMITH? Email us inside 24 hours of ordering and we change it before production. Ordered an L and it fits like a tent? Return it within 60 days of delivery with the free label we email you, and order the size you need. Parcel arrived damaged, or the print differs from what you typed? That is on us: send a photo by email and we put it right. The photo is deleted 30 days after delivery.

Our promise in numbers

The full details are on Shipping and Delivery, Returns and Exchanges and Refund Policy. Rule of thumb: order at least 17 business days before the day you need the shirts. If you spot a typo after ordering, email inside 24 hours and we fix it before it reaches the back.

Say hello

Back Heel, 19 Leland Hill Road, Sutton, MA 01590, US. We are an online shop with no showroom, so email is the way in: support@backheel.shop. Questions about a pattern, a squad order or a size? Start with the FAQs, head to Contact Us, or go straight to the shop and turn a few shirts around.