How Acclaimed Photographer Fede Peretti Captures Football Passion Unlike Anyone Else | OneFootball

We sit down with famed Argentine football photographer Fede Peretti to get the lowdown on what it means to capture the sport through a lens.

When we last spoke to Federico Peretti in 2020, we explored his passion for River Plate and photography during one of the most successful eras in the club’s history.

Now, nearly seven years later, we sit down with Peretti again to revisit his career and perspective on Argentine football. He reflects on how his passion for photography developed, his journey from covering lower-league football to photographing River Plate, the Argentina national team and major international competitions, as well as the challenge of finding unique stories and perspectives in a sport that is photographed thousands of times every week.

Peretti also discusses the passion and culture surrounding Argentine football, his experience documenting River’s golden era under Marcelo Gallardo, the growth of MLS and football culture in the United States, the impact of technology on sports photography, and how years behind the camera have taught him not only about football, but also about people, identity, family, and life.

Urban Pitch: When you look back on your career, what does football mean to you beyond simply being a sport you photograph?

Fede Peretti: Football is a passion. It may sound like a cliché, but it really is. As several coaches and players have told me, it is “the most important of the least important things in life.” And in some way, I really identify with that definition.

My journey has led me to work on different film productions connected to football, including series, movies and photography books. But everything I do around football today really comes from that passion and curiosity to understand it more and more.

My first film and my first photography book, El otro fútbol, came directly from visiting those grounds while I was beginning to photograph youth football. I was curious to discover that other world of football, to portray it and understand what was behind those stories. And that curiosity is still very much present.

Even today, when I travel along Argentina’s roads, I have the address of my destination marked on my GPS, but I also have stadiums and football grounds marked. If I pass through a town and see that there is a pitch nearby, I will often make a detour, go in, explore the place and take a photograph. And it doesn’t necessarily have a professional purpose. Many times, I simply do it out of curiosity.

I think that’s the answer: football is closely connected to my life because what I do professionally around it comes from a genuine passion. It is a curiosity that constantly stays with me and makes me continue looking for football wherever I go, even when I’m not working.

Football is full of moments that last only a fraction of a second. What separates a decent football photograph from an iconic one?

I think that when you’re looking for an iconic photograph, you don’t actually go out looking for one. At least in my case, I try to have my own perspective, to find something that, beyond what the outlet I’m working for is asking of me, represents me and makes me proud.

With photographs of River, for example, I also want fans, especially those who can’t be at the stadium, to feel, when they see one of my photographs, that they were there. I want them to find something they may have missed during a television broadcast. A photograph can allow them to return to that moment or discover something they hadn’t seen.

For me, that has a lot to do with the search and the desire to find a different perspective. But there is also a huge element of luck in football. You have to be prepared, have good equipment, have experience and stay alert, but circumstances are often decisive. If a player celebrates toward the opposite side, you miss a great photograph. If, instead, he comes toward you, stands in front of you and has a celebration that later becomes memorable, you have a photograph that might become iconic.

That goes beyond the photographer’s skill to some extent. It’s about being in the right place at the right time, prepared for when something happens. But you also have to let yourself be surprised by football, by the protagonists and by the situations that appear in front of your camera. I think a good photograph is a combination of all of that: perspective, preparation, experience, opportunity, and also a little bit of luck.

The Passion of Argentine Football Through a Lens

Argentina has an incredibly passionate relationship with football. Do you think that passion changes the way football is seen through a camera lens?

I don’t necessarily think it changes the way football is seen through a camera. At least in my case, I’ve been to matches where there were barely 15 spectators, in very low-level leagues, and I still felt that I could find images full of passion. It can even be just one fan in a stand.

There is one image that represents this very well for me and that also became one of the most important images from my first film, El otro fútbol, which was released in cinemas in 2012. It was taken in Ushuaia, in the Ushuaia League, on a very cold and rainy day. There was a single fan in a wooden stand at Hugo Lumbreras Stadium. He was a father watching his son, who was playing in the rain. He didn’t have an umbrella either and was completely soaked, but he stayed there, supporting him. That image contains an immeasurable amount of passion. That father was enduring the cold and rain simply to support his son while he played the sport he loved.

So perhaps it’s not only about the great passion that exists for football in Argentina, but also about the individual passion of each of its protagonists. In my case, the passion we have for football also made me passionate about it and led me to look for those small stories that often go unnoticed but also speak to what this sport means.

For me, a photograph full of passion doesn’t necessarily have to show a packed crowd cheering. It can simply be a father sitting alone in a stand, in the rain, watching his son play.

You are particularly well known for your photographs of River Plate matches. What makes El Monumental special from a photographic perspective?

El Monumental is, for me, the most beautiful stadium in the world. It already was when I went there as a fan, when I walked through absolutely every stand, and it has something that remains to this day: the feeling of being at home. But every time I arrive at the stadium, I also feel that it is an opportunity to reinvent myself. El Monumental is constantly changing, becoming more beautiful, but the people who go there remain the same. You could simply stay there photographing the drums, flags, or players, but my personal challenge is to find something different in a place I know extremely well.

I want someone who watches a lot of River matches, and who knows El Monumental perfectly, to find something new every time they look at one of my photographs. That’s why, even though I often stick to the positions where I usually work, the walks I take around the stadium or certain searches that I already know, I try to come away with something different every time I go.

The previous match, against Argentinos Juniors, was especially significant because River won again after a long time and, on top of that, it was my 370th match at El Monumental. I experienced many of those matches as a fan, but I think I covered more than half of them as a photographer. Having gone to photograph River’s stadium more than 200 times forces you to sharpen your eye. Above all, it forces you to maintain that desire to keep finding something new in a place that, in some way, already feels like home.

Since you began capturing moments at River Plate, how would you describe what it was like to experience Marcelo Gallardo’s first era?

Experiencing River under Marcelo Gallardo was something I think all River fans should be proud to have witnessed. I had started photographing River matches in 2010, so I first experienced one of the saddest periods in the club’s history and, shortly afterward, saw how everything began to change.

I was able to experience the beginning of Gallardo’s era from very close up and follow it for so many years, witnessing so many results and experiences that, in a way, also fulfilled that childhood dream of being able to travel to Japan with River or accompany them to finals in other countries.

The truth is that it was an enormous source of pride and joy, the kind that goes far beyond the professional side of things. And during all those years, my own life was changing too. During that period, my two children, Vicente and Alfonso, were born. They are now 11 and almost 9 years old. So while River was experiencing such a glorious period, I was also changing as a person, photographer, and fan.

Being able to become a father while also passing on my love for River to my children during such a glorious period for the club makes everything even more meaningful. In a way, all of those things happened at exactly the right time.

Snapping pics in the World of MLS and CONCACAF

You worked with FOX Sports during the CONCACAF Champions Cup: Juego de Campeones. What was it like being in MLS stadiums and working with clubs such as Nashville and Inter Miami? 

Both last year and in 2026, I had the privilege of directing the CONCACAF Champions Cup: Juego de Campeones series, which allowed me to follow the competition from the beginning through to the finals and get very close to a lot of teams and protagonists, as well as experience a different football culture.

Specifically regarding MLS teams, I followed not only Nashville and Inter Miami, but also Los Angeles Galaxy, LAFC, Seattle Sounders and other teams. The project also took me to many different places. I even went to Jamaica to see the Galaxy play Mount Pleasant in Kingston. There, you could clearly see the difference in budgets and structures between a major MLS team and a practically amateur Jamaican side.

But the most interesting thing for me was being able to get an inside look at MLS teams and see how football culture is growing in the United States. I think that growth is being driven heavily by Latin American immigrant communities, who are in some ways bringing many of the football traditions and passion from their home countries to their new places of residence.

That is also making clubs realize that they have an increasingly large fan base that they need to respond to. And that creates a virtuous cycle: they start bringing in high-profile players, those players generate interest and business, and from there the competition becomes increasingly stronger.

In the last two editions, for example, the champions were Mexican teams, but you can see that American teams are becoming increasingly competitive, as was the case with the Vancouver Whitecaps, who reached the 2025 final. These are teams that are no longer simply participating, they are seriously challenging for prominence.

I think that’s the most interesting thing I was able to see through the series: how MLS is growing and how, little by little, it is claiming a more prominent position that for many years had been concentrated more heavily among Mexican teams.

Today, fans see thousands of football photographs every week. How do you find a different perspective and avoid simply taking the same images as everyone else?

I think my relationship with both photography and film comes, in part, from a personal need: beyond thinking about the audience that will eventually see the images, when I go to a stadium I want to come away with a photograph that I haven’t seen anywhere else. I don’t always achieve it, but that’s the search.

Many times I can get good editorial photographs, capture a goal celebration, a victory or a specific image that the outlet needs, but if I don’t also come away with that unique photograph, the one that gives me a different feeling, I feel like something is missing.

As I said before, I’m interested in finding an image that allows a River fan living 2,000 kilometers from El Monumental to feel, even for a moment, as though they are inside the stadium. I think that’s what I look for every time I go to a match: finding that unique photograph that allows me to carve out a small space for myself within a coverage that I often share with many other photographers.

I’ve been covering River matches for years with Revista 1986, one of the few football publications still being printed monthly and continuously in Argentina. Of course, I have to deliver the photographs the magazine needs for its edition and social media, but I try to go a little beyond that.

I look for the image that perhaps other photographers don’t have the time, desire, or opportunity to stop and find. I think that’s where the difference lies: doing the job you’re required to do, while at the same time leaving room for your personal search. Because when that photograph appears, the one that nobody else took and that truly represents you, you feel that it was worth being there.

Technology has changed photography enormously. Do you think modern equipment has made the photographer’s job easier or, on the contrary, placed even more emphasis on creativity and the ability to tell stories?

I think it’s a bit of both. Technology has undoubtedly made some things much easier. When I started taking photographs, I still worked a lot with film. I had rolls of 36 photographs and knew I had only those 36 opportunities. That meant I had to think very carefully about every composition. At the time, I didn’t even photograph that many moments of play: I went to stadiums and photographed the stands, the fans and the situations that caught my attention, but each day had a very specific limit.

Today, by contrast, I probably take around 1,000 photographs at the match where I take the fewest. Technology has also made it much more accessible for many people to own equipment capable of producing high-quality images. Today you can have a professional or semi-professional camera for a much lower cost than a camera with those capabilities would have cost 20 or 30 years ago.

But at the same time, I think that democratization also encourages creativity. More and more people are taking photographs, there are more and more photographers in stadiums and, precisely because of that, what ultimately differentiates one person from another is their perspective.

There is the craft, which allows you to deliver the work you’re asked to do, but then there is your personal perspective, that search for something different. I don’t see it as competition between photographers, but rather as a personal need to contribute something of your own. Because if we all looked for exactly the same thing, all the photographs would be identical.

And that’s precisely what is interesting: if you go to a River match where there might be 50 photographers, you won’t necessarily find the same photograph 50 times. Each person has a different perspective, sensitivity and creative search. And I think that, ultimately, is what allows photography to remain a creative discipline, even in an era when technology allows us to do many things that were previously unimaginable.

What have you learned about football and about people through the thousands of hours you’ve spent behind a camera?

After so many hours behind a camera, I don’t know how much I’ve specifically learned about football, but I have learned a tremendous amount about life. And, interestingly, many of the things I learned didn’t happen at the exact moment I was taking a photograph, but during everything that happened beforehand.

When I started taking photographs, around 17 years ago, I didn’t have accreditation and had to go to Primera D stadiums, the fifth tier of Argentine football, very early. I would arrive three or four hours before the match, talk to the person at the entrance, then ask the referee for permission, explaining that I wanted to work and that I was just starting out. And while I waited for all of that to happen, I had practically three free hours in an empty stadium.

So I started talking to the person working at the food stand, to people who worked at the club, and asking them about the history of the place. In that way, I learned thousands of stories that helped me understand those clubs much better, but also the people and the reality surrounding them.

I think that’s when I learned that behind every club there is much more than a result, a shirt, or a match. There are family stories, sacrifices, dreams, people who work for years to sustain an institution. And all of that is football too.

Later, with time, I had the opportunity to go from those Primera D stadiums to following River around the world, or being at major finals and huge venues. But deep down, I’m still looking for the same thing: to understand the stories behind what I’m photographing.

And I think that’s what football has taught me most: no matter how completely the setting changes, from a small Primera D ground to a stadium in Japan, there are always people and stories. And many times those stories are much more interesting than the match itself.

Looking back at all your work over the years, is there a photograph that tells something about your own life and career that other people might not be able to see?

Honestly, I have many photographs that represent much more to me than what the image itself can show. Someone might see a photograph because they think it’s beautiful, because they like the player, the moment, or the surroundings, but behind many of my photographs there is much more. I put a lot of myself into what I do and, in some way, I think my own story is also present in many of my images.

If I had to choose one, I’d probably pick one I took last weekend. I had the opportunity to have my children in the stands at El Monumental watching a match. Because of my work, it’s not usually possible for me to go with them, but thanks to a friend, they were able to be there. River scored the first goal of the match, which was also the team’s first goal of the championship after four games, and I was photographing the celebration. After photographing Montiel celebrating, I looked toward the stands and saw my older son shouting and singing after the goal. So I took a photograph of him.

To anyone who sees that image, it would probably just be another photograph of a fan celebrating a goal. But for me, it’s my son celebrating a goal in the place where we most love watching football in the world. And that’s when the photograph takes on another dimension.

I see my son, but I also see my own childhood. I see Fede as a kid, the boy who dreamed of one day being inside a stadium, taking photographs and telling stories. So perhaps that photograph sums up many things about my life that someone looking at it from the outside could never know.