Summer at Vivid Ink is always our busiest season. The sun comes out, the sleeves come off, and suddenly everyone in the chair wants something bold enough to survive a beach holiday. But this July, there’s an extra reason the studios have had the match on in the background between clients: England are through to a World Cup quarter-final, and after a proper rollercoaster of a Round of 16 against Mexico, they’re facing a Norway side who’ve turned Erling Haaland loose on the world’s best defences all tournament.

Football and tattoos have always been close cousins — shirts get printed with names, but skin tells the longer story. So while the country argues about formations and penalty takers, we thought we’d do what we do every summer tournament and dig into the ink (or, in a couple of cases, the very deliberate lack of it) behind the players carrying England and Norway into the last eight.

It’s become a bit of a tradition on this blog, if we’re honest. We covered the tattoos doing the rounds at the Euro 2020 final, went deep on Raheem Sterling’s collection and Memphis Depay’s sleeves that same summer, and told the story behind the Lionesses’ ink when they went all the way at the 2023 World Cup. Every major tournament, football gives us a reason to talk about why people choose to mark their skin — and just as often, why some of the best in the world choose not to.

The Mexico Escape Act

Let’s rewind to Monday night first, because England didn’t make it look easy. Jude Bellingham scored twice in the first half to send England 2-0 up, cool as you like, doing exactly what he’s built a career on doing — turning up in the biggest moments and making them look routine. Harry Kane added a penalty to make it three, captain’s armband earning its keep again.
Then it got interesting. Jarell Quansah, thrown into the side and doing a solid job of it, picked up a second-half red card, and England spent the last 40-odd minutes defending a slender lead with ten men against a Mexico side that smelled blood and pulled it back to 3-2. It’s the kind of match that ages a manager five years and gives fans a genuine ulcer, but England held on. Scrappy, nervy, occasionally chaotic — and absolutely a quarter-final ticket. Sometimes the performances that matter most in a tournament aren’t the prettiest ones; they’re the ones where a team finds a way to survive itself. Tattoo artists know that feeling too — the pieces you’re proudest of are rarely the ones that went perfectly to plan.

Enter the Vikings

Norway’s route to Miami has its own story, and it’s arguably an even bigger one for a country that hasn’t played at a World Cup since France ’98. Haaland scored twice as Norway saw off Brazil 2-1 in the Round of 32, which is not a sentence Norwegian football has been able to write very often. It’s Norway’s first ever World Cup quarter-final, full stop, and Haaland’s tournament tally is sitting at seven goals — a number that should be making England’s back line lose sleep this week.
It hasn’t been entirely smooth going into Saturday — reports of the squad being moved out of their Florida hotel and a sickness bug doing the rounds in camp have added a bit of late drama to the build-up. But underdog stories with a bit of chaos attached are usually the best ones, and Norway have already outperformed every reasonable expectation just by being here.
Haaland won’t be doing it alone, either. Alexander Sørloth has been a genuine threat alongside him up front, Antonio Nusa has caused problems out wide all tournament, and Martin Ødegaard is still pulling the strings in midfield the way he does every week for Arsenal. This is the deepest, most talented Norway squad in a generation, built around a golden run that manager Ståle Solbakken will have barely believed possible when qualification started.
England face Norway in Miami on Saturday 11 July, kick-off 10pm BST — a late one for anyone watching from the UK, but nobody’s missing this.

The Ink-Free Enigma

Here’s the twist for a tattoo blog: the two players most likely to decide this game — Bellingham and Haaland — don’t have a single tattoo between them.
Bellingham’s had to publicly deny having one more than once. Years ago, a video game character model gave him what looked like a neck tattoo, and the rumour has refused to die ever since, repeated so often that FIFA effectively created a myth out of a rendering glitch and an old mole. He’s spoken about steering clear of ink and, by most accounts, the party lifestyle that tends to go with it, preferring to let the football do the talking. For a 22-year-old already being talked about as a Ballon d’Or contender, that’s a fairly disciplined position to hold.
Haaland is the same story from a different angle. In a dressing room where tattoos are practically a uniform, he’s the one with completely clean skin, and it’s reportedly a deliberate choice tied to the way he was raised to think about his body and his career. Whatever the exact reasoning, it’s become part of the Haaland brand almost as much as the goals — the most physically dominant striker in world football, and not a single needle mark on him.
We get asked in consultations, more than people might expect, whether everyone in football has tattoos. The honest answer is no — plenty of the best players in the world have decided ink just isn’t for them, and that’s exactly as valid a choice as covering an arm in meaningful pieces. A tattoo should say something about you because you wanted it there, not because it’s expected. Bellingham and Haaland are walking proof that you don’t need ink to make a statement; you can build one with your feet instead.

The Three Lions Who Do Wear Their Story

Not every England player is following the clean-skin trend, though, and a couple of the squad’s stories are worth telling.
Marcus Rashford has never been shy about wearing his history. A lion and cub piece across his torso nods to strength and to the family that raised him in Wythenshawe, while “Family First” sits inked as a permanent reminder of where his priorities stay even at the top level of the game. Angel wings across his upper back round out a set of tattoos that read less like decoration and more like a scrapbook — the people, places and values that got him here. It’s a good example of something we talk about constantly with clients: the best tattoos usually aren’t the biggest ones, they’re the ones with a story you can actually tell someone at a barbecue.
Declan Rice takes a quieter approach but with just as much meaning packed in. A simple armband on his left arm marks the birth of his son, understated by design, the kind of piece that doesn’t need to shout to matter to the person wearing it. He’s also inked with “1241” — his legacy number as England’s 1,241st capped senior international, a permanent record of a milestone that no amount of Wikipedia edits can take away from him. It’s a lovely idea, honestly: turning a stat into skin, making a number that would otherwise live in a record book into something personal.

Ødegaard’s New Chapter

Over in the Norway camp, captain Martin Ødegaard spent most of his career tattoo-free too — until this year. He was spotted with a first tattoo on his wrist, a short inscription reading “It’ll probably just be you and me,” with his girlfriend Helene Spilling wearing a matching piece on her arm in the same lettering. It’s the kind of understated, quietly romantic tattoo that’s become genuinely popular with couples over the last few years — small, personal, deliberately low-key rather than a big showy gesture. Reports even suggest it caught his Norway teammates off guard when he revealed it, which tracks; Ødegaard has never exactly been the flashiest personality on the pitch, so a subtle wrist piece with a private meaning fits him far better than anything loud would.
Matching tattoos get a bit of a reputation as a risky move, but done well — small script, good placement, a phrase that actually means something rather than a generic quote — they can be some of the most personal pieces we do. If Ødegaard’s version is any indication, less is very much more.

Ink and the Height of Summer

All of this lands at the exact point in the calendar when we’re busiest anyway. Summer brings the same questions into every studio across the chain: what heals well when you can’t stay covered up, what survives sun and sweat and salt water, and what actually still looks sharp by September rather than fading into a smudge by August bank holiday. If you caught our piece on botanical designs a few weeks back, you’ll know summer is when we lean into pieces that work with bare skin rather than fighting against it — clean linework, good placement on areas that’ll actually see daylight, and colours chosen with UV exposure in mind rather than against it.
Aftercare matters more in July than at any other point in the year. Fresh ink and direct sun are a bad combination — we’re talking proper SPF, loose clothing over new pieces for the first couple of weeks, and resisting the urge to jump straight in the sea with a tattoo that’s barely out of the cling film stage. Whatever’s inspiring the design — a summer holiday, a World Cup run, a phrase that means something only to you and one other person — the healing rules don’t change with the occasion.
It’s also worth saying: none of this means you have to rush. Every summer we see people walk in wanting something finished before a specific date — a holiday, a wedding, in this case maybe a semi-final — and every summer we say the same thing. A good tattoo is worth getting right rather than getting fast. If Saturday goes England’s way and you want something to mark it, we’d rather book you in properly for a design you’ll still love in five years than rush a piece just to have it healed before kick-off next weekend.

Whatever Happens Saturday

Nobody knows yet whether it’ll be Bellingham’s calm or Haaland’s ruthlessness that decides this one, or whether Rashford, Rice or one of the substitutes writes themselves into the story instead. What we do know is that football at this level is a genuinely great excuse to talk about why people get tattooed in the first place — to mark a milestone, to remember where you’re from, to say something true about yourself in a way that lasts. Some of the best players in the world have decided that story doesn’t need to be written on skin at all, and that’s fine too.
Whether Saturday sends England into a semi-final or ends the run in Miami, we’ll be watching with one eye on the football and the other on the ink, same as every summer. If the match has got you thinking about a piece of your own — whether it’s a tribute like Rashford’s, something understated like Rice’s, or a first tattoo altogether the way Ødegaard just found out — our artists are always happy to talk it through in a consultation. No pressure, no obligation, just a conversation about what your story actually is.

Come on England.