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Meet Pete Sibley: the man who draws cursed cartoons of famous footballers that you’ll never see the same way again

Social media can often be a two-sided coin: sometimes you see humanity at its absolute best, other times less so. This is neither of those — we just can't stop laughing.

Danny Jones - 15th February 2023

While scrolling aimlessly through Twitter over the last few days, we looked beyond all the worthwhile news stories and cutting-edge journalism and, instead, we chose to spend hours looking at daft, cartoon-based portraits of some of football’s most recognisable faces.

Caricatures of footballers are nothing new — they spark memories of walking down the beachfront on holiday and eyeing up fake Real Madrid shirts and so on — but these comedic little cartoons are like the kind you’re used to seeing.

Drawn by artist Pete Sibley, whose popularity online is growing with each comical even if admittedly cursed cartoon, he depicts footballers, managers and in a simple but ever-surreal style.

Regularly fusing two individuals’ likenesses together in an almost uncanny valley-esque manner, some are more exaggerated and silly than others, but one thing’s for sure: you’ll struggle to look at these people the same way ever again.

haaland caricature — **‘Guardihaaland’**

Pete Sibley cursed cartoons — **‘Guardihaaland’**

We’re not joking when we say he’s got literally dozens of these creepy combinations across his social media channels: 71 and counting, as far as we’re aware.

In fact, we know it’s at least 71 because you can literally buy Pete’s sketchbook which is filled with copies of his humorous drawings, not to mention individual prints if you want to gift someone perhaps the most unique and inexplicable kinds of artwork on the market.

These faces might be something, but we’d love to see the kind you get when your friend or loved one opens up one of these bad boys.

Here are some of his most random examples of late:

man sketching footballers as cartoons — **‘Carnacho’**

And just in case you were wondering, he doesn’t just focus solely on Man United and City figures either — though he certainly seems to have a knack for capturing their essence whilst also making them absolutely ridiculous.

Pete sketches players, managers and more from across all the football leagues, each just as hilarious ad confounding as the last.

When we asked him for a bit of background about himself and what his inspiration was, he simply said: “I just thought maybe somebody else would also find them funny.”

You were absolutely right, Pete.

To be honest, we think we like him staying somewhat of an enigma. On the one hand, it adds to his reputation (move over Banksy) and on the other, we’re not sure we want to dive too far into the mind that conjures up these absolutely wonderful but often unsettling sketches.

We’ll warn you that once you start going down the Pete Sibley rabbit hole, you won’t be coming back any time soon: we literally looked back through every single caricature we could find and still couldn’t pick a favourite.

As if this artistic series wasn’t weird enough, Pete isn’t the only person painting and drawing utterly cursed cartoons at the minute either…