Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2017-2019, this paper explores how kinship is done through the particular transnational family affiliation that is established between male, Ghanaian footballer migrants and the people they call fathers, referred to here as “the football dads”. The football dads are people that the Ghanaian players singled out as some of the most important persons in their lives and careers. By unpacking who the football dads are, and what they do, the paper discusses what the naming of a father entails in practice. With the backdrop in a comparison of what fatherhood is understood and practiced in Ghana and Sweden with similar structures in football, the paper shows how this relationship is performed through transnational, reciprocal transactions of both emotional and financial character. Whilst acknowledging the power asymmetry inherent in one of the most archetypical power relationships there is; that between father and son, the paper focuses on the caring and loving aspects of the affiliation, as this was emphasized by both the footballers and the football dads. Finally, the paper demonstrates how intimate and personal relationships are intrinsically linked to global processes of commodification and capitalism, as manifested in the football industry. The football dad – footballer relationship is a key relationship within the football migration trajectory and the economic and relational migration infrastructure, a cross-cultural phenomenon of performative and creative, yet historically and socially grounded kinship.