“And then it kind of just became this joke,” Francis said. “It’s Asbury Park. Park is in the name. But there’s not one place you could actually play soccer in this town. In New York, all these downtown creative kids have all these really cool teams. We’re like, ‘We should start a team!’ But there’s no place to play. ‘Well, screw it, what if we don’t actually ever play?’ And we had a good laugh.

“And then we said: ‘Hang on. There’s something there.’”

The gag got ever more elaborate, as Francis and Perkins created all the trappings of modern soccer, except for anything that resembled actually kicking a ball at a goal on a grass field. They made a logo featuring Tillie, a smiling face on a famous mural at a bar by the Asbury Park boardwalk and the city’s unofficial mascot. Through a contact, A.P.F.C. landed a jersey deal with Umbro, which made 100 jerseys that quickly sold out as word of the club spread organically through Francis and Perkins’s networks in the soccer and music industries.

Next, they put out a retro jersey with a “heritage logo” that “draws on our rich history of nonexistence,” Francis said with a chuckle. It depicts Morro Castle, a ship that caught fire and ran aground in the waters near Asbury Park in 1934. That jersey quickly sold out as well.

They found an architecture student in Sri Lanka on the internet, who, for $50, mocked up computer renderings of a small soccer stadium atop the city’s famous waterfront Convention Hall. Several news outlets picked up the story and reported it seriously.