Nashville grows from 'not a soccer city' to hosting Club World Cup matches

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Soccer enthusiasts in Music City once numbered so few that when a fan spotted someone with a soccer bumper sticker, they could probably recognize the car's driver.

Now? Don't wave. Odds are it's a stranger.

Soccer has grown by leaps and bounds from the immigrants who played at a park decades ago through semi-pro to teams drawing only a couple hundred diehard fans eager to watch.

That thirst for soccer helped Nashville go from an outside chance at a Major League Soccer expansion franchise to taking the pitch February 2020 before the biggest crowd to see a match in the state of Tennessee. Now, Nashville SC will be hosting Club World Cup games at its GEODIS Park in June.

Ian Ayre, hired in May 2018 as Nashville SC's first CEO and now vice chairman of the MLS team, got a quick dose of skepticism about soccer on his cab ride from the airport to his hotel on his first day in town.

"The driver heard my accent and he's like, what are you doing here? I said, ‘Oh, I've come here to build a soccer team,' and he started laughing. And he said, ‘This isn't a soccer city.' Like that's not going to work here. Like you may as well kind of go home sort of thing. And little by little, we chipped away."

Now Nashville has the largest soccer-specific venue in the U.S. The 30,000-seat venue has hosted a Leagues Cup Final with Messi booed by local fans in 2023, and Aston Villa of the Premier League visits in August. Ayre said FIFA President Gianni Infantino had only compliments for what Nashville has created.

''He said to me, ‘I think it's incredible not only that you guys built this, but it feels like a truly authentic soccer experience,''' Ayre said.

Nashville's soccer pioneers

In the 1970s, Jose Fernandez and Fred Eckhardt helped build six soccer fields south of Nashville. Jose and Lois Fernandez also brought the first pro soccer team to Nashville in 1982 with the Diamonds of the then-American Soccer League.

Otey Smithson, now a board member of U.S. Adult Soccer, vice president of the Tennessee State Soccer Association's adult programs and a high school boys' soccer coach, grew up playing for Fernandez.

"They started the transformation of soccer in Tennessee,'' Smithson said.

Steve Klein also played on Fernandez's fields before high school, where the soccer team often drew more fans than the football team. After college, he played for the Nashville Metros in 1998 with crowds reaching up to 2,000 for games.

Klein remembers the team's owner trying to get Nashville's help building a stadium that never came for the Metros.

''His vision was a little bit earlier than what the city wanted maybe, because obviously now they've got things really rolling,'' said Klein, now director of coaching and MLS Next for Pennsylvania Classics.

MLS was interested in Nashville in 1999, and Devinder Sandhu asked the Adams family — owner of the NFL's Tennessee Titans, the Frist family of HCA and the Ingram family to invest the $3 million franchise fee. Nobody thought Nashville was a soccer city even with an assist from the U.S. Soccer Federation.

Now the principal owner of Nashville SC, John Ingram's group paid $150 million for the Nashville franchise granted in December 2017.

Sandhu, who played club soccer at Vanderbilt in the 1970s, helped start local youth programs, the Blues in 1978 and the Metros in 1989. The roster had players like three-time MLS Cup winner Richard Mulrooney, and Jon Busch, who also played for the U.S. men's national team.

Sandhu studied engineering at Vanderbilt and worked with the Nashville mayor's office during the design phase to ensure Nissan Stadium's field met minimum FIFA standards for World Cup play.

''It's a rocket ship that had been sitting on the launching pad for 70 years,'' Sandhu said of the sport's explosive growth in Nashville.

Soccer boom

The roots kept growing in 1976 when the Tennessee State Soccer Association opened. High schools followed with sanctioned championships in 1986-87. When Hans Hobson was hired as a coach for the Olympic developmental team, practices were held at the Metros' field next to a prison.

Hobson had to reassure parents it was safe to practice there.

''You were willing to take whatever,'' Hobson said. "We've kind of gotten kind of snobby now. ... ‘Why are we playing on this field? It's ratty, it doesn't have enough grass.' When we were growing up, we'd take whatever we could get.''

Now the executive director of the state soccer association, Hobson says Tennessee had approximately 35,000 registered players when he was hired about 14 years ago. Now? That's the number for the Nashville area alone, not counting independent groups or adults.

National team impact

U.S. Soccer also helped with the U.S. women first playing in Nashville at Nissan Stadium, home to the NFL's Tennessee Titans, in 2004. They are 5-0-1 all-time in Nashville with their latest game here in February 2023 at GEODIS Park.

The U.S. men's national team didn't play in Nashville until 2009 and are 5-2-2 all-time.

Rain led fans to stand for that 2009 game featuring a then-19-year-old Jozy Altidore and again through a 2011 match.

Clay Trainum, founder of the Nashville Soccer Archives, worked as a press officer for the U.S. team for the 2011 match against Paraguay. He said fans standing alerted people nationally to the local interest in soccer.

''I think that that kind of queued off, whether subconsciously in folks' heads, ‘If we can do this right, we can find a community that will support this team,''' Trainum said.

National connections

Cindy Parlow Cone, president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, is a native of Memphis claimed by Nashville soccer folks as one of their own. The area has sent plenty of players to U.S. women's national teams, though not the senior squad. Henry Ring is a Franklin native who played goalkeeper in MLS

Mulrooney coaches the Memphis men's soccer team. Stanford coach Jeremy Gunn played for the Metros in 1998. Klein coached U.S. national team star Christian Pulisic both with the Pennsylvania Classics and the U.S. youth national team.

''The tentacles have grown so much, and it's amazing to see where it started,'' Smithson said.

Southern-style approach

Tailgating is key piece of American-style football in the South, and that's become a tradition for Nashville SC and the Backline featuring seven different supporters' groups now.

Stephen Robinson, president of the Roadies' group between 2020 and 2023, recalls getting permission to tailgate with a friend in the parking lot at Vanderbilt University for Nashville SC games. Now he commutes to Nashville from Washington D.C. for games with people he considers family.

''There's way more than two people nowadays, but you get that sense of just being a part of something,'' Robinson said.

They do more than just party before matches and chant and sing through games. The Roadies, a non-profit group, help fund local youth soccer through Soccer for the Nations in an outreach started when one of their founders, Kyle Mountsier, took soccer balls to Haiti in 2014.

''We're the dumb idiots that want to make a city better," said Newton Dominey, a Roadies founder and original president in 2014.

Southern company

Nashville is hardly alone among Southern locales embracing soccer culture.

In North Carolina, the North Carolina Courage in the National Women's Soccer League has an enthusiastic fan base. Charlotte FC, which joined Major League Soccer in 2022, averaged 33,383 fans per game last year.

The Southern love of soccer extends beyond the pro teams. The University of North Carolina women's soccer team has won a staggering 23 national championships and regularly ranks in the top 10 in average home attendance.

What's next

Nashville missed out on the 2026 World Cup with the Titans building an enclosed stadium, taking the only venue big enough to host Cup matches off the market. That opens in 2027, and yes, Nashville wants the 2031 Women's World Cup with Ayre helping recruit future events.

Add to that a NWSL team to the list.

Ron Deal, among the founders of the Nashville Roadies' supporters group, is among those confident that is coming: ''We will have a professional women's soccer team. ... I'm disappointed it hasn't happened yet."

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AP Soccer Writer Anne M. Peterson contributed.

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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer