Sam Surridge: The Englishman battling Lionel Messi for the MLS Golden Boot
With the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies a three-hour drive away, sports culture in Nashville often revolved around American football and ice hockey.
The city is home to the NFL’s Tennessee Titans and the NHL’s Nashville Predators, which Surridge enjoys watching.
“It’s pretty intense,” he explains, having been to a few games. “The way they play is different, they’re different types of people; these big guys are going to tear each other apart.”
But Surridge, who is reveling in U.S. Open Cup success, says Nashville has also become a “soccer city.”
The football club, whose chief executive Ian Ayre previously held the same role at Liverpool, was founded just nine years ago and joined MLS in 2020. The purpose-built Geodis Park accommodates over 30,000 fans. Miami’s visit on Sunday will be one of the most sought-after tickets of the season.
“A lot of people love sports in general,” Surridge says. “They’ll go to watch the NFL, the NHL, the football. They love it here. I’ve seen it grow and the Lionel Messi influence definitely helps.”
“It’s a much bigger deal in America. They want to have fun, which is great because at the end of the day, that’s what we do.
“We are lucky to have a lot of fans coming to our stadium, but when Inter Miami comes, many clubs change stadiums. This is a big deal for the football club.”
Surridge expects next summer’s World Cup in North America to further raise the profile of soccer in the U.S., but he worries about the heat; Nashville usually practices at 8 a.m. before it gets too hot.
“It will be really difficult for the players to get used to the heat,” he adds. “You saw it in the Club World Cup, where the teams couldn’t even train because it was so hot and it wasn’t easy.
“I can’t imagine what it would be like to play at 3pm in the middle of the day. You get water breaks but that doesn’t help at all.
“It’s going to be a lot slower. You don’t want to lose the ball and have to run around for half an hour trying to get it back into heat.”
