North Carolina
Chelsea FC Club Director David Barnard talks game vs Wrexham at UNC
Wrexham takes on Chelsea July 19th at Kenan Memorial Stadium
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Wrexham takes on Chelsea July 19th at Kenan Memorial Stadium
I think you can go back to the first time that I personally came to America with, with Chelsea, that was in 2004. And when we first came, we were only playing in front of crowds, for example, 30,000 people. And what we tried to do is we try to, when we go to the States, not just come in and play a game and go, we try to leave some form of legacy, the Chelsea legacy, which we've done through our foundation and soccer schools, etcetera. Now, since 2004, there's been a complete mark on how we've achieved our aims in the US. And you've only got to look that everywhere we go. Now, it's 60,000 plus compared to 2004. And of course, when we played in, as you know, the stadium where you were 100 and 6000 people watching Chelsea and you know, half the stadium is blue and then we've been to a few cities now in the States where these three quarters of the stadium, which is we build up supporters, clubs in the States. So States is a great place for us. You know, it's not just from building up the brand of Chelsea. It's also a great place for us to train as a team and to play matches. Because this time of year when we come across, it's our preparation for the E P and the facilities here in the States are second to none. You know, the, the stadiums we play in that, we use quite a few NFL training grounds to train on And a little thing, a note to say that in three NFL training grounds that we played at, played in Pittsburgh back in 2004. I think it was, they went on to win the Super Bowl. We then trained at Seattle Seahawks, they went on to win the Super Bowl that year and we trained in Philadelphia for the Delta Eagles. They went on to win the Super Bowl that year. So you want to put your money on Philadelphia because that's where we're training this year. Ok. We make this venue compelling. It's just the, the ambiance of the place. You know, you can see that once this is probably turfed and it becomes sort of dressed as a soccer stadium, you can actually feel. Now the vibes that come that day when it is a soccer stadium for that 11 day, it will be totally fantastic emotions like right now just being here in America thinking about this upcoming game, how do you feel always excited, as I say, because it's not just that, especially coming here in Carolina, as I said initially. And when we had that first presentation is Carolina is somewhere where we North Carolina two, isn't it? You got to get the right one. Um, is that we've had a great reception, you know, we played twice at Charlotte over the last 20 years and we were there last year and just the warmth of the people, you know, they really take upon soccer, you know, they embrace it, you know, because we can go to some places where it may be an F N F city or whatever. But when we came to North Carolina, they embraced us as a soccer team and the enthusiasm of the crowd and the people that were watching us, you know, that's why we like coming here.