Welcome to Nashville, whose new MLS stadium is the biggest, and is likely to be loudest, soccer stadium within the U.S.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The power inside GEODIS Park was surreal as a sellout crowd of greater than 30,000 Nashville SC followers received to witness the disclosing of the glowing new stadium in a 1-1 draw in opposition to the Philadelphia Union on a ravishing Sunday afternoon.

An amazing sense of delight stuffed the ambiance as thunderous “S-C” chants echoed all through the biggest soccer-specific stadium in the USA. Singer and songwriter Tommy Shaw of Styx kicked off the festivities, along with his prematch guitar riff sending the followers right into a frenzy.

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The Music Metropolis has rapidly embraced Nashville SC for the reason that staff joined the NFL’s Tennessee Titans and NHL’s Nashville Predators as its third main skilled staff in 2020. Video games had been initially performed at Nissan Stadium, house of the Titans, with the primary house match drawing 59,069 followers, setting a mark for the highest-attended soccer occasion in Tennessee.

It was throughout that inaugural season in 2020 that Nashville SC final endured a house loss. It then went unbeaten at house in the course of the 2021 marketing campaign — changing into the seventh staff in Main League Soccer historical past to realize that feat — and reached the playoffs in each seasons. Nevertheless, the journey to Sunday’s unveiling of GEODIS Park — dubbed by some followers as “the Citadel” — was a protracted, arduous course of.

MLS introduced Nashville as an enlargement staff in 2016, however the anticipated price of $275 million for a proposed stadium later elevated to $345m. Regardless of challenges and roadblocks raised by the coronavirus pandemic, the stadium building on a 10-acre website that was previously the Nashville Fairgrounds continued to press ahead. Demolition of the city-owned website started in March 2020.

“For any staff, whether or not it is in soccer or different sport, the stadium is the non secular house,” Nashville SC chief govt officer Ian Ayre mentioned. “For those who’re renting, it isn’t the identical as proudly owning, proper? Of all of the infrastructure and the elements we construct, it is an important.”

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Now in its third season, the membership has gained sufficient traction in Nashville to warrant funding from native celebrities. Final week, Titans star working again Derrick Henry joined Nashville native Reese Witherspoon and technology investor Jim Toth as minority house owners.

Amid all of the pregame festivities, there was nonetheless a recreation to be performed. Nashville SC was trying to prolong its house unbeaten streak to 20 matches — courting again to Nov. 20, 2020, the longest such streak in MLS. After being the extra aggressive staff within the first half, the hosts fell behind as Union ahead Mikkel Uhre etched his title as the primary objective scorer at GEODIS Park. However Philadelphia’s objective merely added extra gasoline to the group that was ready to erupt on the sight of a rating by the house staff. Nashville followers received their want when midfielder Randall Leal slipped a penalty previous Union goalkeeper Andre Blake, fulfilling a prophecy his father made earlier than the sport.

Leal sprinted to the nook and waved his fingers because the followers went wild. “I scored and simply ran to the followers,” Leal mentioned. “To be the primary one to attain and see the response from the followers, it was unbelievable.”

Nashville SC coach Gary Smith known as the group “magnificent,” including that the gamers felt the power from the second they walked onto the sphere for warm-ups. “The expectation and pleasure that surrounded this opening recreation was enormous,” he mentioned after the match. “To assume that the gamers did not really feel that will be inhuman. The ambiance was terrific.”

Nashville had a pair extra probabilities to internet a second objective, however the recreation completed 1-1, with exhausted gamers collapsing on the pitch as the ultimate whistle blew.

“It was an incredible ambiance, ? I believe the fellows, they got here out and had been prepared,” mentioned Blake, who made a sequence of spectacular saves for Philadelphia. “We spoke about being calm and being assured earlier than the sport, and I believe we did that.”

And whereas gamers do not sometimes keep on the sphere after the sport except they win, the house facet knew that Sunday was a special form of second. That is why they locked arms in entrance of the followers and sang the staff’s anthem, “By no means Give Up On You” by native band Judah & the Lion.

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“We put collectively a terrific run on the Titans [Nissan Stadium],” Smith mentioned. “We have started working to the place we kind that yet again right here [at Geodis Park]. We all the time knew the followers would give us that additional increase. Whenever you see simply what it was like on the market, I believe there is a fabulous alternative to attempt to harness that as a bunch. We have taken each first step on this area and hopefully will make it only a profitable interval as we had on the Titans.”

Nashville SC has now spent 544 days since final shedding at house and simply over two years since becoming a member of the league, Nashville SC are proper at house at their new fort for the primary of what followers hope would be the website of many extra improbable recollections to come back.

“To have our own residence is vitally essential,” Smith mentioned. “This venue now would be the place over the approaching years and a long time that fathers and sons will come to and look again on and say, ‘Do you bear in mind?'”