All eyes will be on Charlotte FC come Saturday, as the 2022 MLS expansion side plays their debut home match at Bank of America Stadium (7:30 pm ET | FOX, FOX Deportes), hoping to break the single-game regular-season attendance record with a crowd that could push 75,000 onlookers.
For the LA Galaxy, their role will be trying to spoil the party, as they make the cross-country trip to be Charlotte's opposition for the contest.
Being the antagonist for a team's first-ever home match comes with its own set of challenges, Galaxy head coach Greg Vanney told reporters on his Wednesday video call, with Charlotte itching to provide a show in their first match before home supporters.
"I think it's fantastic just for the game, for a new franchise to come into our league and have 75,000 people show up to the first one," Vanney said. "Clearly there's going to be a lot of emotion involved, both for their fans and for their team. For us, it's about managing that emotion and the excitement they're going to have at the beginning for sure and allowing the game to settle in. At the end of the day it becomes a soccer game at some point, but for sure at the beginning there's emotion, there's anxiousness, there's probably a lot of extra energy."
Vanney grew up in Virginia, not far from where Saturday's match will take place. He said Charlotte's buzz comes as no surprise, having witnessed the appetite for the sport present in the area.
"It's a hotbed," Vanney said. "There's been talented players there, soccer's been a big deal. You have the ACC, you have three fantastic universities all within each other in that area. It's a sports town. So, it's really not surprising that soccer is such a hit there.
"The first game is the culmination of a lot of excitement and a lot of work by many, many people to help bring that franchise to North Carolina," he added. "A lot of eyes will be on this game because it's their first and the sheer quantity of fans that are going to be at the game, it'll be a spectacle."
Having reviewed Charlotte's first match of the season, a 3-0 Week 1 defeat at D.C. United, Vanney said he didn't think that scoreline was necessarily reflective of the performance from head coach Miguel Angel Ramirez's team.
"I think they were a little unlucky in D.C. I thought they were organized," Vanney said. "They obviously want the ball, they want to play with the ball, they're not afraid to play through some pressure. They have good ideas. They were a little unfortunate in terms of the timing of the goals, and they were a bit against the run of play for me, just the way the goals came out. So clearly a team, like all teams in our league, every team is difficult to play against, every game is tough. We have to respect it and we have to perform and handle the whole environment the right way."
Galaxy forward Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez said LA are relishing the opportunity to play in the hostile environment and hopefully can continue a positive start to their 2022 campaign. Hernandez played the hero role during the Galaxy's Week 1 victory over defending MLS Cup champion New York City FC, scoring the game-winning goal in the 90th minute.
"We're going to go and expect a complicated team, like everyone else in this league," Hernandez said. "Regardless of whether they're new or not, we're going to respect them so much and we're going to expect that they're going to fight for their lives and it's going to be so tough to go over there on a turf field on the road.
"So I think they're going to be supported very well. That city is very excited that this moment came to them and they can go support their new team. I think it's going to be so, so tough and we're going to expect nothing less."
