The final whistle had sounded, ending an emotional whirlwind of a 90-minute battle, and Jaylin Lindsey sat in the middle of the field trying to soak in what had happened.
A Charlotte native, Lindsey had been to Bank of America Stadium numerous times, watching the Carolina Panthers from the cheap seats and checking out European powerhouses come to Charlotte for preseason tournaments.
But nothing was quite like Saturday night for the 21-year-old Charlotte FC defender, who played in front of an MLS-record crowd of 74,749 in the expansion side’s first home game.
“To know that I’m that person on the field it was just unbelievable and why I’m just so proud of myself to be here and the team how we played and how we played and it was just a great night,” Lindsay said after the 1-0 loss to the LA Galaxy.
The club’s anticipated home opener has been discussed for months, with Charlotte FC officially bullishly targeting a record crowd as its goal.
It became real for Lindsay before the opening kickoff, when the entire crowd sang the national anthem.
“That’s when it just hit me that this is it, this is what we’ve been working for my whole life,” he said. “It’s a remarkable thing in my life that I come across and I feel like I accomplished it now and can just build from this.”
The previous MLS record was set at MLS Cup 2018, when 73,019 packed into Mercedes Benz Stadium to watch Atlanta United defeat the Portland Timbers in the title tilt.
The largest regular season in MLS history also belonged to Atlanta, which drew 72,548 for a match against the Galaxy on Aug. 3, 2019.
“We play football because we want to win. I believe that I am the happiest coach in the world,” Charlotte coach Miguel Angel Ramirez said. “I cannot describe it in words the energy and I would like to thank everyone that joined us in this party because it really was a party.”
Efrain Alvarez played spoiler to said party with a sensational second-half strike with his left foot to give the Galaxy the 1-0 win, dropping Charlotte FC to 0-2 on the young season.
Alvarez put a finger to his lips to signify his silencing the crowd before putting both hands to his ears in his goal celebration.
“It’s nice to see MLS grow that much,” Alvarez said. “I have been in the league for like three years now, so to see MLS grow that big in three years is something nice. I am used to it now, playing with Mexico, like for the Gold Cup final, with big crowds. It was nice, it was something really nice for MLS. And for the celebration, honestly once I scored it came to my mind. I just felt like silencing everyone, it was something from our group, that we wanted to shut down their party and we did.”
Before Greg Vanney became a head coach, first at Toronto FC and now with the Galaxy, he played in MLS, competing for the Galaxy in Major League Soccer’s first season. He’s had a front row seat to the massive growth of the league over the next 20-plus years and said the record crowd in Charlotte was just another sign of how far the league has come.
“It’s amazing. On the field. Off the field. In the stands. The new clubs that are coming in, the fan bases that they have before they even play one game, the ticket sales and the season ticket holders,” he said. “All that stuff just shows how the league continues to grow. How it’s getting ingrained and entrenched in the culture of North America. And, no different, I said this last week, but North Carolina is a hot bed for soccer.”
As Lindsey sat soaking in the moment at the end of the game, there was a special jersey exchange taking place between Galaxy veteran Sacha Kljestan and Charlotte rookie Chris Hegardt, who both came on as second-half substitutes. Back in 2010, Kljestan visited Hegardt at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, presenting a U.S. men’s national team jersey to Hegardt, who was battling liver cancer at the time.
The 20-year-old Hegardt not only beat cancer, but he continued his career, competing at Georgetown University and the Seattle Sounders academy, making 17 appearances with that club’s USL affiliate, Tacoma Defiance.
Charlotte signed Hegardt to a homegrown contract in January after acquiring his homegrown priority rights from the Sounders for $50,000 in General Allocation Money.
“I think for me, the whole moral of the story is just, be a good person,” Kljestan said. “It cost me nothing to be kind to him and his family that day, and if it just gave him one percent of hope or just made him smile a little bit that day, then it was all worth it.”
After ticking off two major milestones with their MLS debut and setting an attendance record in their home opener, Charlotte targets the next goals — first goal and first win.
“If we are able to compete until the end, with this big crowd that we are facing now at the beginning of the season, we have the most important thing,” Ramirez said. “We have the pace to build from that and at any day that will arrive for us.”
