ORLANDO, FL. – Talk to any Orlando City SC player or staff member about their forthcoming new stadium and the one word guaranteed to crop up in their first sentence is “home.”
Camping World Stadium may have been the venue where they played for their first two years in MLS, but everyone is aware of what the new location means.
“There are so many details, when you add them up, the best way to express it is that this is our home,” head coach Jason Kreis insisted. “No matter how you dress it up, the Citrus Bowl wasn’t really home, we were just renting it. This will be truly ours. And I hope we and the fans are all on the same page in saying our home is something we’ll be fiercely willing to protect.”
Portuguese defender Rafael Ramos agreed.
“It looks great,” he said. “You drive past and it just looks beautiful. It will be great for us and a very tough place for visitors to come – our home.”
“I like everything about it,” center back Jose Aja said. “We are really excited to have a place where we can have a home, that is more localized, that is our place. It gives us our identity. I couldn’t be happier.”
“We shouldn’t lose any home game there,” striker Cyle Larin added. “The fans deserve it and I think it will create a great atmosphere when we play there.”
While the look and style of the stadium all get glowing comments, one aspect of the field itself has the players most excited.
“It’s the grass,” said Italian midfielder Antonio Nocerino.
“Best feature? Grass,” added Ramos, who was injured last year while playing on Camping World’s artificial surface last year.
“Playing on grass is totally different. It’s much better,” Nocerino said. “The speed and bounce of the ball; a player’s movement, directions, timing; everything is different. It is more natural and normal for us to play on grass again. Now we need to turn this stadium into the definition of a home advantage. We want to make teams coming in uncomfortable and make each home game feel like a cup final.”
For Nocerino, who has played in the San Siro in Italy, Camp Nou in Spain and Stamford Bridge in England, there is one other over-riding feature.
“It’s a very English-style stadium,” he pointed out. “The supporters are close to the pitch, they get to see a spectacle right in front of them and feel connected to it. Having played in England, there is a definite atmosphere of fear when the supporters are so close, which is what we hope to create when teams visit us. We’re lucky to have a stadium that’s completely ours, and we must take advantage of that.”
Is there a sense of déjà vu for Kreis, after a similar transition as coach of Real Salt Lake, when they moved into Rio Tinto Stadium in 2008?
“A thousand percent,” he admitted. “To be coaching in a football stadium last year on an artificial surface brought me back to my early days with Real Salt Lake. We believe, as it was there, the new stadium with a real grass field can be a game-changer for us.”
New signing Will Johnson was a player on that Real Salt Lake team under Kreis at the time of the Rio Tinto opening, and he believes he learned a valuable lesson.
“Moving from a football to a soccer stadium, from turf to grass, that was a big deal,” Johnson said. “And you’re going in to a place you call home. I bet if you ask most of the guys here, Camping World Stadium didn’t feel quite right.
“We will make this our home and treat it like our home. We’ll invite 25,000 friends every week and will make it hard for visiting teams. I think you’ll see a sense of pride from the players and staff that wasn’t there at Camping World, because it wasn’t ‘their’ stadium.”
