INTERNATIONAL SOCCER
But Alan has been visiting different sites since 2018. And Ewen and David Graham, who ' s on our stadium side, have both gone around to a lot of the training sites. We’ ve been working on those relationships since long before I got here— probably six or seven years at this point.
SFM: What does the interaction look like with the host venues for the base camps and the training sites? What type of interaction do you have with the existing sports field manager at each site, especially with regard to how each site will be managed? Appelfeller: Part of us coming on early in this process was to make those relationships and have a working group that is not just Alan [ FIFA Senior Pitch Management Manager Alan Ferguson ] or Ewen [ FIFA Head of Pitch Management Ewen Hodge ] or the people at University of Tennessee and myself. There is a personal relationship that needs to be made with every groundskeeper. They are part of our team and we want them to feel that way. We ' ve spent a long time getting to know every groundskeeper and grounds crew at each one of these locations. Any of the guys on my staff can walk in and have a deep conversation with the groundskeeper. We are now to the point where a lot of those groundskeepers treat us no differently than they treat their favorite sales rep. Each site has a special meaning for us; we know the good and bad at each site, and what we could expect to happen at each site. We have helped them develop their staffing and their plan. We know that what we are bringing here is a huge ask for a lot of these sites, and we want to be good partners with them.
SFM: How far in advance did you have to start that process? Appelfeller: I came on in November, and one of the first things I did was go on the road to some of the sites and start building relationships. We hired two more people in January, and they have been at each site. Once every two or three weeks we have been going around in a rotation. Now, as the tournament is coming up, that will be there every two to three days.
SFM: Can you give us a feel for what your team looks like just on the on the training camp and base camp side of things? Appelfeller: Everything starts with Alan and Ewen, and they provide so much leadership and help to provide us with what we need. I fall directly under Ewen, overseeing all of the training sites for the United States and Mexico. We have Carlos Sartoretto, who is pitch cluster manager for the Mexico sites. In the U. S., we have Jason Griffith, who is in the northeastern portion of the country. Jason is a former groundskeeper for the Boston Red Sox and was head groundskeeper at Daytona International Speedway for seven or eight years. I know people probably don’ t think NASCAR fits with the soccer world; but when you ' re doing a track inspection for somebody driving over it at 220 miles per hour and something is not perfect, that is just as scary as having a pitch that can ' t perform right for the World Cup.
In the south— Texas to Florida— we have Alex Redd, who was formerly with LSU and the University of Tennessee. Then we just added three pitch venue managers, who are responsible for different regions of the country. In Charlotte, we have a consultant, Tanner Coffman, who is at TGL Live in Palm Beach Gardens. Jeff Fowler will be in Atlanta, and Evan Fowler will work the D. C. area and the Midwest sites we are using this year. We have three pitch venue managers, and next year that will expand to include a lot of different areas of the country. But right now, the team is three of us who are full time focusing solely on training pitches, and four different consultants working with us.
SFM: Once you get into the actual tournament schedule— whether that ' s Club World Cup or World Cup 26— what changes for you and your team while the tournament is going on? Appelfeller: For tournament time I will move to Miami, and I will live there for 45 days. Jason and Alex have already moved— they both have about
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