COVID may have delayed it a year, but Charlotte FC finally kicked off its inaugural season. One of the biggest stories alongside their DP signing of former Leicester defender Christian Fuchs is Queen City native, Jaylin Lindsey.
I caught up with Jaylin a few days after their match with Atlanta United (which saw CFC suffer a heartbreaking stoppage time loss) to talk about the soccer journey that led him back to his hometown team.
EL Johnson: Jaylin. Appreciate you for taking the time to chat. We’re gonna jump right into it. So can you tell us about when you fell in love with soccer?
Jaylin Lindsey: Yeah, so I fell in love with soccer, probably around the age of like four or five. My mom played soccer. So that’s where I got kind of my influence from.
She was kinda like my first coach, you know, growing up as a young player. So the energy that she fed off with soccer was kind of passed down to me. That’s when I started falling in love with it, through my mother’s influence.
EJ: Who were some of your favorite players growing up?
JL: Uh, growing up, obviously you know, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi are my favorites. And to be fair, I really didn’t really watch or actually focus on soccer until I was say 12 or 13 years old. My first game was Liverpool. I watched them, so I’m a big supporter of them, but yeah, those were the two players I really watched growing up.
Those are the players that I watched YouTube videos of before going into a 8v8 game or an 11v11 game and stuff like that. So they were kind of like my two big inspirations growing up.
EJ: Okay. So Some of your biggest inspirations were attacking players but you play defense. So how does that happen?
JL: Naw so it’s funny because I was a forward, like pretty much most of my life until I got to the age of like 14, 13 years old. I was actually a striker; and then I started playing at Shaw soccer academy in Charlotte and one of my coaches moved me to center defensive mid, so then I kinda started playing there for a little bit. It was kind of hard at first, but then I adapted.
I don’t know if they still do them now, but back then they used to have market training centers for U.S. Soccer and they’d select players from a certain region, you know, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina and they’d all come together and do a training session in front of U.S. Soccer, youth coaches for the national teams.
I remember when I got there, Everybody was kind of like, nah, I’m a forward I’m a midfielder. So it got to the point where I was like, well shoot, I guess I’m gonna play defense this camp or whatever. So I got stuck playing center back.
At the end of the session, the scout goes: “oh yeah, we only invited two guys from this region to go to the U-14 national team” and one of them was me, surprisingly. I was like, well, I just played out a position, never played center back in my life and now, i’m about to get called onto one of the biggest stages at my age.
So then from then on I was a center back. Once I got to maybe like the U-17 level youth national team, I got moved to right back and I’ve been right back ever since. So it’s actually a funny story going from playing at forward to, you know, becoming a defender.
EJ: Yea gotta do what you gotta do, right? To get it on the field.
JL: Exactly.
“My family is here, so it’s just a true honor to come back here and play in a city I’m so familiar with. It’s a true honor to be back here.”
Jaylin on playing in his hometown of Charlotte
EJ: Do you have any standout memories from your time playing so far? It can be youth, pro, etc.
JL: Yeah, I think my biggest two, I should say three actually right now, Actually, let me go four sorry. I keep going up.
I’ll say my biggest would have to be my first pro debut when I was 16 years old in Kansas, with their USL team. Obviously just me being that young and making my debut at such a young age, It was just such an accomplishment of mine that I never thought would come so early. But sure enough, it did and I wanted to cherish the moment. So, I think that was one of them.
Then my other two, i’ll put them together, playing in the U-17 World Cup qualifying and the U-20 World Cup qualifying. Those two together were such a great experience because growing up, you watch the United States national team, the full Men’s National Team, and you watched them go through qualifying matches and stuff like that. To kind of like mimic that a little bit at such a young age, it’s just an amazing feeling.
I would say my third one would have to be playing in a U-17 world club in India. That was just such a great experience to go out there and be around a different culture. People can’t really say every day that they played in the World Cup and I could say for myself, I played in the world cup.
My last one had to be this past game with Charlotte FC, having one of the biggest crowds in MLS history. Obviously for myself, I was the biggest attendance I’ve ever played in front of and it was just an amazing feeling, especially being in my hometown. I’m back here, back home and especially in a stadium I’m so familiar with, It was such a great feeling. So those are really kind of like my four or five, biggest points in my life.
EJ: For Sure! That’s actually a perfect segue. You being a Charlotte native, what does it mean to you to play for your hometown team?
JL: Oh, yeah, it means a lot! Like I tell people all the time, growing up, I always wanted to have that team to look up to, like a professional team. With my age, being young, back then it didn’t come about. I was in Kansas (City) when they announced Charlotte FC was coming, I was like, you know, at some point I want to play for them, like for sure, I want to go back home and play. At the time I honestly didn’t know it would come this quick. I’m blessed that I’m back here, i’m back home. My family is here, so it’s just a true honor to come back here and play in a city I’m so familiar with. It’s a true honor to be back here.
EJ: I’m guessing you put some calls in to your agent, like, “Hey, make that happen for me” lol.
JL: Naw, naw lol, I was just trying to stay focused on what I had to do. I was in Kansas and then it came about that Charlotte was kind of interested, I couldn’t waste the opportunity to weigh it. I was so excited to come back here and play.
EJ: You mentioned that one of your big playing moments was the home opener, that first home game as a Charlotte FC player. Can you describe that day to me? What types of emotions you were feeling? What was the vibe like before kickoff? What’s the energy like around that day?
JL: Yeah. So I woke up and I was just like, “today’s the day, today’s the day that everybody’s been hyping up. Everyone’s been saying that the attendance kept going up each week, So it was just like, today’s the day that you’ll get the job done.
The entire day, I’m just kind of envisioning myself playing in the stadium, you know, doing my thing a little bit. Just trying to get to the stadium, i’m like 3 minutes away from the stadium and took me 25 minutes to get there, just because of how many people were in the streets. As I’m driving, I’m sitting here like, “this is a lot of people, like this is going to be a crazy game” you know. I got to the stadium and I was just excited. I remember I had the biggest smile on my face in the locker room.
JL: We had a little team huddle and I just had the biggest smile on my face because this is a moment. You know, this type of game is something I’ve been waiting for and preparing for my whole life, games like this. So I was ready and prepared for it.
Walking out, even for warmups, it was just so loud. It was such a great atmosphere to be a part of, especially before kickoff, it was just amazing. I think what really got me going was the National Anthem. The singer got cut off a little bit, but you had the entire stadium singing it.
It was almost like I was at a concert and I was singing along, you know? It’s just a great feeling being at Bank of America games, I’ve been there. And now you’re that player down there and you have 75 thousand people behind you cheering you on. You can’t get much better than that, So it was just an unreal feeling to be out there.
EJ: The energy in the building was crazy. I happened to be there as well. I know there can be like a lot of distractions around, especially for big games, what do you listen to pre-game to get you in your zone and do you have any pre-match rituals?
JL: I’m a big Drake guy, I love to listen to Drake, Post Malone as well. They’re my two favorite artists to listen to. I don’t want to necessarily be too hot because I feel like it’s just too much energy and too much stuff going on for my mind a little bit. They put me in a mood where I’m like, I’m ready to go kick ass. You know what I mean? So those two, are the right vibe before the game.
As for my rituals, I have little ones, you know we have the training bras that we wear under our jerseys and stuff, Some people don’t wear them during warmups, but I do because I feel like every time I do I have a good game, or I do great things. So, I mean, those are just like little things, I usually put my left sock on before my right sock. Little things like that kind of built up throughout my youth career and I kind of transferred to now.
EJ: Yeah, for sure. So unfortunately you guys weren’t able to get a win (on opening night). But, there’s a shot of you sitting at midfield, after the game. Walk me through that, what were you thinking about in that moment?
JL: Yeah, so the game was over, I’m walking around the stadium, thanking the fans for being there and supporting us. I was watching the guys that, didn’t play do their runs and stuff; I happen to find myself towards midfield. I was looking around and thinking this is a moment, you know. This is something maybe a couple of months ago, or a couple of years ago that I would have never seen myself in this position.
To finally be there, to finally play in that stadium, to finally play in front of those fans, in my hometown, it’s a dream come true. I was just thinking that’d be cool to play at Bank of America stadium with all of my friends and family there.
In that moment, I was like “that really just happened, that game really just happened, and I’m still here”. It was an emotional moment for me. Last year when I was in Kansas city, had some reoccurring injuries and it kind of put me out for a couple months. I had hamstring injuries. I injured my hamstring three times last year. They were kind of back to back to back and i’d be sitting there, like I just want to be on the field playing, it helped me build up my mental strength.
It’s just little things like that that were going through my mind when I was sitting there. I been through so much, you know, in my career; It was just an unreal feeling.
I was just taking time to think to myself, like “you’re doing a good job. You got to keep going. like, this is the only to start”. So that’s kind of what was going on.
“To finally be there, to finally play in that stadium, to finally play in front of those fans, in my hometown, it’s a dream come true.”
EJ: Beautiful. Beautiful. So the next week you guys play in Atlanta, and team gets its first ever goal. There’s been a lot of talk about this quote unquote rivalry with Atlanta and Charlotte, maybe because of the proximity, I would assume. How do you as a player, feel about that kind of talk? Do you guys buy into it? or is it not something that you guys really think about?
JL: As a team, I think it’s something that we don’t really worry about. Like obviously we focus one game at a time, we want to go into every game as if it is a rivalry, you know what I mean? I think personally for me, like I’ve grown up in Charlotte, playing academy against at the time it was Georgia United and that was a really good team at the time. It was a team that, every time I went to Georgia or they came here, I wanted to beat them. So there was a rivalry, you know, personally, in my life. I kind of said that game is a little bit of a rivalry, but I think as a team, it’s hopefully a start to a rivalry, but we’ll see how it goes.
EJ: So what makes Charlotte a soccer city? What makes it perfect for pro soccer?
JL: I think it’s the amount of support that the city has for soccer. I think Charlotte’s one of those cities that is influencing soccer in this country. For example, when I was in Kansas, I would come back in the summertime, to visit family they have the international champions cup. European teams come over and they play in the United States, and they would have games here in Charlotte and I would come every summer and the games would be packed like 40-50k people.
That’s when my mom and I were kind of like, you know, Charlotte should get a team here because if there’s that much support, just for you one game in the summer; imagine every week or every other week there’s a game for a Pro team. That’s where I kind of figured it out, like Charlotte should get a team.
Charlotte, right now, is such a sports city. You got the Panthers and you got the hornets, you got the knights as well. So add that soccer team. What makes it so good is because it’s new, it’s something new that people don’t usually get to see all the time. Especially when we’re playing at a stadium that a lot of people are familiar with for the Panthers. I think having a pro team is a really good thing for the city.
EJ: What advice do you have for young kids in the Charlotte area who are aspiring to be pros and, even play for your hometown club?
JL: Yeah. So I tell young kids all this time, I even count guys in their first year pro. I’m like, you guys are still young, You know what I mean? even for myself, I’m a young kid, I’m 21 and I signed when I was 17. The thing I tell the younger kids that maybe are in academy or youth soccer, is that being a professional soccer player is a privilege.
If you want to be a pro soccer player, you got to have commitment to it. It’s a grind you’re always going to have. There’s gonna be days where you’re going to be amazing, then there’s days that are going to be not so great. Other days you may be average, I don’t know, but it’s just a journey along the way.
There’s bumps and there’s obstacles, but you had to be fully committed to it as well. You want to have that full passion for the game. Like I say all the time, if you have passion for the game and you love it, you would never hate a day in your life. And for me, like I never wake up and I’m like, oh shoot Like I got practice. Like, no! I wake up and I’m like, I got practice today! Like it’s a new day to learn and stuff like that. So, it’s just having that mindset and having that figured out if you have that passion for it. ‘Cause I’ve seen a lot of kids, you know, especially when I’m growing up, they’re really good at the sport, but they don’t have that kind of passion to keep pushing. It’s just trying to find that passion for it as well.
I think starting habits early as well; What that does for you, knowing your mental state going into practice or a game. Do you know how to recover your body after a game? Are you drinking enough water during the days of the week? Are you eating the right foods? Those are such important things that if you, at a young age, start doing now, when you’re a pro you’ll be free flowing through it.
I think another thing is sacrifices. You know, I tell people this all the time, growing up in high school and middle school, there were some days I had to sacrifice not going to group hangouts or parties or whatever. There was stuff that I had to sacrifice to fulfill my dream, to be a pro soccer player. Now I’m here. Like I’m happy, I’m happy as ever, but those are the things I had to sacrifice.
For example, my schooling in high school, I went to seven different high schools. People don’t really realize that, like I had to go through like online school, back to regular school, to online school, to back to regular school, just because of my schedule.
Everyone’s schedule and journey is different, but it’s just sacrifices that you make for yourself In order to fulfill your dream. I just think at the end of the day, it’s about getting the right habits early, know you have to sacrifice and find that drive and that passion for the sport of soccer.
