When the Detroit Lions beat the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs last week, Matt Lewis wasn’t, like so many of his Brush Park neighbors, unrepentantly ecstatic. Perhaps they were carefully choosing the Lions gear they would wear to work the next day, with hope in their hearts. But Lewis?
“I was devastated,” he said.
Lewis played defense for Detroit’s other soccer (most people say soccer) franchise, the Detroit City Football Club (DCFC), which he first joined in 2020. He is originally from Kansas City , Missouri. The Chiefs’ loss hurt. He’s trying to be a good sport for the remainder of the Lions’ season because the team’s victory brought so much joy to the fans in his temporary home.
“From now on, I definitely support the Lions,” he promised.
If he’s lucky, Lewis says his professional career will last seven or eight years. He recently signed a two-year contract with DCFC, a blessing in the USL Championshipa league where multi-year contracts remain the exception.
We often hold professional athletes to the unrealistic standard of representing a team they barely know. How invested can players be in any city when it’s just a step in their career path?
DCFC is a professional football team with a grassroots history, and the front office expects players to spend as much time as possible in Detroit when not on the road. Lewis says he feels a duty to support the city that supports him. One of the ways team management attempts to facilitate a closer relationship between players and the city is by encouraging players to live within the city limits.
“I think experiencing the authentic city life pays off,” said Tiffany Ebert-James, DCFC vice president of sports and wellness.
Ebert-James and her husband, head coach Trevor James, live in Corktown. They moved here from Southern California in 2019. Ebert-James says she has since gone from being “Detroit-ish” to fully embracing what she says is the team’s “Detroit first” philosophy . She believes living in Detroit helps many players have a better experience on and off the field.
“If they are happy, they perform better,” she said. “This helps us achieve results on the ground. And all the pros talk to each other. So if they say good things, that helps us in recruiting. And I think they can see that we are an organization that puts Detroit first.
The club grounds – with two indoor courts, offices, a restaurant and a bar – are in two adjacent buildings on the east side. Ebert-James says 80 percent of the front desk staff lives in Detroit. The field where the team practices and plays, usually in front of stands filled with fans in the team’s maroon and gold colors, is at Keyworth Stadium in Hamtramck. Ebert-James says the team wants to secure a spot to play in Detroit.
“The community built the team, the community grew the team and the community continues to support the team. There’s a lot more pressure there as a player.
Matt Lewis, Detroit City FC defender
DCFC has 20 players and 15 live in Detroit. None of the players are from Detroit. Of the five guys who don’t live in the city, two live in the metro Detroit communities where they grew up. The DCFC women’s team also plays in Keyworth, but is semi-professional. Most of the players are still in college and only staying in Detroit for the two-month season.
Matt Lewis says the soccer culture in Detroit is different than other cities he’s played in.
“When I think of American football, I think of very corporate football,” he said. “Someone with a little money wanted to build a stadium or wanted to have a team or something.”
For DCFC, however, “the community built the team, the community grew the team, and the community continues to support the team.” There’s a lot more pressure there as a player.
The DCFC story is different. The team started as a local effort in 2012 with a recreational league team playing on Cass Tech’s field trying to see if soccer could take hold in Detroit. This happened and DCFC turned professional in 2020, with Lewis scoring his first professional team goal. The team is still owned by four of the five original founders, with three of them working for the team full-time.
When money got tight during the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020, about 3,000 fans came to the rescue, purchasing public shares of the team through a fundraising campaign. which raised nearly $1.5 million. These fans now collectively own a stake in the team.
Lewis takes the responsibility of giving back to the community seriously. He plans to make Detroit his home more permanently and is looking for something here that he can transition to once his playing days are over.
He feels welcome and safe in the city, but Lewis says it hasn’t been perfect. His car was stolen while he lived on Kercheval Avenue on Detroit’s east side, but he attributes that to city living and not a Detroit-specific problem. His girlfriend moved here recently and they have no plans to return to Kansas City during the offseason.
They welcome downtown with an enthusiasm that many longtime residents temper with some ambivalence about the compromises that are often made in the name of economic development, even if they are fraught. public subsidies to private developers or the threat of displacement. A self-proclaimed “Formula 1 guy,” Lewis was perhaps one of the few residents in or near downtown who viewed June’s Detroit Grand Prix not as a big deal but as a “moment strong summer.
Midfielder Michael Bryant signed a two-year contract with DCFC a year ago. The team offers to arrange and help pay for club housing at Lafayette Towers as part of the players’ compensation. Bryant lives there and is happy in the building and in the Lafayette Park neighborhood.
(Though he would like to state his desire to control the temperature inside his own apartment and have a built-in washer and dryer.)
As a Southern California native, getting through the end of his first winter in the Midwest was difficult. After surviving it, Bryant says Detroit now ranks second behind his hometown in his city rankings. He doesn’t hesitate to explain why. “What makes the big difference from back home is the people here,” he said. “A lot of people are just a lot more genuine and kinder. For example, when you pass people, they will say, “Hey, how are you?” Like, “How’s your day going?” »
“At home, it’s not like that,” Bryant said. SoCal has too many “fake people in their own little world.”
Bryant, who misses California sushi, keeps a list of all the restaurants he’s tried with his teammates and ranks them on a five-star scale. And he found new cultural offerings to enjoy.
“I really love the music scene here,” he said.
Bryant is a big fan of the Movement music festival and says you can often find him and other DCFC players at Spot Lite on their one night off a week during the season. On his list of things he still wants to do in the city? Attend a Detroit Pistons game.
Both Bryant and Lewis say they make sure to challenge people they find more “skeptical” about Detroit when they travel to other cities for games.
Ebert-James says being a city ambassador comes with the territory.
“When we travel, we wear our badges that represent the spirit of Detroit,” she said. “Even new players have (a) certain attachment to it.”
“If someone says, ‘What is that?’, you know, (the players) take their time to explain. I think our players seem to take it upon themselves that they must represent the city.
