Ian Ayre’s journey from Liverpool CEO to running Nashville SC in MLS

Few saw Tennessee as fertile ground for an MLS club but the team has built a loyal fanbase by focusing on authenticity

Ian Ayre, Nashville SC's CEO, had never given much thought to working in the US, let alone Tennessee. In fact, after his 2017 departure from the same role at Liverpool, he wasn't really thinking about soccer very much at all: a decade at his boyhood club had proved as grueling as it was exhilarating. A visit to Nashville and a meeting with the club's owners changed his mind. Back then, the club was a concept rather than a reality. For Ayre, it was a chance he knew he had to take. How often," he asked himself, do you get a chance to work with a blank canvas?"

In December 2017, MLS confirmed Nashville would be awarded an expansion team, who would join the league in 2020 (Ayre joined the team in May 2018). The club's birth would have seemed almost fanciful a decade prior. But the ambition, and investment, spearheaded by owner John Ingram, an avuncular local industrialist was crucial.