A Modest English Club Prepares Off the Beaten Path

VENTURA, Calif. — More than 80,000 fans, among them Charlize Theron, Kevin Garnett and Will Ferrell, filled the Rose Bowl on Tuesday night, drawn by the star-studded lineups and the lion-like coaches of Chelsea and Inter Milan. It was one way to prepare for the coming European soccer season. Another took place an hour’s drive west.
The Burnley Football Club readied itself for its first season in the English Premier League by playing a fourth-division American club on an artificial turf field covered by the lines for the Buena High School football team. The crowd was announced at 3,300. No celebrities were discernable, although Burnley’s manager, Owen Coyle, does bear a resemblance to George Clooney.
In a little more than a month, Burnley and Chelsea will play each other in London, and on Tuesday night they were separated by 67 miles. In reality, they exist in separate universes. They may, on occasion, share the same space but not the same air.
The top clubs in Europe — Manchester United, Barcelona, Chelsea, Real Madrid and A.C. Milan among them — have made summer visits to the United States part of their preseason routines in the past decade. As much as these trips provide for bonding and training — amid five-star trappings, of course — they are in many ways brand-building exercises, a chance for the teams to sell jerseys and introduce themselves to a burgeoning soccer market.
Inter Milan, which spent a week at the Beverly Hills Hotel, rolled out new uniforms at an invitation-only fashion show in Hollywood.
For clubs like Burnley, which is returning to the top division in England after a 33-year absence, journeys to the United States are rare — and not so rarefied.
As they sat in an airport in Manchester, England, waiting for a nine-hour flight to Atlanta, to be followed by a five-hour flight to Los Angeles and a two-hour bus ride to Ventura, the 34 members of Burnley’s traveling party could look out on the tarmac and see the private jet waiting to ferry Manchester United to Asia.
Burnley players traveled to their game not in a plush bus, but in extended vans. One was driven by striker Robbie Blake. The team also headed to the Beverly Hills Hotel — for lunch.
“We’re not the Ferrari and diamond-earring brigade,” said Paul Fletcher, Burnley’s chief executive, though one of his players, midfielder Chris Eagles, now owns a white Lamborghini. “We’re a football club. That’s our brand.”
In much of the soccer world, teams move up and down levels based on the previous season’s standings. Generally, the top three are promoted and go up a division, the bottom three are relegated and slide down. This inevitably leads to Cinderella stories, and the glass slipper last season in England belonged to Burnley.
In cup competitions, Burnley beat Chelsea, Arsenal and Everton, and topped Sheffield United, 1-0, in a playoff at Wembley Stadium to grab the final spot in the Premier League.
The club was founded in 1882 and was the champion of England in 1950. But its soccer fortunes have mirrored those of its city, which is not much different than others in the industrial north of England. As cotton mills closed, Burnley became smaller and poorer. With a population of about 73,000, it is by far the smallest city in the English Premier League.
Its stadium, Turf Moor, opened in 1883 and holds roughly 23,000. Entering it on a Saturday afternoon is like taking a step back in time.
“In England, football is more sanitized now than when I grew up,” said Wade Elliott, a 30-year-old midfielder for Burnley who cited the advent of new stadiums that have added revenue streams, often at the cost of intimacy. “Burnley is almost what football used to be like. We’ve got an old-school ground. It’s not a glamorous place — opposing players don’t like going there — but it’s loud and the fans are close to the pitch. It’s a marvelous atmosphere.”
Elliott did his part to raise the atmospheric pressure in town when his 30-yard strike beat Sheffield United. It was dubbed the “£60 million goal,” the value that was placed on a team being in the Premier League, where it can draw on lucrative television and marketing revenue.
Some of that money has been spent on new players, including forward Steven Fletcher, who was bought from Hibernian of Scotland for $5 million. That was a club record at Burnley but would be loose change at Real Madrid, which paid Manchester United $130 million for Cristiano Ronaldo.
Fletcher, 22, is typical of the players Burnley has accumulated: young and promising but not yet polished enough to play at the biggest clubs. Richard Eckersley and Eagles were signed as 21-year-olds who could not crack the lineup at Manchester United. Fernando Guerrero, a speedy, skillful wing on trial from Ecuador, was impressive Tuesday. He scored a goal and drew a penalty kick in a 5-0 win over the Ventura County Fusion of the Premier Development League.
The hope is that those players will blossom enough to help Burnley remain in the Premier League and attract the attention of well-heeled clubs.
“The football club cannot exist on gate receipts,” said Paul Fletcher, who played for Burnley long before he became an executive. “We have to have different income streams. So generally, we try to sell a player — normally a young player — and that balances the books for us. That’s been the story for 50 years. What we don’t want to do is lose our roots. We’re not a club that goes out and spends stupid money on wild transfer fees.”
That eye for undervalued talent is what brought Burnley to the United States. It trained in Cary, N.C., a year ago, when it also traveled to Minnesota for a preseason game. This year, it has linked up with the Fusion, which recently sold a player, Anton Peterlin, to Everton. Burnley will play the Portland Timbers of the United Soccer Leagues First Division on Saturday.
“I expect the United States, in 10 to 12 years time, to be one of the favorites to win the World Cup,” said Coyle, who was pursued during the off-season to manage Celtic, the Scottish club he cheered for as a child and later joined as a player. “We want to be in there at the forefront of the good young players that are coming out of America. We want to put down roots.”
Coyle pointed proudly to his players who stood along a fence surrounding the field. They signed autographs, took photographs and chatted with fans. It was not the Rose Bowl, or any other grand stage, but Coyle and his players did not seem to mind.