John Shin couldn’t believe the crowd at Borussia Dortmund’s event. It was a pretty nondescript bar in Brooklyn, an outdoor space with a few drinks - a good spot for a beer outside.
But the German club turned it into a celebration of football. There were fans from all over the world, supporting all sorts of clubs, and representing a wide range of fan groups. There were Dortmund fans from Mexico. USMNT fans from New York, and a general gaggle of football enthusiasts from around the world.
And Shin, an influencer and Instagram personality with nearly 100,000 followers, couldn’t quite comprehend what was happening.
“There was a fan from Slovenia, a fan from Germany, a fan from everywhere, now just showing up to Brooklyn, celebrating, and I love that,” Shin told GOAL.
That incident - and the subsequent impact it had on the Korean-American Manchester United fan - was a microcosm of the way foreign clubs are catering to their European fans during the Club World Cup. Just 10 years ago, tours were all about outreach and brand building. Now, it’s a question of feeding communities and building them up, year after year. This tournament, this summer in the United States, is a seminal event on a calendar that was written a long time ago.
“We've been doing things for the last seven years now. It gives us a platform, a global platform, to showcase our our work here, and our presence here,” Marc Lingenhoff, managing director of Borussia Dortmund Americas, told GOAL.