550 players, 51 games, Fruit Loops, Fortnite, funky food and just “so many swabs” – how MLS endured and bonded in a bubble
At 9:32 p.m. on March 11, 2020, the sports world stopped – first with a virus, then with a whistle. On that night it all started to shut down.
As news broke that the NBA had suspended its season after Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz had tested positive for COVID-19, it signaled more than a pause in basketball. Stadiums all over the world fell silent. Seasons were abandoned. The global sports machine – fueled by passion, pageantry and profit – ground to a halt. It was a time of isolation and uncertainty.
Soccer is, of course, the world’s sport, and the beautiful game wasn’t immune to the realities of a pandemic. That was until – after three months of anxiety and uncertainty – Major League Soccer hatched a plan. An improbable one, perhaps, but a plan nonetheless – and one that could bring soccer back.
“Obviously, the project here in Orlando is incredibly ambitious.”
Don Garber was putting it lightly. “Ambitious” wasn’t even the word. In the summer of 2020, amid a global pandemic, the MLS commissioner and league officials put together a project that was more than ambitious. It was unprecedented.
It began with a phone call from Orlando City CEO Alex Leitao to Faron Kelley, then-VP of ESPN's Wide World of Sports, a sprawling complex on the grounds of the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. MLS, like the rest of the world, was on hold, but what if it didn't have to be? What if the league could find a way to play? What if soccer could come back?
"My phone rang,” Kelley recalled. “It was my friend Alex Leitao. He said, 'Hey, crazy idea. Major League Soccer is looking at creating a campus, a bubble – a single site where they can bring in the teams and do a tournament. Do you think you can do that?' No one had ever … done a bubble. The closest thing to a bubble would be the Olympics, where you have the athletes living and playing there.
"Then, you put it on top of a virus that back in April, May we knew very little about… From the first call from MLS to the players practicing on the fields was 66 days.”
The concept stamped as, well, plausible, it prompted a text from Leitao to Gary Stevenson, president and managing director of MLS Business Ventures – and then quickly, a proposal for Garber.
“I have this crazy idea,” Leitao recalled. “ 'I spoke with the guys at Disney. They feel like there’s something we can do. What do you think?’ Half an hour later we were in a Zoom call with Commissioner Garber. I repeated the idea. He liked it. He said, ‘Let’s put together this call, let’s see.’"
The idea quickly spiraled. Over those 66 days, experts were consulted. Protocols were put in place and, ultimately, tested to the extreme. That summer, 550 MLS players descended on Orlando for the now-infamous MLS is Back Tournament. Admittedly, few knew what they were getting into or how it would impact their lives forever.
Five years later, the MLS is Back Tournament remains a seminal and surreal moment in U.S. soccer, one that left a legacy few have fully grasped. Those who lived through it are still reckoning with what that summer meant to them. For some, it was an adult summer camp, a soccer tournament held in paradise free from the chaotic realities of the outside world. For others, it was hell, weeks locked indoors for a test of mental and physical fortitude unlike anything they’ve experienced before – or since.
The tournament kicked off on July 8, 2020. There were 51 games in total, all without fans, culminating more than a month later with the Portland Timbers lifting a customized MLS is Back Cup on Aug. 11. And one thing is certain: everyone left Orlando that summer with a wildly different perspective on what soccer, and life, meant to them.
Marking the five-year anniversary of the first kick, GOAL tells the story of the MLS is Back Tournament, in the words of those who lived it.
ImagnENTERING THE BUBBLE
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Dax McCarty (Midfielder, Nashville SC): It was a mix of doubt and anxiety with a little bit of excitement scattered in there. In the middle of a global pandemic, being the first professional sports league to come back with a return-to-play scenario was exciting, but also nerve-wracking. There was skepticism, naturally, because it's never been done before.
Diego Valeri (Midfielder, Portland Timbers): The days before we arrived in the bubble were a difficult time for the whole world. Families were concerned with the pandemic, and we as players understood that coming back to play meant not being able to be there with our families. There wasn't much info about what was happening at that time, right? All of our thoughts were on how to handle this situation, but we also wanted to keep going and keep playing while also knowing our families would be protected.
Justin Morrow (Defender, Toronto FC): There was this dynamic of, "Are my teammates taking this seriously? Is my city taking this seriously?" I say that because in Toronto and Canada, we took it very seriously. We weren't able to leave the house. Then it gets to a point where you go, “Alright, I guess this is happening”.
McCarty: You put a lot of faith in the decision-makers and a lot of trust in the doctors to tell you that everything is going to be safe. We, as players, wanted to make sure it wasn’t a lost season, but obviously there was that mixture of a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of stress and then, yes, a little bit of excitement.
Oscar Pareja (Coach, Orlando City): We’re used to seeing so many matches on TV, and sometimes we get exhausted from there being too many games. I remember that being a time when we were begging for the game to be on somewhere. We were watching games in Russia or anywhere else. We were becoming fans of teams or players that we can't even name anymore. It was a wake-up call for everyone.
Valeri: The soccer part was difficult. I remember we started training isolated, four players on a field at the same time. Even so, I wanted to come back and compete.
Tesho Akindele (Forward, Orlando City): Everyone was scared that they were sick or that they were going to get sick. Even the first thing, when you walk into the hotel – I don't think we even put our bags down – but we go to a conference room, and they have a sea of 60 testing stations. It was crazy. It's easy to look back and be like "Oh, that wasn't that big a deal," but, at that time, it was. Everything felt scary. I felt scared to touch the railing on the stairs because other teams might have used it.
John Tolkin (Defender, New York Red Bulls): I remember I had a false positive, actually, a few days after I got there. I was like, 'Man, now I have to sit for like 10 days because of this sh*t.” But luckily it was a false positive. Even so, it was just a lot of uncertainty. Nobody really knew what was going on. There were so many protocols, so many swabs going up your nose every day.
AdvertisementImagnEARLY SCARES, POSITIVE TESTS
McCarty: My first thought was that I hope everyone on my team is safe, because there were still so many unanswered questions about COVID and about what it meant. I think there was enough data at that point to realize that healthy professional athletes should be OK, but we had it running through our team, with guys testing positive day after day. It was almost like there was an impending dread – “Am I going to be the next positive?” It felt like it was just a matter of time.
Taylor Twellman (Analyst, ESPN): I remember doing Zooms and conversations with players and coaches down there – and then all of a sudden finding out four, five, six players tested positive.
Akindele: We saw what happened to Dallas and Nashville and it sucked for them – they were the ones that took the big hit. So, for us already in there, it was like "They did it. At least it wasn't us!" It took a lot of weight off our shoulders because we knew we weren't the first to f*ck it up. If this all got messed up, at least we weren't the ones who messed it up!
Morrow: Nashville and Dallas, we saw that and we saw guys posting images in the bubble – and we hadn't even left Toronto yet. We were seeing it all and going into a lot of uncertainty. We were like, "Are we going to get onto this plane or not?" Our team then had a false positive in the first 24 hours we were down there, too. There was so much uncertainty.
McCarty: Our thought was, if we can field a team, we should play. We're already down there. We're basically fit and want to compete. Whoever's fit and ready to go, if we take a vote, we want to do this. I think we had like 12 or 13 field players who had passed through protocols after a couple of days. We had maybe two goalkeepers as well. It was bare bones, but we wanted to play. MLS made the decision that, for the safety of our team and the league, they wouldn't let us go through with it.
Getty ImagesTHE SUDDEN REALITIES OF THE BUBBLE
Brenden Aaronson (Midfielder, Philadelphia Union): I remember we were all joking about all the things we would do at the hotel. 'Oh, we're going to go fishing or golfing or do all of this.’ We ended up having one golf day. We had a gaming room, too. But really, it was just you in your room. You couldn't do much. You could walk around a bit, but you couldn't go out of the property. We had the Swan Hotel to walk around, but that's it.
Tolkin: We stayed in those Swan hotels, and you could walk to Epcot from our hotel. I love Disney, so I've been back like three times in the years since, and I see those damn hotels that we stayed in for the bubble, and it gives me nightmares, man. No good memories in those hotels. OK, maybe some little ones, but not many.
Valeri: The first week, we're training and it's OK, and we can play. Then, the second week, it felt totally different. The whole team was isolated on one of the floors in the hotel. You're alone in your room, no contact with any other team. Games are at night and training is at night because of the weather, too. All of the contact with your people, your family, is through video calls.
Sebastian Berhalter (Midfielder, Columbus Crew): I was a kid, so I just wanted to play. I was like, “Why wouldn't people want to be here?” I didn't get it. Obviously, other people had families at home, but I didn't, so I just wanted to play.
Twellman: Even [fellow broadcaster] John Champion and myself, we were stationed in Connecticut in quarantine, staying in our own hotel. We each had our own floor because no one else was in the hotel in West Hartford.
Eryk Williamson (Midfielder, Portland Timbers): I'm young enough to have memories of the Disney Channel – it was like a “Suite Life of Zack and Cody” episode in there. We were just living in a hotel. Our lives revolved around this hotel.
Matt Freese (Goalkeeper, Philadelphia Union): I wouldn't say it was an enjoyable experience, to be honest with you. Living in a hotel with zero access to the outside world for weeks? I don't think anyone would say otherwise.
Valeri: It felt claustrophobic being there. It was just you in a room alone with a window.
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MLSENTERTAINMENT, ANYWAY, ANYHOW
McCarty: I was wearing my robe. That was my thing. I put my hotel robe on and wore it for like a week straight. I felt like a mixture of the Dude from “The Big Lebowski” and “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.” I was in my robe just recording myself doing all kinds of stuff. Jumping from bed to bed, throwing a football. Honestly, I was going a bit crazy. I remember guys from across the hotel sending sign language signals to each other. Anything to pass the time.
Williamson: I got into tanning somehow. There was the whole pool situation, so you could get away for a little bit. I'd just go outside and read and tan. I didn't realize the UV was at like 10 or 11, so, looking back, it was pretty dangerous.
Freese: I picked up the guitar right before that tournament. I brought my guitar and just taught myself a bunch of songs. Some Zach Bryan. I was taking classes to finish my degree, too, and I think I knocked out like three classes in that month and a half. It made it easier to work or study every day. My thought during that was either, “You can win COVID or lose COVID.” You can either succeed during this time and make the most of it, or you can just sit there and do nothing with it.
Pareja: I remember having to make what felt like thousands of videos for the players. Players were knocking on my door all day, asking for guidance or to go through video or to talk about the game. I'd never seen that before. It was the effect of us being in that condensed area and not allowed to do much. But it also felt sincere. Everyone just wanted to talk about the games. It was a time when people were suffering. People's families were in that external world, dealing with things we didn't want or expect. The competition, the training, the chatting in the hotel – those were our ways of letting things go a little bit.
Akindele: Everyone was just playing video games. We had a game called Parchisi that we used to play on the iPad. We would play that a lot, put a little bit of money on it, so that was fun. For me, I also got big into online chess and studying chess – and that's also when I started to get really into real estate investing. I learned a lot.
Tolkin: We would go to the beach volleyball court like every day. It was one of the few things you could do. I was p*ssed off the whole time, mostly because I didn't play a minute [in MLS matches]. I was training really well, but I wasn't playing and was stuck in this bubble down in Florida.
Freese: It was a difficult time. I was living in a bubble for weeks and I wasn't even playing. I wasn’t even on the bench for games. You weren't training much, either. So I'd spend four hours a day in the gym. I probably put on 10 pounds of straight muscle. It was clear I had to do something during that time. I couldn't get better on the field, so I might as well spend all day in the gym.
Williamson: I had my PlayStation with me. I had two beds, so I'd sleep in one bed for a few days and then the other for a few, just to change things up.
Aaronson: I played a lot of Fortnite and FIFA.
Williamson: There were days of ping pong, days of hoping the Wi-Fi connects well enough to play Call of Duty.
Aaronson: We played darts a lot there, too. It was a lot of messing around, particularly for us homegrowns, so it was good for us to grow together in that sense. Of course, it gets to the point in the tournament where you're still messing around with the boys and it's still fun, and then you're getting towards the end and it's starting to die out a little bit. You do get a little tired.
Akindele: One of my teammates, Benji Michel, he would always leave his door propped open. One day, we just scared the sh*t out of him. We hid in his room and just scared him. He walked in. I was hiding in his closet, one guy was behind his bed. He scared him, then Benji turned around and I scared him. At that point, all you can do is goof around with your boys. It had been like 40 days, so what else is there to do?
McCarty: It was a lot of boxed lunches, that’s for sure. They definitely weren't my favorite meals I've had in my life, I'll tell you that much. It got old really quickly, but it was edible.
Tolkin: I wouldn't feed that food to anyone, looking back at it. It was just boxed lunches every day. Eating that, especially knowing that we as athletes need to eat to perform and get energy? Man, especially in that heat, too? The food was just awful, so that was rough.
Williamson: We were on a Pacific [time zone] schedule, so we'd eat breakfast at noon. Just eggs and potatoes for a while, so it feels like you're a kid eating the same thing every day. I started just eating Fruit Loops and apple juice every day because, why not?
Akindele: I think guys were a little bit dramatic sometimes. It definitely wasn't amazing, but it was the same as the hotels we would go to all over the place. When you have to eat it seven weeks straight, yeah, it gets tiring. But it's no worse than most hotel meals we get. I think some guys went into it just wanting to hate the experience. It seemed like some people wanted it to go badly. They wanted everything to suck. Nobody got food poisoning or anything. Was it good? No, but it was fine.
Williamson: We started to order food and it was funny because you could tell that our team was one of the teams that was training late and needing a meal. We'd order food [from outside of the Disney campus]. Guys were getting sushi. I got hibachi a few times. If we didn't have a game, I'd get like Five Guys or something. Guys would go down for food and find a big, greasy Five Guys bag with "Eryk W." on it. That was me! A group of us would get together and get milkshakes from Five Guys, too.