Home sweet home: Charlotte FC shows Panthers, Hornets how it’s supposed to be done
For the first time in a long time, a Charlotte pro team has actually figured out how to capitalize on a home-field advantage.
Charlotte FC and its supporters are like newlyweds right now, and their honeymoon period continued Saturday afternoon with a 1-0 Charlotte win over Inter Miami before a fervent crowd of 32,018 in Bank of America Stadium.
This was Charlotte FC’s fourth straight win at home, and the fans were integral to it. They filled up the lower bowl at Bank of America — the franchise doesn’t sell tickets in the upper bowl for most of its Major League Soccer games. They arrived early. They sang the national anthem en masse in an organic tradition that began by mistake and now has become one of the most beautiful parts of the Charlotte FC gameday experience.
And then they yelled and sang through 68 minutes of a scoreless tie before Andre Shinyashiki finally netted one for the home team, which levitated the stadium and provided the game’s only goal.
“In our home, we have the confidence that there’s no way to lose, because we feel we have more than 11 players on the pitch,” Charlotte FC coach Miguel Angel Ramirez said later. “The engagement and the commitment of the fans is outstanding… And every coach is coming to me saying the same, like: ‘’What’s going on here is simply amazing! I mean, the atmosphere that you got in this stadium is unbelievable.’”
Shinyashiki was making his debut for Charlotte after arriving from the Colorado Rapids earlier in the week in a trade. He was caught off guard by the noise.
“It’s crazy because Miguel is trying to say something to me when I’m in the game, and I’m just looking at him like, ‘I can’t hear a word you’re saying,’” Shinyashiki said. “It’s loud. The fans don’t stop singing. It’s an amazing atmosphere, and it sure makes a difference for us on the field. When you need that extra energy, that extra run, it definitely pays off.”
After losing its inaugural home game before an MLS-record crowd of 74,479 fans in Bank of America Stadium on March 5, Charlotte FC hasn’t lost in the Queen City in the two months since. The team is 4-1 overall at home but 0-5-1 on the road. The road issue is a serious one for an expansion team that has publicly set a goal of reaching the playoffs in Year 1. But it’s also a problem for another day since Charlotte FC plays its next two matches at home — on Saturday and then on May 22.
It’s important to point out that Charlotte FC fans aren’t the only pro fans who know how to cheer around here. Charlotte Hornets fans were much improved as a group this season, frequently selling out Spectrum Center with 19,000-plus fans. The team often failed to deliver, though. The Hornets hardly had any true homecourt advantage at all, given they went 22-19 at home and 21-20 on the road.
And the Carolina Panthers? Ugh.
Their fans have done their best — at least the ones who haven’t sold their tickets (and it’s hard to blame anyone for doing that, given this team’s performance the past four years).
The Panthers — who opened up Bank of America Stadium in 1996 by going 9-0 at home, including a playoff win over the Dallas Cowboys that sounded like a Rolling Stones concert — have hardly ever been that good at home since.
Kevin Greene’s sack dances in the late 1990s and Cam Newton’s Sunday giveaways to kids in the mid-2010s have faded into the distant past. The Panthers have gone 6-21 at home over their past 27 games, and their fans have sadly become accustomed to going home angry or disappointed.
Let’s not forget that the Charlotte Checkers have a fine home-ice advantage, and that the Charlotte Knights provide one of the best minor-league baseball fan experiences around, and that Charlotte Motor Speedway will draw more fans than any other venue in the state for NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 May 29.
Still, for purposes of this discussion, we’re limiting it to the three Charlotte pro teams that play in the highest possible pro leagues in America.
And of those three teams, Charlotte FC — the little brothers, the MLS expansion team still trying to figure things out, the fans with the monstrously impressive supporters section that the Hornets and Panthers would do well to emulate — is the only one winning regularly at home.
It’s bizarre, really. And a lot of fun.
This story was originally published May 8, 2022 at 10:33 AM.
