East Sheen FC have been revived after 120 years and it all started with just £15.
The club, who will play their home games at Rosslyn Park in Barnes, will play their first competitive game since it was dissolved in 1906 away against Ruislip Town at the Brunel University Sports Park on Saturday, 19 September.
At the centre of it all is 23-year-old New Yorker Matthew Evans, who discovered the forgotten club while studying in south west London.
Describing the beginning of the story, Evans, who had been looking to buy a football club, said: “I sat there. I was like, ‘Well, man, I got to bring this back. This is the one.’
“The big consensus was, ‘you’re insane.’ Even speaking to local MPs their reaction was ‘you’re insane’, in a good way.”
East Sheen FC were founded in 1873, just 11 years after the first ever English professional football club Notts County, but disappeared in 1906 after moving grounds three times.
Earlier this year, Evans spent £15 to register the company, a modest investment for the club he now claims is worth over £150,000 – a 10,000% increase in value.
After buying the club, Evans, who is now chairman, said the community was unaware they had a football club.
Ted Lasso comparisons were inevitable – a young American arrives in south west London and takes charge of an English football club, but four months into the experiment, this young American is trying to prove East Sheen is beyond just a headline.
Evans said: “The beginning of the story was like real life Ted Lasso. That’s it. Now it’s real life Ted Lasso works with a former Arsenal employee, a former Tottenham employee and two ex-professionals.”
One of these ex-pros is Guilherme Bortoletto.
He said: “I can only say positive things about Matthew. About how he’s playing the game, the training, the mentality.”
Bortoletto says he turned down other offers from Spain and Italy to join East Sheen FC.
Evans added: “I always loved the idea of a step five community club in five years.”
To achieve this, East Sheen would need to achieve three promotions as they currently play at step 8.
East Sheen’s average squad age is 23 and their oldest staff member is 26, but while ambitious, Evans is staying grounded.
He added: “We have to look realistically at what our peak could be, summit that first mountain, and then see what’s on the other side.”
While the match against Ruislip is their first competitive 11-a-side game in over a century, the team already play football on six out of seven days a week through training and smaller sided games.
Evans finished by re-affirming his long-term vision and said: “We don’t want to limit ourselves in anything.”
Feature image courtesy of jacobwvisuals.co.uk
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