published on April 27, 2024 in gacor

Visiting the New York prison that is Leicester defender Christian Fuchs field of dreams

With the millions of pounds they are paid, the average Premier League footballer can buy whatever he wants, and often does. Sports cars, huge houses, luxury holidays and lavish lifestyles — nothing is out of reach for most top-flight players.

Not many, though, will have thought about buying a prison.

But then, Leicester defender Christian Fuchs is not your average Premier League player. The 33-year-old and his wife, Raluca Gold-Fuchs, are a power couple leading a multi-million dollar project in Warwick, upstate New York, to turn the Mid-Orange Correctional Facility, a former medium-security men’s prison, into a state-of-the art sports training complex.

On first impressions when The Athletic arrives, it does not seem the obvious location for a huge community venture. Steel and wire fencing surround the entire site and there is a huge guard tower overlooking the gated entrance, a reminder of the venue’s previous guise for 34 years until it closed in 2011.

Dotted around the complex are run-down dormitory huts that are slowly being reclaimed by nature and over which stands an old house, from its days as a training school and reformatory for boys between the 1930s and 1970s. Before the First World War, it was established as a substance abuse treatment centre by Eleanor Roosevelt.

In short, this is not your typical field of dreams but for Fuchs, it was “love at first sight”.

“It was perfect for what we had in mind,” says Fuchs, dressed in black T-shirt and blue jeans, and scurrying around the corridors on a warm September afternoon.

“We didn’t expect it to be a prison but the fields and the way it is located, with Wickham Lake at the back, is amazing. I grew up on a football field and my kids should have the same opportunities.”

So why is Fuchs, a Premier League winner who signed a new contract late last season, building an academy here in New York?

The first reason is that his family home is in Manhattan, where Raluca works and lives with her son from a previous relationship, Ethan. Every three weeks, Fuchs travels to the US or the family fly to the UK. “It is where my family is and I will settle in New York when my career is over,” he says.

The second is that, away from football, his appetite for business is insatiable

He has his own clothing brand, NoFuchsGiven, which he began with just two t-shirts and now has more than 100 products on offer, and he has launched his own Esports team, which competed in the Esports FIFA Club World Cup and is part of a growing market that Deloitte predicts will be worth $1.6 billion by 2020, thanks to the estimated 600 million Esports fans worldwide.

He set up coaching academies in New York, Leicester and Austria, the country he captained, after being dissatisfied with the courses stepson Ethan was going on in the US.

After buying 36 acres of this site in the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains for about £3.25 million dollars at auction in 2018, and christening it the Hudson Sports Complex, he plans to take that enterprise to another level.

Fuchs has probably spent a further £800,000 on renovating the main building and artificial pitches, and he hopes one day to be able to host 700 youngsters at a time, and provide coaching in a host of sports, including “soccer”, baseball and lacrosse.

The site currently has two main artificial pitches, which sit pristinely among their rustic yet slowly-transforming surrounds, and Fuchs hopes to build more. He believes, to fulfil his vision, it will cost about £70 million in total.

“It is crazy, isn’t it? I didn’t expect it but everything came from seeing our son just standing around bored at a training camp,” Fuchs says.

The site is also home to the FSA (Fox Soccer Academy) Pro Foxes, the latest to join the United Premier Soccer League, a development league started in 2011.

He and Raluca are certainly hands on as they prepare for the opening game of the Foxes’ season against Real New York. Fuchs is busily helping move small, mobile bleachers to the side of the main field, which has been named Vichai Field in honour of the late City chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.

“He was a special man,” is all Fuchs can say. Nearly a year on from Khun Vichai’s death, the feelings are still raw.

Fuchs briefly stops to kick a ball around with his youngest son, Anthony, but there is work to be done before the Foxes’ league debut and Raluca is quick to get him moving again. He heads back into the redeveloped main building and refurbished changing rooms, and lays out bananas and grapes. The team kit is on steel chairs, some still bearing the names of the many celebrities and players who attended the grand opening of the complex in June.

For that event, Fuchs reformed Leicester’s title-winning back four with Wes Morgan, Robert Huth and Danny Simpson in an all-star game along with Jamie Redknapp, Emile Heskey and comedian Jack Whitehall, who wore American Football “cleats.” He decided to buy some boots on arrival and asked in a local sports store for “football” boots.

The guard tower was turned into a DJ booth and $25,000 was raised for Beautiful People, a non-profit local organisation that helps disabled children take up sports. The previous night, the Fuchs family were special guests at a ceremony to honour their contribution.

“We had 1,000 people here for the grand opening from across the greater Hudson area and the valley,” says the complex’s head of marketing, Alex Serbetzian. “It was a great occasion and we even had people come from the city. We wanted to bring the community in and introduce ourselves.

“It is a blessing to have Christian and his family here doing this. To have people of not only their stature involved is great for us but despite them being celebrities and successful business professionals, they are also so humble and down to earth.

“It all starts from them, their vision, drive and work ethic. It influences all of us working here.”

After deciding there are too many Rice Krispie Treats in the home dressing room, Fuchs heads back up to the kitchen to make coffee for the VIPs before they arrive, his phone chiming intermittently as we walk.

“That’s another ticket sold,” he declares with a smile. “I have to go and make coffee. Do you want to come and make coffee with me?

“Everything you see is brand new,” he adds as he heads through the corridors.

“There is no way the place could host people at the moment but they have plans to rebuild some of the dorms and eventually, it can host 700 kids at a time with the old school house acting as a hotel for the parents.

“We rebuilt the showers and locker rooms at quite an expense.

“The way we have budgeted the whole project and the way we see the final project is a total of $85 million but then it will be how we want it to be, completely developed with hotels and everything. We are looking for a partner to help with such an outlay.”

Fuchs says that City have been supportive of his venture and he hopes that one day, when the project is complete and additional pitches are built, the club will use the facility as a training camp.

“I want everyone to know what is happening here,” Fuchs said when asked how supportive the club had been.

“They know what is happening here. They have been very supportive already but it would be important for the decision-makers to see how big it is. I can talk about it but they wouldn’t understand how big it is.”

With everything that is going on in his life and Raluca’s own businesses and charity work, it is hard to understand where the Fuchs get their energy from, although a couple of nights in New York near to their Manhattan home provides an answer. The city that doesn’t sleep is like huge generator and the Fuchs family are plugged in, fuelling their hyperactivity.

“My wife and my kids give me energy, even though they make me tired,” Fuchs says. “In England, I heard a radio advert which said when you start in business, you do everything. You make the coffee, you do the taxes, you are your own chauffeur, and I thought, ‘Yes, that sounds like what I am doing’.

“Is it making coffee, taking care of the players and being on the other side of the situation rather than being a player? Anything that needs to be done.”

Fuchs had planned to return to play in Major League Soccer when his last Leicester contract expired but changed his mind and signed a one-year extension for this season, and he admits the Hudson project was a factor in his decision.

“Well, we had our soccer academy already going, so I knew it was something I was going to follow up after my career but when this popped up, it gave it a totally different dimension,” he explains.

“The scale is getting much bigger than anything we had going… ”

Raluca’s arrival cuts Fuchs off: “Stop talking. I need you!”

“But I am making coffee at the same time,” he says.

The Fuchs’ are a power couple but when it comes to business, there is no question it is Raluca, 41, who Fuchs met in a New York nightclub when on a pre-season tour with Schalke in 2012, who takes the lead.

Raluca moved from her native Romania to New York at 15 and went on to work as a senior analyst with Investment firm Goldman Sachs and as a global consumer analyst at Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec, before starting her own events business in New York — RA Entertainment.

“You have to have someone here, because I can’t be here all the time,” Fuchs says. “She is a brilliant businesswoman. She knows how to run a business. This wouldn’t be possible without her.”

The players start to arrive for their first-ever game. One, who hasn’t made the cut, brings in cheesecakes for after the match.

The Foxes are made up of mostly college students without scholarships and many of them are from Warwick itself, helping form the first official team from the area. Some had also travelled from the city, which is over an hour’s drive, to play in the game.

Some of the players are semi-professional but they get just a few dollars for playing and have only trained together a few times, with Fuchs watching over one session, although he says he will leave the coaching to Michael Holzer, the German manager. Coaching is not one of Fuchs’ passions.

Fuchs has played well over 500 games in his career, which started in non-League football in Austria at Wiener Neustadt before signing his first professional contract at SV Mattersburg.

Fuchs with wife Raluca, daughter Katherine and son Anthony

He moved to Germany to play for Bochum, Mainz and Schalke before joining Leicester in 2015. He has also been capped 78 times by his country but admits to feeling more nervous watching his new team in action than playing himself.

“The idea to start a team came to me a couple of months ago,” Fuchs explains. “We were looking at how we could create better exposure for what we are doing. One thing benefits the other and everything is intertwined with us.

“We have the complex but it has the same logo as the Fox Academy and similar logic to the sides we have in Austria and the UK. I will be nervous watching, more so than when I play. I watched a session on Friday and it was very good, of a good standard but I will leave everything to the coaches.”

The supporters arrive long before kick-off and while dozens of children are playing football on the next pitch, the rest of the estimated 250-strong crowd — a few even wearing Leicester City shirts — take to the bleachers.

The Foxes are out first to warm-up but as Real New York trot out, some of the players are on their phones, filming. It is clear that this is probably the best ground they will play at this season, which consists of only eight games.

Fuchs is conducting a meet-and-greet with fans inside the main building and there are constant requests for autographs and photos.

He is still inside when everyone stands for the national anthem, which is sung live and played over the prison camp’s old PA system. Fuchs arrives just after kick-off, carrying his youngest child, daughter Katherine, who is immediately drawn to the team’s mascot, Henry Fox.

“When my wife was pregnant with Anthony, we considered Henry for his name,” explained Fuchs. “Perhaps one day he will meet Filbert Fox (City’s mascot).”

Henry is very popular with the children, but there is a problem Raluca has spotted.

“He looks naked,” she tells one of the staff helping the fox around the crowd. “Put a t-shirt on him.”

The Foxes are dominating the game, but their central striker is having one of those days and Fuchs is concerned by the number of balls that have sailed over the fence into the undergrowth of the compound, sending someone to retrieve them. When you are a businessman you have to think of every expense and replacing lost footballs is an unnecessary one.

His side take the lead before half-time, prompting cries of “Let’s go Foxes”, but Catherine’s attention has switched from Henry to one of the Real players who has gone down injured, though few others seem concerned by his theatrics.

“He’s done a boo-boo,” she says, pointing to the player as he holds his ankle.

Fuchs misses the final minutes of the half to change Katherine’s nappy but is back intermittently during the second half to see the Foxes succumb to two Real breakaways. Despite their first-half dominance, they lose their opening game 2-1.

Raluca sends a message that the players must come over and thank their new fanbase for their support, especially as they have another home game the following weekend.

Afterwards, the deflated players sit in one of the baseball batting cages at the corner of the pitch for their post-match debrief and their coach (Holzer) is scathing, telling some they might not be with the team much longer but as their heads sink even lower, Fuchs springs into action and gets them all onto their feet.

As he walks across the pitch, opposition players wait to have selfies taken with him and even their coach is lingering with his phone. It is clear who the star attraction is and he hasn’t even played.

“It is disappointing because we should have scored one or two more goals in the first half but we gave away the game with our mistakes,” is Fuchs’ verdict.

“But overall, the turnout with all the kids was amazing. The turnout and the feedback from all the people, they have been telling me they are so proud that we have brought this to Warwick when it hasn’t existed before.

“It is only the beginning. Already the start has exceeded my expectations to be honest because I was expecting 100 people to turn up, but to see so many people here is outstanding and I am really happy.”

As the crickets continue to chirp loudly, the new Foxes fans head through the steel gates, past the guard tower and disappear into the dark.

The old prison has been transformed so much by Fuchs it is now a place to which people wish to return.

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kGtna2llaXxzfJByZmlxX2Z%2FcMLIrKCtoZ6cerW0xGalnq9drryzt4ypqaKrn6N6tbTArWSiq12bwqS00madop2cmXqwsoydqZ6Znah8