Ben Foster interview: ‘You expect attention at Manchester United but this is Wrexham’
Ben Foster knows all about life in the goldfish bowl.
Having played for England and spent 15 years in the Premier League, including a five-season stint with Manchester United, the goalkeeper is used to scrutiny. So the adulation Wrexham experienced on their recent tour of the USA was nothing new.
What Foster did enjoy, however, was watching how his team-mates handled the pressure in a country that turned out in huge numbers to watch a club from League Two — the fourth tier of the English game.
Advertisement
“It was nice seeing the attention that comes with this club and then how the lads react to it,” Foster tells The Athletic. “A lot of these lads will never have had that intense media scrutiny before, where they are being watched wherever they go. Or with fans coming up all the time.
“It is mad to see. Honestly. We landed in Washington D.C. and were all queueing in passport control and there’s American kids there who all knew who we were. You’d pass them in the line and they’d say, ‘I have a Wrexham top at home’.
“I’m seeing this and thinking, ‘Wow! These are American kids’. If you’re a player with Manchester United, and all the big-name players they have, you expect that sort of attention. But this was Wrexham — and it’s brilliant.”
Wrexham proved a big hit during their fortnight in the United States, with thousands of fans who have fallen in love with the north Wales club via the Welcome to Wrexham documentary series turning out for their four matches in North Carolina, Los Angeles, San Diego and Philadelphia.
The pneumothorax — effectively a collapsed lung — and four cracked ribs suffered by star striker Paul Mullin against United in San Diego certainly dented that off-field success, especially as the club’s talisman is now
Read on theathletic.com
