Johnson: I'm So Blown Away By Everything Sunday, 24th Oct 2021 06:00 Blues co-owner Brett Johnson will watch his first game at Portman Road on Saturday afternoon and spoke to reporters, including TWTD’s Phil Ham, on Friday as he prepared for his big day. Johnson flew over from his home in Los Angeles on Friday with his wife for a swift first visit to the club he and his fellow Three Lions, Mark Detmer and Berke Bakay, became co-owners of in April. “It’s surreal, it’s completely surreal,” the 51-year-old said. “I was expressing to anyone, but specifically [CEO] Mark Ashton as we were walking around, my expectations were incredibly high, understandably. “I’m so blown away, by everything. I guess I’ll start here because I’m sitting here but Portman Road, I’ve just been so keen to get here and I can’t wait until tomorrow because I know I’m going to have goosebumps. I’ve got goosebumps now and the stadium’s empty! Tomorrow, it’s going to be just beyond electric. “My only regret is obviously my partners were unable to make it for this trip. I can’t wait to return to with them. “But going to the training ground earlier today, just world class, seeing the players, meeting Paul and his staff, just blown away by everything.” Surveying Portman Road from a Magnus Group West Stand executive box, Johnson continued: “It’s unreal. It really is unreal. Sitting here, looking out, and then just thinking about the history of this place and ideally the history that we’re going to continue to make here. “I can’t wait to hear the energy and the noise tomorrow. Mark Ashton sent me a clip early on, I think the opening home game, one of our goals, and I was shocked at how loud it was, so I can only imagine when I hear it in person. Come on you Blues!”  Johnson has a BA in history from Ivy League university Brown and says he has been studying Ipswich Town’s storied past since the takeover. “Yes, for what it’s worth, I have to put my college degree to work, I consider myself a history major,” he said. “I’ve been studying up. A lot of supporters have sent me books and collections and I been reading those, they’ve been sitting on my nightstand. “I had such a reverence for this club from the inception [of the takeover], but since we’ve had the pleasure of being a part of it, I pinch myself every day relative to what we’re a part of and hopefully helping to contribute to the rightful future that this club deserves.” He says he’s in contact with the UK wing of Gamechanger 20 Ltd, Ashton and chairman Mike O’Leary, regularly. “Fairly often, they’re busy guys and they get on with it, which is the brilliance I think of the partnership,” he continued. “I certainly love to check in with them and we’re a fairly tight group, we communicate through a bunch of different media on a regular basis. “By and large, pre the deal closing, Mike and I seemed to be on speed dial with each other, that’s tailed off a little bit understandably but I think now we’re starting to a hit a real rhythm. “Because the transfer window’s closed Mark Ashton has a minute to breathe, but it’s good communication all around.” Asked whether he and his fellow Three Lions allow them to deal with the day to day but are there as a support network, he agreed: “That’s probably well said. With all my partners, I think we all want to be an incredible resource, a level of support. “But the reality is, in particular with Mark Ashton, he’s a professional, this is what he does and he’s got to have the latitude to get on with it. He can’t continue to have to check Stateside for everything he wants to do. “I know from my perspective, whatever my hopes, expectations, my respect for Mark, he’s just blown me away in terms of what he’s contributed in a short period of time. “Seeing the core group that was here and now the additional talent that’s come in, it’s fantastic. “I’ve just loved my time, it’s only been a couple of hours now, but I’ve loved my time meeting everyone and everyone seems very positive and it’s the right culture. Everyone’s calling each other by their first names, you can just kind of sense something, you can sense there’s a lot of respect around the entire club.” Johnson believes the relationship between the Three Lions and Ashton, who they first met at a USL board meeting a few years ago, is among the most important at the club.  “Completely. I’ve just expressed it as brilliant in terms of the job that he’s doing and how he hit the ground running. I don’t know how he’s not got a complete head of grey hair but none of this is for the faint of heart, it’s amazing just the complexity of all the different moving parts. “Obviously, he was very, very busy from the day he showed up here until the end of the transfer window and I’m just thrilled and love the players that we have the benefit of being associated with now. “And again, in an environment where in the last eight games when we’ve been on a run of form, which is nice. It’s building and heading in the right direction and I think everyone can feel it.” Town’s summer certainly wasn’t for the faint of heart with manager Cook completely changing the squad with the Blues subsequently making a slow start to the campaign. “I’ve had the benefit of recognising that you’ve got to be patient and that sometimes, literally and figuratively, the ball doesn’t bounce the way you’d want it to, so you’re not always going to get the results,” Johnson said. “I don’t necessarily view the adversity as being a bad thing. In some respects, again taking into account how competitive we are and the impatient nature that we all bring towards this, I’m at peace with it, relative to it. “I’ve always felt you’ve got to take a deep breath, keep putting the right foot after the left and I’ve always felt like it’s going to come together, and it is coming together, which is a lot of fun. “Again, we’re in this for the long, long haul and the long arc of it and I remember early on in a season, through nine games in Phoenix we’d only had two wins and we had a really talented team, we knew we had a talented team. “I remember we went on a 20-game streak after that nine games, so for me that was a little bit of the universe explaining in terms of taking a deep breath and recognising that sometimes it takes a little while to click. So that was a very, very valuable lesson. “It’s nice to sit here. My being here isn’t relative to how we’re doing or not doing. I wanted to get over here, I would have loved to have got over here for the home opener but once we were unable to do it, then it became clear, let’s try to find another date. “Hopefully I can keep finding another date and another date and then my wife will probably buy a place over here!” Johnson has plenty of business interests inside and outside football but says the Blues are his priority. “I have to rank it as top, for a lot of reasons,” he said. “I feel, as I always say, I’m so blessed with everything I get to do and how far it’s all come. I’ve always wanted to be involved with English football. I think if you’re in the sport, this is where you have to be. “My respect, my reverence if you will, not just for Ipswich but for English football, has hit a whole other level watching it week in, week out, especially if you look at League One. Just the depth, the quality, the calibre. There are no easy games. It just blows me away. “And then seeing today first hand [manager] Paul [Cook] and his team and the way they approach training etc, it’s mind-blowing for me. I want to be respectful to States, but it’s literally and figuratively like I’m watching a whole other league.” Johnson’s enthusiasm is palpable and he admits he’s completely hooked: “I’m hooked for sure. It’s great! I totally am. I want to try to spend more time over here, I’ve got obviously [USL Championship side] Phoenix and a team in the league below called FC Tucson but then I’m launching a team in [Pawtucket], Rhode Island. "“Talking with Mark Ashton, I really want to leverage an exchange programme, I want to get the coaches from the clubs I’m part of over here, but vice versa I want to have an exchange programme where we can get some of the coaches Stateside and really try to figure out how to leverage the assets, so ideally one plus one plus one is a lot more than three, if you will.” It’s been six months since the takeover, how have Johnson and the other the Three Lions found watching on from across the Atlantic? “I think lately it’s been a lot of fun, obviously,” he smiled. “I think we’ve got a lot of threats on the field, from my perspective I love a team that can hurt you with a lot of different weapons, and that’s clearly what’s happening lately, which has been great. “When you have a team that can score, it’s pretty easy to figure out how to leverage that and I think the team’s doing it, so that’s been fantastic. “I wish we could have got over here for the home opener. I think better late than never and I wish, maybe I’ll frame it in a different light, I can’t wait until my partners come over here and I’m immediately going to go back and say ‘Look, I don’t know what day it is, but let’s get it in the calendar and let’s try and pack this stadium and never look back’.”  Did you draw lots on who would come over first? “As far as I’m concerned we did, and I drew it. No, I’m thrilled. Again, as everyone knows, travel’s just not for the faint-hearted right now, there are still a lot of challenges to do it. “I’m happy that I was able to navigate getting over here, really, really excited for when Mark and Ed [Schwartz from ORG, who manage funds on behalf of the Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS)] and Berke and Mark [Steed, chief investment officer of PSPRS] can join me on this. “Barring anything unforeseen, it will certainly be this side of the year. I think we should try and figure out what that date is and kind of put a flag in the ground and key off of it. “I know tomorrow we’re going to have close to 20,000, which will be superb but it would be nice to see if we can’t bump that up.” Do the American wing of the Town ownership have a Whatsapp group they communicate through during matches? “We definitely send messages back and forth to each other. On the Saturday games we’re all tuning in, sometimes the midweek games, there are some situations, with what’s on the collective plates of everyone, sometimes you feel like you might be in an echo chamber wondering why no one’s responding. “And I have to be careful with my family because sometimes I sit there and say ‘Dad’s got to get on a Zoom for the next 90 minutes’, hoping they’re not realising that I’ll be watching an Ipswich game.” While delighted to be watching his first match at Portman Road, one thing would add something to the day. “From my perspective, I wish it was under the lights,” Johnson said. “I look forward to coming back at some point and watching the game at night because I can imagine there’s nothing like that. “I’m used to waking up in Los Angeles for a 7am game, which has been nice because I have been able to turn to the family and tell them ‘Dad’s got a little work to go and do’. My wife better not read this as she’s going to catch on to what I’ve been doing! “But she can sense, especially lately, because I’m in a good mood because the results have been going the right way. “I can’t wait until tomorrow, a three o’clock game, sometimes in the States, at least with the teams I watch, sometimes they can be a little late, especially with young kids.” The new owners backed manager Cook to the tune of 19 new senior signings in the summer. Asked whether he will receive further funds in January, Johnson said: “That’s Mark’s wheelhouse, literally and figuratively. But yes, I look forward to seeing, if you will, the art of the possible in what happens during that window. “With the utmost respect to Mark and Paul and the extended team, it’s nothing short of incredible what they’ve pulled off. “Understandably, it wasn’t going to click from day one and I think to really enjoy it the adversity is something we should be embracing, kind of saying it was a positive. Hopefully it will be serving us well between now and the end of the season, or certainly leading up to January.” While Johnson is hoping the Blues can achieve promotion this season, he says it’s not the end of the world if it takes longer than that. “From my perspective, obviously we have a healthy impatience,” he said. “Everyone wants the same thing and we want it as quickly as possible. But at the end of the day, you have to be realists. “I don’t think we want to give up the chase ever, but that being said we have to recognise that it might not happen this first season. There’s no expiration date in terms of any of our commitments or involvements with this, this is absolutely a very long term play. “But from my perspective, we’re still early enough in the season and I’m the eternal optimist on this and I love what I’m seeing from everyone and so we’re remaining very positive relative to what might be possible, certainly this season and obviously beyond.” He says his first day at Portman Road will be understated with no helicopter landings, no keepie-uppies in the centre circle or anything like that.  “That’s it, that’s not me!” he laughed. “I can see there’s an American flag flying out there, so maybe the secret’s out. “I’m very happy my wife was able to join me on this trip, so it’s been nice for us to get some time together and we just love England, so it’s exciting for me to spend some time with her and show her what I do day in and day out, what I’m so blessed to be a part of.” He says his children are also getting into following his clubs: “Yes, the story I tell all the time, my daughter who is now 10 but when I first started with this, she thought I was a professional player! They get into all this and I can’t wait to bring them over, for so many different reasons. “It’s complex with them being in school right now but maybe in a couple of months we’ll get back here. I was telling my wife that maybe we can try to figure out how to bring them over as well. “There’s nothing like watching it with the kids, and seeing their enthusiasm and their excitement about it. “They’re always wearing their Ipswich [merchandise], like their dad. It’s very rare when I’m not wearing some gear from Ipswich, and they’re doing the same, so it’s a lot of fun.” Asked how long he let them believe he was a player, he joked: “I still do! They can’t believe that at 51 I’m still out there doing it. “This brings it full circle to Ipswich. I was hiring Frank Yallop, at the time the team was Arizona United and I was joking with Frank when I was interviewing him. “I said ‘Frank, I’ve got a situation, my four-year-old thinks I’m a professional player. You might have to do me a favour and let me [on the field and] pull my hamstring and say ‘Daddy’s career is over’. I had to tell Frank I was just joking, I think he was having second thoughts on the position. “They fully know where I sit in the pecking order of it all now. It’s fun to start to see how the kids start to gravitate towards it. I’ve got so many teams that if they wanted to they could be watching soccer all the time. I like to show them the highlights, point out different players, what’s going on. It is really is becoming a real family affair. “I tell you what I’ve enjoyed from our involvement, every time that I see the supporters and I see them bringing their children, those are the things you start to recognise. “Someone was just telling me a story about when they came here when she was 11 years old and her father brought her because they were playing Arsenal and he was a big Arsenal fan. “And after the game, none of the Arsenal players came up to the fans but the Ipswich players all came up and since then she’s been a lifelong fan of Ipswich. “Stories like that just show the connections and at the end of the day it’s about the supporters, it’s about the fans, that’s what these clubs are all about. “From my perspective, there’s a big difference between what I’m doing in the States, which is really building teams that are bespoke, versus a scenario where you have a club like this is 143 years old. Just the history, it’s amazing. “But the reality is, the history and the future are only going to be as strong as the supporters and the belief they have in it and that’s why I think it’s so important for us to make sure that we do right by this club and do right by the supporters who care so much about it.” He says he briefly touched base with the team on Friday morning but was conscious of not getting under their feet. “I met them all very quickly,” he said. “I always want to be sensitive because it feels a little strange kind of interrupting their work day. I was very happy to give them a quick wave and just loved watching training. “At the risk of being really repetitive, I’m blown away with the quality and calibre of English football. I’m blown away with the quality of this team, blown away with the depth and breadth of League One. “There’s just nothing like it. Nothing compares. It would actually be very interesting just to see how an average League One club would perform against other top teams [from other leagues]. They would hold their own, there is nothing like English football. “That’s why it’s a dream come true to actually have a team like Ipswich, to be associated with it. Whatever I get to do in the States now, it’ll be light years in terms of how I believe I’ll be able to take my assets there and accelerate them because I think I’ll be able to take the best practices which exist here and bring them over to the States and vice versa. “Like I said, I just can’t wait to continue to figure out how this is connectivity feeds in the most positive sense, and supports the other pieces of the puzzle.” Phoenix are currently top of USL Championship Pacific Division, while another of the clubs Johnson is involved with, Helsingør, lead the Danish second tier. “Jordan Gardiner deserves credit for Helsingør, I love to be associated with it,” he added. “I was saying to Mark Ashton earlier that I think there is a lot of talent in that club, they’re sitting in first position, really poised to go up, which will be exciting. “And Phoenix has been enjoying the kind of success that we’ve grown accustomed to and have had. We were in the final last year, it was disrupted through Covid. “I have the benefit of recognising just how difficult it is to get into that position and you have to covet it, you have to cherish it because the reality is it can be fleeting, you don’t know when you’re going to be back there. “But I’m thrilled that Phoenix is having the season its having, we’ve two games left until we enter the play-offs and I really hope we can take a deep run, a very deep run this year.”  Asked what type of supporter he is, he said: “Hopefully you’ll see it because I’ll be going crazy for a lot of reasons. There’s a great photo of Mark, Berke and I at a Phoenix Rising play-off game where Didier Drogba scored a beautiful goal in this kind of embrace and Didier Drogba’s coming over. “We can get quite animated. But Berke, those guys feed my [excitement], my wife might keep me a little bit subdued because I don’t want her to look at me and think she’s married to a madman. “The Brett Johnson tomorrow might be different from the Brett Johnson who comes back in a couple of months.” How might be be if Macauley Bonne pulls another goal out of the bag? “It’s such a pleasure to watch him, a couple of the goals that he’s had, with the goalie a couple of weeks again against Sheffield Wednesday. You could watch a thousand of those and never see one of those pay off, so that was something else. “And I know it was a little bit different the other night but he’s got two quasi-similar goals, just figuring out how to be in the right place at the right time. He’s a lot of fun to watch and what a brilliant young man, personally and professionally. “From my perspective, they’re all a lot of fun to watch, the depth, I think people are starting to see it. You don’t want get out of the starting line-up because it’s not that easy to get back in.” While out and about in LA in Town merchandise Johnson has taken it upon himself to add to the ranks of the Blue army when he bumps into people interested in English football. “I have it on my car, I’m constantly wearing the baseball cap,” he explained. “Among many of the highlights today was running into the guys who run the e-commerce site, I’ve been keeping them busy so I was thanking them for sending me all this incredible gear. “You definitely get individuals, but the reality is they’ve probably been following football for a while, they kind of recognise the history of Ipswich and I look forward to converting them one American at a time. “I did convert an Englishman who I met just this past week before I got on a plane. He was here last week, he lives in the Palisades where I live in Los Angeles, and he gave me a four-page breakdown of everything I had to do to get into this country. “And, by the way, it was timely because I don’t know what I would have done without his four-page breakdown, ‘You’ve got fill this paperwork out’. I naively was just going to show up at LAX and probably get turned away. “But anyway, I’ve now converted him, he and his wife are now a Tractor Boy and Tractor Girl. Then I’ll get them eventually on the Phoenix Rising train and then I’ll get them on the Rhode Island train.” As well as there being a synergy between the clubs he has a stake in, Johnson would like links between the fans. “One hundred per cent. I love the connectivity and I do recognise that I’ve seen supporters here who will reach out and wish me, Berke and Mark good luck on a game,” he said. “If we have a good result and they’ll congratulate us, so I think that we’ve got the nucleus of being able to get a fantastic exchange programme going. “I welcome and look forward to it and I recognise the team in Tucson that I have the pleasure of owning, I’ve started to recognise when stuff is posted on social media, some of the followers of Ipswich are very supportive of it. “The club I’m launching in Rhode Island, which is a little bit more than a year out, but already right now, I’m always thinking about how I can I bring some of the supporters from Ipswich to Rhode Island to start to tell, if you will, some of the diehard Rhode Islanders that are going to get behind the team that this is the way you properly support a club.  “I feel like it’s just ingrained in the culture here, it’s different when you’re trying to build it up completely fresh in a new market.” He added: “I think it’s a whole other level of intensity here. The stakes seem higher here. American fans have got an embarrassment of riches relative to all the different sports that they follow, and especially in a market like Phoenix. You’ve got the NFL and the NBA, the NHL. I find it interesting because over time I’ve become so focused on football, on soccer. Americans, I do feel that often in foreign markets, especially if you look at England, they’re really going to be behind their local football club. “And it’s changing I guess in America from what I find now is that when I’m constantly talking about it, I’m constantly wearing stuff. “I was on an aeroplane and I was sitting next to a 79-year-old retired gentleman from Los Angeles on a flight a couple of weeks ago when I was flying to Rhode Island. His knowledge of English football, this is a guy who started to pick it up like five years ago, he didn’t grow up playing soccer, but his knowledge now of English football, the different clubs, I was blown away by it. “It makes me so optimistic relative to the future of the sport and the future of the sport in America because not too long ago if I’m sitting next to a 79-year-old retired American, who didn’t play soccer growing up, there was no chance he talking to me about what’s going in English football. “He was aware of Ipswich, he couldn’t believe my association with the club. And that’s another foreign fan that I’ve converted! At this rate, think about the global following, one a day, 365 a year that I’m going to be converting. “I do think [the situation has changed] for a host of reasons. First and foremost having the Premier League on every week has made a huge difference. “About five years ago if you were walking into a bar or restaurant you wouldn’t see football on television. “Now it’s very rare to walk into a bar or restaurant where you don’t see it. It’s completely shifted. And then you also get to a point where the average fan in America, they’re all starting to adopt, they all have their teams, they all watch their leagues. “Nothing like English football, nothing like the following of the Premier League. They’re talking about the renewal of that contract and it’s going to hit a new other level. “But then I also think that the European Championship, that set new records in the States in terms of viewership and then with the World Cup coming back, I’m so bullish on the future of soccer in America for a host of reasons, and that’s why it’s such a pleasure to be able to do what I do. “But then I also have the connectivity here because I think you’ll start to see so many different ways to leverage the talent here and start to see how you bring it back and cross-collateralise in the most positive way with the United States.” Having talked about his interest in the history of the club, Johnson hopes on a future visit to spend time wandering the corridors of the club looking at the framed memorabilia and newspapers from years gone by, while he has also discussed making that history more accessible for fans. “I need to come back and I literally need to just walk [around], it’s a book in itself,” he said. “We’ve been talking about how at some point we potentially create more of a public viewing for what’s in all the different corridors - do you create a museum? Clearly we have enough archival material to do it. “When I have a little bit more time on my hands, I literally have to go through frame by frame and read all the stuff. “It’s been reading about the Cobbolds, reading about the European tours, really getting a sense for its former glory and just being so keen to see us get back there because it deserves to be back there. “I can only imagine what those days were like, when you were able to get on a plane and go and watch them compete internationally and compete well and represent not only this region very well but represent England. The pedigree of both here at Portman Road and what they were able to achieve internationally, there are very few clubs that can boast the kind of history that this club does, that it has. “I’m just so honoured to have whatever small part I have to play and will try to support it and be a good ambassador literally and figuratively for the club.”
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