“When you look at the numbers back then about why the club decided to open an office in the US, the figures were something like there’s 100 million people interested in football here. That’s more than the population of Germany, so the potential is huge. Before we came here we asked, ‘Is this beneficial to us, can we really make a difference?’ The potential was just very difficult not to take up. Then it came down to where it would be located. Obviously there’s a time difference, it’s much easier to be on the East Coast, but New York is a real hub in terms of all of the headquarters being [here] such as the NFL, NBA and MLS headquarters.