Honestly, I couldn’t be happier to be here.

Over the past few years I’ve driven through Louisiana and Alabama, Georgia and Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina. I’ve watched football beside the Gulf of Mexico and beneath the Smoky Mountains, in downtown stadiums overlooked by skyscrapers and on modest grounds hidden behind warehouses and community parks. I’ve crossed the Mississippi at sunrise, followed the Blue Ridge Parkway beneath autumn colours, sat in Atlanta traffic wondering whether I’d make kick-off and driven lonely stretches of interstate where the only company came from truck stop coffee and whatever happened to be playing on the radio. I’ve eaten gumbo in Louisiana, hot chicken in Nashville, shrimp and grits in Charleston, Cuban sandwiches in Tampa and barbecue in towns so small I can no longer remember their names. I’ve shared tables with fishermen, bartenders, waitresses, professors, factory workers, coaches, students, retirees and supporters who cared deeply about clubs most people have never heard of. Every place sounded different, smelt different and moved at its own pace, but almost all of them greeted a stranger the same way – with a smile, a question about where I’d come from, and a recommendation for somewhere better to eat than wherever I’d planned to go. Somewhere between all those miles I stopped thinking of these places as assignments and started thinking of them as pieces of home. To be blunt, I fell in love with the South.

But there comes a point when every traveller starts looking at houses instead of hotels.

Charlotte became our base rather than our home. We’d unpack just enough to feel settled before another assignment sent me somewhere else with another notebook on the passenger seat. It was exciting, and I wouldn’t change a second of it, but it also meant asking my wife and Noah to build their lives around my next journey. Noah deserves more than that now. We’ve bought a house here in Miami. We’re looking at schools. For the first time in a long while we’re planting something instead of simply passing through it, and there’s a quiet comfort in that I didn’t realise I’d been missing.

Professionally, this feels like an entirely different challenge. Until now I’d always been writing from the outside, trying to understand football by observing it. Now I’ll be helping to tell the story from within. Every photograph, every matchday graphic, every interview, every line of copy that appears on Miami FC’s social channels will carry my name somewhere behind it, even if supporters never see it. My words won’t just describe the club anymore; they’ll become part of how people experience it.

Years ago I’d probably have imagined this moment arriving through the NFL or Major League Baseball. That’s what I thought sports journalism looked like when I first started. Somewhere between Tampa and Chattanooga, Knoxville and Greenville, that idea quietly disappeared. Football found me instead. Or perhaps I found football. Either way, by the time I reached Miami, it no longer felt like an alternative career. It felt like the only one that made sense.

I’ve still not met Didier, the club’s head coach, although everyone I’ve spoken to describes him as demanding in the best possible way. I’m looking forward to learning from him, to understanding football from the inside rather than through a notebook balanced on my knee in the press box. I still have far more questions than answers about the game. Thankfully, I don’t think that’s ever been a disadvantage. It’s probably the reason I’ve kept following it this far.