sport news New York Mets star Pete Alonso opens up on his love for Chelsea and Didier ... trends now
Baseball’s biggest names have been tasked with winning UK fans over to their sport this summer and they already have a fitting blueprint for success, as devoted converts to the Premier League.
The third running of Major League Baseball’s London Series will see the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies arrive at West Ham for two games in early June.
These two old rivals are charged with growing the sport in Europe and selling out a 60,000-seat stadium - something none of their 30 clubs get close to back home but which was achieved in east London in both 2019 by the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, and last summer when the Chicago Cubs and St Louis Cardinals finally completed a series delayed three years by the pandemic.
While priority number one is gaining bragging rights in Europe against a division rival and erasing any memory of a turbulent 2023 campaign, a large section of the Mets locker room have an eye on the heroes that light up their clubhouse screens every Saturday morning.
Fearsome slugger Pete Alonso is capable of delivering baseballs beyond the fences of any stadium, never mind the slightly more snug ballpark he will enter in London, and his thoughts are locked on starring in the same city as a man born more than 5,000 miles from his native Tampa, Florida.
New York Mets star Pete Alonso has opened up on his Chelsea fandom ahead of the London Series in London in early June, where his team face Philadelphia Phillies
Alonso has said that he hopes to visit Chelsea's Stamford Bridge stadium when in England
Alonso said his support for Chelsea was inspired by former striker Didier Drogba
‘I’m really excited for London - Chelsea is my favorite football club,’ says Alonso. ‘Didier Drogba is my favorite. He’s done now but I think my favorite performance of his was against Bayern Munich in the 2012 Champions League final. The dude is an absolute savage.
‘It started in the 2006 World Cup watching him play for Ivory Coast. Chelsea was his club then and seeing him play, the dude is a very physical player. He’s also a guy that plays with power and grace. He plays football like an American football free safety.
‘I caught the bug in 2006, that World Cup. That inspired me to play a couple seasons of soccer.’
Joining Alonso in the Drogba fan club is his new manager at the Mets, Carlos Mendoza. The Venezuelan, who steps up to the top job this season after six years as an assistant coach across the East River with the Yankees, first fell for Real Madrid
