How Nick Hagglund used coffee to contribute to FC Cincinnati during surgery recovery

The clearest indication that Nick Hagglund was truly back for FC Cincinnati in the on-field sense wasn’t that he subbed on against New York City FC for his first appearance of 2024 on Saturday. It was a few minutes later when Hagglund slid to break up a pass.

Had NYCFC connected on the pass, it would have meant trouble for FCC’s 1-0 lead at the time. Instead, Hagglund’s sliding interception helped Cincinnati see out a 1-0 win, the club's first victory of the year at TQL Stadium.

Hagglund's contributions over a shift that ended up lasting more than 30 minutes were noticed by teammates.

"That was probably the best moment of the match for me because it's like validation for him, kind of being like 'alright, I'm finally back here, I know I can do it,'” FC Cincinnati goalkeeper Roman Celentano said of Hagglund. “I was really happy for him to be back on the field and make a few big plays to help us see out the game."

More: Luciano Acosta makes MLS history in FC Cincinnati win over NYCFC | Replay

More: FC Cincinnati loans out Marco Angulo. What it means for both sides

Hagglund’s debut arrived five league matches into the 2024 season due his recovery from surgery for a torn hamstring suffered early in the 2023 MLS Cup playoff run. The recovery process limited him to watching the club’s preseason matches on the sidelines, often in sunglasses and a floppy bucket hat.

Generally, it was the same story once competitive matches started. Hagglund was tucked away inside TQL Stadium, viewing from much farther away than he’d have preferred.

What fans and anyone else outside FC Cincinnati couldn’t have seen and wouldn’t have known was that Hagglund was a daily contributor to FC Cincinnati all along. His season debut against NYCFC wasn't his first offering to the 2024 team he'd worked so hard to be part of via a March 2023 contract extenison.

Recovery from an injury can be a notoriously solitary endeavor, but Hagglund’s presence in a team-run, makeshift coffeehouse operation that existed during preseason ensured he was helping build chemistry within FC Cincinnati at a time when FCC needed exactly that.

Key players like Brandon Vazquez had departed. Alvaro Barreal, who was permitted to arrive to preseason late, would soon depart. Meanwhile, the club was onboarding the likes of Pavel Bucha, Luca Orellano, Kipp Keller and others.

Year-over-year roster consistency was key for FC Cincinnati in winning the 2023 Supporters' Shield. In 2024, a quick transition with a new-look roster would be key. It's fair to say Hagglund was did plenty to help facilitate making his new teammates feel at home.

A lot of bonding took place around a coffee maker.

“It’s just such a cool, communal thing to share a cup of coffee with someone,” Hagglund said. “You just sit down and you get to know somebody. It’s easy to sip something and talk. Even with my kids. ‘We need to get out of the house, what are we gonna do? Oh, let’s just go to a coffee shop. I’ll get a drink, you can get a biscotti.' We’ll talk, drink, hangout. We’re gonna meet people. For me as a very outgoing, extraverted person, it’s a place I like to meet people and hang out and invite people to go do something and share that with.”

You might call Hagglund the purveyor of the preseason coffee setup, and in 2024 he once again took on a role as a primary caretaker for FC Cincinnati’s private coffee station.

FC Cincinnati's deal with its preseason hotel, the Hyatt Regency Clearwater Beach, saw most of the team housed on a single floor. On that floor, some suites were temporarily converted into communal areas. The coffee machine that was the center of so much use and conversation was in a kitchenette about 10 feet from a line of four fully-padded training and massage tables.

So, as players and staff nursed injuries and groaned during massages, Hagglund and others were often communing nearby at the a relatively complex coffee and espresso machine, which was a modest setup but one that featured all the hissing, columns of steam, and attempts at "latte art" you'd expect from your neighborhood coffee shop.

A makeshift coffee shop in a training room might not sound like a natural fit but for Hagglund's purposes, it was a perfect intersection.

“Very communal. People are coming in the training room and everyone’s hanging out, everyone’s making coffee,” Hagglund told The Enquirer during a Feb. 12 interview. “I don’t know if I’d see (head of goalkeeping) Paul Rogers or Austin Berry as much as I do, but because they come make coffees, everyone gets to hang out.

“Young guys come in and we teach them how to make a coffee. Now they’re making coffees. It’s in the training room, so everyone’s in here anyway. It’s just a good vibe."

The FC Cincinnati coffee tradition: An origin story

The prominence of coffee at FC Cincinnati preseason was made abundantly clear through humorous but sharply-produced videos shared on social media in 2023 and 2024. Hagglund directed and organized participation in the videos. He said that process engaged a part of his brain he doesn't typically get to stimulate.

But the real beginnings of FC Cincinnati staging its own, in-house, impromptu coffee shop started with Hagglund in the early days of his time playing for Toronto FC.

“I didn’t enjoy coffee until I was a professional athlete," Hagglund said. "I was like ‘oh, I don’t need coffee. I have natural energy’ – until my roommate in Toronto, Bradley Orr, who was 31 years old and played in England and what not, he would always go to coffee with Michael Bradley and they’d always be like, ‘Nick, come on.’ As a rookie, I knew I should hang out with these guys and I better order something, and the first coffee I got was awful. It tasted so bitter. I was like, ‘nah, I can’t drink this.’

"The second time I went, I ordered a super-vanilla-y latte and I knew I could drink this. Over the course of a year, I started to like it. Then I found my own place in Toronto (Jimmy’s Coffee) and now I’m drinking it every day, all the time. I feel like this is me passing down the coffee tradition from Michael and Bradley Orr… There’s not much to it but it’s good fun and everyone appreciates it.”

The machine FC Cincinnati uses to produce a variety of caffeinated drinks - drip coffee, espresso, cappuccino – packs a heavy punch for its size. It's a Breville Barista-Touch, which retails for around $1,000, and it's smaller than most microwaves.

Hagglund and others successfully lobbied to have the Breville removed from TQL Stadium, where it was sparsely used, and brought to Clearwater, where the club in 2024 spent the bulk of its preseason for the third straight year.

The coffeehouse vibe commanded by the small but mighty Breville was immediately a hit. In 2023, even non-coffee drinkers at the time, such as Vazquez and Matt Miazga, became aficionados. Players were saving money, it was more convenient than walking around town for coffee, and they noticed something else.

“We were seeing more of each other,” Hagglund said.

There was little doubt the coffee station would make a return in 2024 until, upon arriving in Clearwater and unpacking the machine, it was discovered that the device's water reservoir was shattered.

Repairing the reservoir was impossible and finding a replacement was a time-consuming pursuit. A replacement was eventually shipped to the team’s beachfront preseason hotel hub, but it required 10 days of waiting.

The club’s coffee drinkers lamented having to shell out the money on less-convenient java from big-chain brewers nearby. The sense of community driven by the coffee machine took something of a hit, too.

“It was a damper,” Hagglund said. “I didn’t see Paul Rogers smile for probably 10 days straight until the reservoir got here. Now, he’s back to normal – he smiles once a day.”

But even during the wait for the reservoir, Hagglund continued the vital process of making interpersonal connections with new and younger teammates over coffee.

“I was taking new guys to this coffee shop nearby… and it’s just an opportunity to get to know people. Kipp (Keller) was going and we had Bret Halsey come, so it’s just some guys I maybe wouldn’t get to hang out with on a solo basis or in a small-group setting – they like coffee, I like coffee. Let’s go get coffee,” Hagglund said.

Community via coffee

The supply of beans – about 10 pounds for the Clearwater portion of preseason alone – was provided by Fulton Yards Coffeehouses, which is co-owned locally by the father of Cincinnati native, former MLS Rookie of the Year and FCC player-turned-athletic trainer, Austin Berry.

That was somewhat fitting as Berry was said to be one of the more-frequent visitors in the kitchenette. Rogers, too, often departed the club's athletic-training suite double-fisting his coffees.

Hagglund estimated the club went through about five pounds of coffee every two weeks, and that was just for players and first-team staff.

“We thought about doing an actual shop and were thinking about donating the money to charity or whatever,” Hagglund said. “It just became too difficult to see if one person would man this and do the money and all that stuff, so we just keep it (free). It’s an enjoyable thing for the group.”

If there was any doubt who was primarily in charge of FCC's preseason coffeehouse, that was put to bed Feb. 12 as Hagglund prepared a cappuccino for The Enquirer. From the beans to the actual brewing, his process was meticulous.

At one point, Hagglund said to no one in particular, "you have to respect the machine. You have to respect the tools." That was in response to a hiss from the Breville. Espresso machines can be cantankerous.

Hagglund navigated the Breville with ease, though. So in-depth was his knowledge of beans and teaching this craft that plans for an actual coffee shop in Cincinnati started to formulate in 2023. Hagglund said he and Vazquez, now formerly of the club, started to sketch out the makings of a would-be brick-and-mortar shop.

The concepts were serious enough that Hagglund was guarded about many aspects related to the business model. He declined to go into detail about what a post-career coffee shop might look like.

“I’ve read a couple books on beans and what it takes to run a coffee shop,” Hagglund said. “Let’s just say there are multiple levels to what this could be. This was not just a coffee shop. I’ll just leave you with that, but that’s all I can tell you.”

Whether a shop materializes in the future or not, Hagglund’s love of coffee provided a unique usefulness to FC Cincinnati this winter – a moment in the team’s history when opportunities to bond were much-needed amid a period of heavy roster turnover.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: How Nick Hagglund used coffee to contribute to FC Cincinnati