Sam Surridge bet on himself, and it's starting to pay off big with Nashville SC | Estes

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To understand how unique Sam Surridge’s soccer journey to Nashville SC has been, start with two popular quotations, blended seamlessly on his left forearm.

The blond striker looked down at his scripted tattoo, and he read aloud in his British accent:

“Persistence can change failure into extraordinary achievement. In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.”

The first line, if you are curious, seems widely attributed to Olympic gold-medalist swimmer Matt Biondi, and the other (if you can believe it) to disgraced comedian Bill Cosby.

But when presented in brachial form, the sourcing doesn't matter. Only what those words foretold for the gifted young soccer player from England who wears them.

Because Surridge lived it. He walked the walk. Without fear, he bet boldly on himself a couple of summers ago, doing something that hardly anyone in his sport would do.

Surridge, then only 24, exited the Premier League for Major League Soccer, leaving Nottingham Forest’s bench to move across the ocean and join Nashville SC.

“It was really hard for me,” Surridge said, “because I always wanted to play in the Prem. I still want to, obviously, in the future, whenever it'll be. But I just wanted to come over and just show what I could do. Nashville brought me in and let me do that.”

As one of Nashville’s three designated players, he was added to fill a void as the goal-scoring striker the club had long been seeking to pair alongside playmaking star Hany Mukhtar.

Two years later, Surridge’s gamble is beginning to pay off wonderfully for him and his American club. Nashville SC, after a tumultuous and poor season in 2024, has in 2025 quickly played itself back among the ranks of the best teams in MLS under last summer's newly hired coach B.J. Callaghan.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the turnaround: Surridge.

He's been scoring goals like crazy.

He had a hat trick in a 3-2 victory at New England on June 25. A converted penalty kick in the 1-0 win against DC United gave him a league-high 16 goals in 20 MLS games this season, extended his MLS scoring streak to six games and pushed Nashville's unbeaten streak to 13.

The MLS Golden Boot winner (for most goals) in 2024 scored 23.

After the DC game, Surridge was on pace to score 27.

“End of the day, the hardest thing in football is still scoring a goal,” said Mukhtar, the 2022 MLS MVP and Golden Boot winner (also with 23 goals). “ . . . For a successful team, you need to have more players who are capable in scoring goals. Sam has that hunger. He shows that every day. After training, he wants to do shooting exercises and do more. We need to have players like this.”

A soccer road less traveled

Surridge’s birthplace in England is listed as Slough, but he was raised mostly in Bournemouth. That’s where, at about age 7, he said he started playing at the academy of local favorite AFC Bournemouth, a lower-division club that has since become big-time in the Premier League.

Surridge, naturally, was a Bournemouth supporter growing up, going to games with his dad. But as he was coming up through the ranks of English soccer, Surridge would bounce around various clubs, a list that included Bournemouth as well as others like Stoke City and then Nottingham Forest.

In a Premier League game on Jan. 21, 2023, Surridge scored a late equalizer for Forest that, as luck would have it, was against Bournemouth.

That sort of plot twist is common in England, which has the world’s most respected soccer league and legions of smaller clubs filled with native players aiming to get there one day.

While soccer players in England might venture to the U.S. for college, and older British stars near the end of esteemed careers (think David Beckham) have opted for senior tours in MLS, seldom does a developing striker with Premier League aspirations and experience leave in his early 20s to go play in America.

“It’s like, in England, you don't see outside it in a way,” Surridge said. “And there's so many clubs.”

But he added: “As I got older, I wanted to play abroad. I didn't know it was going to come that early . . . but I knew at the time it wasn't a normal thing. A lot of English players wouldn't really come over. It's quite special for me.”

Despite the depth of soccer talent throughout England, five other countries — Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mukhtar’s Germany — are listed as having more foreign-born MLS players, per the website Transfermarkt.

Of the 15 current MLS players from England, the most valuable is probably Surridge, who is surely earning global attention with what he’s doing these days with Nashville SC.

He already has become the fourth English-born MLS player to score 10 goals in multiple seasons, and he’s the first Nashville SC player to have reached 25 MLS goals in his first 54 regular-season matches.

“I’m really happy,” he said. “I still feel like I've got more to prove in MLS and around here before I start looking at (returning) . . . (Nashville SC is) still trying to find their peak, and I want to do the same. It seems like we’re all in that place where we want to prove something.”

Checking a box for Nashville SC

Since joining MLS as an expansion side in 2020, Nashville SC has been a precocious newbie. It overachieved in its first few seasons, thanks in large part to Mukhtar’s heroics but also to a defensive-oriented approach under previous coach Gary Smith that fit the squad nicely at the time.

For years, otherwise stout Nashville lineups lacked a dynamic striker, someone with the rare skills and ability to routinely affect games and worry opponents. It wasn’t for lack of trying. But a few high-profile attempts in the club's early years flamed out (anyone remember Jhonder Cadiz? Or Ake Loba?) Thus a glaring need persisted for a club that by 2023 was in need of younger talent and scoring.

Which led to Surridge, who could provide both.

Late in the 2022-23 season at Nottingham Forest, Surridge’s agent told him about interest from Nashville SC, which was coming to watch him play. Surridge said he met with GM Mike Jacobs and staffers Chance Myers and Ally Mackay (now the GM at DC United) and liked what he heard.

“They just showed a lot of love,” Surridge said, “and I think that's what I probably needed at the time. I wasn't playing at Forest as much as I wanted to. I wanted a new challenge, and they sold it really well to me.”

The recruitment was important. Surridge didn’t have to make the move, didn't have to leave England or the Premier League. He said he had opportunities with clubs in the lower-tier Championship. He said he also could have stayed at Forest for another year, sticking it out with an ascending club that just finished seventh in the Premier League this past season, narrowly missing a Champions League spot.

Heck, Surridge had never even been to the United States at the time.

Nonetheless, he chose Nashville because he saw a "platform to go and express myself," experiencing more for himself than a seat at the end of the bench and a few minutes at the end of games.

"You need to prove what you can do," he explained.

He showed up in Nashville midseason in July 2023, and of course, it wasn’t a simple transition. New country. New league. New teammates. The travel in MLS is very different. And then there is the weather for a league that plays through the summer.

Surridge remembers sitting on the bench sweating through a Leagues Cup game at Geodis Park soon after his arrival and thinking to himself, “I don't know how people are playing (in this heat).”

“I thought everyone was just really fit and I was really unfit,” he said with a laugh.

He scored twice before the end of the 2023 season and a dozen times in 2024. But Nashville SC’s hire of Callaghan has seemingly unlocked more success for Surridge in 2025. As analyst Taylor Twellman marveled during Apple TV’s broadcast of the New England game, “Sam Surridge looks like a completely different player since the manager B.J. Callaghan took over.”

Asked about Surridge’s background, Callaghan complimented the striker's sense of professionalism, which was a product of his time with clubs in England.

“It’s not easy to come over from a different culture, a different league, coming up through a different system,” Callaghan said, “and he’s embraced it, welcomed it and has found ways to adapt and make an impact on our team.”

Surridge, now 26, is making waves this season while still being oddly overlooked. When the MLS All-Star teams were presented, he'd been snubbed despite his goals total.

His contract goes through 2026 (with an option for 2027), so there's more yet for him in Nashville.

This eye-opening run of success in 2025 has indeed been a product of persistence and gumption, just like his arm says. Surridge said that he was originally planning to get his entire arm sleeve inked, but he’s now glad he didn’t.

He chose to leave it at those lines that originally spoke to him.

“I quite liked it,” he said, reading back over the words with a smile.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social