Even now, three weeks after the official announcement of USL Nashville 2018, investor Chris Redhage is still reveling in the idea of the project he and his fellow DMD Soccer partners are undertaking.

“One of the things I’m excited about, and humbled in a lot of ways, is that at my age I get to do this,” Redhage told The Tennessean’s 12th Hour podcast on Thursday. “Ten years ago I was playing and coaching in the same league that we’re buying a franchise in, so that’s a dream come true, I never thought I’d be in a position to do that.”

In an in-depth conversation with host Marcia Masulla, Redhage laid out how the franchise came to be, as a year-long process saw the former player and entrepreneur join forces with major local businessmen David Dill and Marcus Whitney to bring professional soccer to Nashville.

For Redhage, getting the chance to work with a man he had admired for a while in Whitney for the first time, and alongside a longtime friend in Dill, was a massive opportunity.

“I’d always been in awe of Mr. Marcus Whitney,” Redhage told Masulla. “He approached David Dill about investing, and really taking the Nashville Football Club – which is the amateur team here – professional. They realized they weren’t going to be able to fund it as a community-owned, membership-owned team, so basically he approached David, David called me – we had joked about five years ago, David and I go back about 10 years, and we had joked, ‘hey we should buy a professional soccer team someday’ – so he calls me up and says, ‘hey, I’ve got this email, can you come to the meeting?’

“I was going to be at a meeting in D.C. for my day job, which is Provider Trust, so I was up there dealing with a not-so-fun issue, and he called me up afterwards and said ‘this is what happened,’ and I said ‘dude, we’ve got to do this.’ I got back to town, Dave and I met, then I met with Marcus and Chris Jones over at NFC, and we just really started putting together this deal.”

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More details for the new franchise are set to be announced later this month, with Redhage saying there is the potential the club’s next major announcement could be held at the Bridgestone Arena, home of the NHL’s Nashville Predators.

As DMD Soccer moves forward, though, there is a clear vision for what the organization is aiming to be as it builds toward the start of the 2018 USL season.

“We want to build a world-class franchise,” Redhage told Masulla. “We want to include the community, because it’s not going to be successful unless the community is involved and excited about it, and then three, we want to win some championships, because at the end of the day you want to win some awards, you want to make some money, and you want to win some championships.”