Inside the NFL's herculean mission to bring the Chiefs and Chargers to Brazil... including dental floss, 4,500 staff and shoe dryers

The first trucks were loaded up in Los Angeles in May. They contained food and drinks and their initial pit-stop was New York.

After being driven across the United States, the precious cargo was chucked on a ship that headed out into the Atlantic Ocean. Destination: Sao Paulo. The only proviso? It had to arrive in Brazil before Wednesday morning.

Otherwise the Los Angeles Chargers would have gone hungry in the final days before Friday night’s NFL season opener against the Kansas City Chiefs. Jim Harbaugh and his players have spent four months preparing for this Week 1 matchup, which represents a stiff early test of their Super Bowl credentials.

Behind the scenes, however, Chargers officials have been hard at work since February, when it was announced that Los Angeles would play in the first of seven international games in the 2025 season.

What NFL officials would do for such a quick turnaround. Over the coming weeks, they face the mammoth task of putting on games in Brazil, Dublin, London, Berlin and Madrid. In an ideal world, the journey from concept to kickoff will take nearly two years.

The steps on that mission? ‘Identifying the market, going into market, negotiating host agreements, and then moving into planning through delivery,’ the NFL’s global head of major events, Jon Barker, tells the Daily Mail. The hope is all that spans ‘anywhere between 18 to 22 months.’

It is a herculean effort that will be lost on the 50,000 fans who cram into Neo Quimica Arena for a rare glimpse of Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Justin Herbert and Co. They are there to watch four quarters of football that are years in the making.

‘There are a lot of things that get put on trucks and boats and aircraft to get here (and) to get us ready,’ Barker explains.

Among them? People. ‘The NFL alone has traveled 150 to 175 people to Brazil for this particular game,’ Barkers explains. ‘Then when you start to add the layers of all of our production partners and suppliers and vendors that will be here day of (the game), you're talking probably 2,500 to 3,000 people who are dedicated to the execution and operation of this game.’

Add in the temporary workers, hired to manage a stadium on gameday, and that number reaches around 4,500.

In Kansas City, meanwhile, more than 200 players and staff climbed on to six buses on Wednesday morning, to begin a journey of nearly 6,000 miles to Brazil.

During 11 hours in the air, Mahomes and Co sought to 'keep themselves moving' whenever possible. 'The trainers and coaches have really done the research and they understand what we need to do,' the quarterback explained.

Andy Reid's team shifted their normal practice schedule forward two days to try and minimize disruption to their routine. On Thursday, for instance, the Chiefs went through a walk-through as if it was Saturday.

Earlier this year, meanwhile, Chargers staff went round every department of the organization to tally up everything the team needed in Brazil. They needed to know where every item was made, how much it weighed, how much it cost and – for electronics – its unique serial number.

The final list included shoe dryers, dental floss, longer studs for a soccer field… and gear belonging to players who never even made it to Brazil. Everything left their training base last Tuesday morning – before the deadline for teams to decide their 53-man roster.

It was taken to New Jersey before being loaded on to a cargo plane – alongside the Chiefs’ equipment – which landed in Brazil on Sunday. No food or beverages were allowed on the flight. Hence why all that had to be shipped over in May.

‘It seems unusual, but it's something that we do need to do,’ Barker explains. Take energy drinks, for example. ‘Gatorade in the United States and Gatorade in Europe, it's a different product because in Europe, certain ingredients in the US are not allowed.’

The Chargers’ nutrition reached Brazil in early August. By then, a staff member had already been and gone. He checked out the airport, the locker rooms, the field and the team hotel. Harbaugh's players boarded the plane with only the essentials - at least one had Chipotle, another had Chick-fil-A. By the time they checked into their rooms in Sao Paulo, staff had already sent 70 player bags through customs and hauled them on to carts.

One slip-up can prove very costly. Just ask Harrison Butker. In the wake of their Super Bowl loss earlier this year, the Chiefs kicker was left without any clothes in the locker room. At the time, wearing only a towel, he speculated that a team staffer mistook his suit for Mahomes' and had packed it away. 

Unfortunately, getting everyone and everything to Brazil is only part of the challenge. The NFL also has to make soccer stadiums such as Neo Quimica Arena fit for purpose. Football leaves a bigger ‘footprint’ than soccer and a 53-man roster requires more space to prepare.

‘We have to go in and retrofit all of the locker rooms, to be able to fit our players and personnel and their equipment,’ Barker explains.

Then there is the issue of rival fans. Soccer stadiums are used to segregating supporters but, at football, everyone is thrown into the same melting pot. This might require the NFL to tweak how fans enter the ground, how much they can mingle, even what they can do inside the stadium.

‘If you think about your experience inside the bowl of an NFL game for three hours compared to what you would see at a typical soccer game, it's wildly different,’ Barker points out.

Organizers can’t forget about those watching back home, either. An NFL broadcast looks very different to a game of soccer on TV. ‘Different camera positions and camera wells and sky cams and spider cams,’ Barker continues. ‘So there's a lot of conversion of the infrastructure.’

Thankfully, the NFL has had enough practice at taking teams overseas. The first international game was back in 2007. By the end of next season, the league will have travelled to seven countries during the regular season. 

This is their second foray into South America in as many years and, on Friday night, the Chargers will become the first franchise to play on five different continents – including preseason games.

The Chiefs are well travelled, too. This is Kansas City’s fourth foreign adventures in a decade. In that time, Kelce has become the sport’s biggest star and one half of the world’s most famous couple. Then, last week, the tight end announced his engagement to Taylor Swift and reached new levels of fame.

He and the Chiefs were mobbed at Sao Paulo airport and at Friday’s final practice, a team of security staff – all dressed in black suits and black ties – lined up to prevent ‘field runners’. Protecting football’s biggest names adds another layer of complexity to this operation.

‘We have probably the best within the industry when it comes to security,’ Barker claims. ‘So regardless of the makeup of the team or the celebrities that will attend our game, our security best practices are in place at every event that we do - Super Bowl included – and we feel very, very confident in the plans that we have in place.’

Unfortunately, not everything can be accounted for. Sometimes, you simply ‘stumble across’ a problem. Or a gem.

Take the NFL’s first trip to Munich in 2022. ‘One of our employees was walking through a parking lot and overheard a conversation of a few folks from Munich, just talking about the song “(Take Me Home,) Country Roads” and how they love singing at Oktoberfest,’ Barker recalls.

‘She sent a note over to our game production team, and they incorporated into the game, and it turned into this viral moment.’ During the Buccaneers’ win over the Seahawks, fans belted out the John Denver classic - even as the game carried on below.

‘It is (about) us learning local culture… really understanding what resonates with these fans,’ Barker continues. ‘Yes, we want them to become fans of the NFL… but it's really important to us that we're also listening and that we're adapting what we do.

‘So this feels like their game, not a product that was in a box that we dropped down and it's all just focused on America and American culture.’

At last year’s Brazil game, the NFL brought out local Olympic stars such as gymnast Rebeca Andrade - just weeks after the Paris Games.

But the league knows that the true test of these international adventures come in year two, once the novelty has worn off. The NFL claims that early indicators suggest all their efforts are paying dividends here – in the value of media deals and the growth of fan bases and the demands for tickets.

‘We really want these games to feel like Super Bowls for these fans,’ Barker says. ‘It's three hours and it's one week out of 52… but we do know that games are working.’