Thought pretty interesting stuff on supporter culture in MLS
Thought pretty interesting stuff on supporter culture in MLS
“Years have gone by and I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good football.
I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’
And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.”
-Eduardo Galeano
“Years have gone by and I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good football.
I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’
And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.”
-Eduardo Galeano
“Years have gone by and I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good football.
I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’
And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.”
-Eduardo Galeano
Damn - the Timbers Army are impressive.
I wish it could be like that in the south end. I would love to capo that. the power and emotion felt watching that is just amazing. lets get a little bit of that back here. whether it be tifos or what not. we should do one for the sake of it. I love tifos :P.
Damn!!! the Timbers Army put everyone else to shame....
I cant take curva collective seriously.......the first word means something totally hilarious in this context in Serbo-Croatian....
Columbus Crew don't look that good in the video. But some games once they get going are very loud, singing and jumping together, one of the loudest supporters in the league at times.
New England shit support. Need a new stadium actually in Boston and maybe fans will start coming out, does not help they play in a NFL stadium.
Vancouver whitecaps selling tickets look good, but when it comes to atmosphere/supporters...they are shit, laughable to see them really. The owners from day 1 never seemed to care about supporter groups.
San Jose, very small stadium still. Lets see once they move, the support may get much bigger and better as it did with Kansas last year.
Philly seem louder and more ogranized then our South End is in this video. THey also have a lot more banners then we do behind the net. What happened to those loads of banners we had hanging behind the net at the sky dome??? the amount of banners that were at sky dome would cover the whole south end and more. I also noticed the Philly supporters seem to have more of a friendship with the owners/ Front Office of Philly Union with ticket sales and all.
Portland....well nothing new to me, they have taken this league to the next level. There support is one that actually can rival some support in Europe! (but whats with the big pictures outside the stadium? reminds me of the Bank of Montreal adds they had with Toronto FC Fans looking like we are Greek warriors, was pathetic.)
Last edited by james; 05-30-2012 at 09:01 AM.
^ Just wanted to mention -- in addition to New England's lousy stadium, their supporters have had some major recent problems with their FO, security, and cops as a result, which further dampened their spirits. Stuff like hassling people in the supporter's section about bad language, dragging them out of the stadium, etc. Going with a cheap rookie coach after a lousy season further killed things in the off-season when people had to renew (although that's now turning out better than expected).
I'm sure all that's been bad for their numbers & enthusiasm.
Is it not ironic that one of the clubs with the worst history of helping supporter culture (the Whitecaps) are putting out videos about supporters? That's jokes man.
SOBs was a good place to start though. Good on them.
I can't wait for the Toronto episode to come out. Such promise wasted...
The Ultras are entertaining. Thanks for posting. Do you think the coverage of TFC's will be fair? I figure they are pretty bitter.
hahaha, 10 people getting involved in Vancouver. Passion, boys, passion.
“Years have gone by and I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good football.
I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’
And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.”
-Eduardo Galeano
curva just formed in the last while
my brother is associated with them.
they seem to have a proper plan and guide line in to sort out and grow the group.
Timbers Army is very impressive.
Toronto FC baby...best team everrrrrrrrrr -Jozy
Very cool feature. Neat to see all these groups big and small just trying to grow the game of soccer across North America. Major props to all of them.
Last edited by james; 05-30-2012 at 07:22 PM.
even there bigger supporter group is shit tho. That said Toronto FC has fallen way down the ladder in recent years, most games if you were to do a video of our supporting culture it would not look much better. I would be bit embarrassed actually if people saw the atmosphere at a average match. It just once in a while we come out of our shell and show that TFC fans are one of the best in MLS when all the supporters come out, example passed games vs clubs like LA home match in first year, Columbus away game 2,000+ fans, Montreal V cup games, and LA at Sky Dome this year!
Last edited by james; 05-30-2012 at 07:22 PM.
you would think New England management would start to take notice how other clubs Supporter Culture is catching on and maybe start encouraging it there...but nope they seem to not want anything to do with it. Tho sometimes i start to think the same about TFC management/Front office not wanting anything to do with supporter culture.
Sadly, an "average" match usually involves us losing, and the team playing like they have nothing to play for. Sometime's it's amazing (like when we beat Vancouver at home) but often it's strained. I know it will turn around, and all the hardcore supporters will still be there to see it... I just hope it's sooner rather than later.
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These mini-docs are great. MLS themselves should have taken initiative and put together these videos, instead it seems VWC have taken matters into their own hands. Good on them.
Anyone know if they are filming at all away matches or selecting as they go?
C'mon Mike the "poor record responsible for dwindling support argument" is pure jokes. Even worse is the belief that winning will fix what is now completely broken. Support started going downhill long before this year.
FO deserves blame for the predicament we are in no doubt. So do we as supporters. For not seeing the writing on the wall some time ago, standing up for ourselves, demanding change and a new way of doing things.
Roogsy had a great quote a while back: "It takes a special kind of incompetence to kill the golden goose".
The timbers army are fantastic aren't they? They truly do everything a supporters group should. I heard one story where they had some sort of run in with their FO over tickets or something rather. Anyways, in short, the timbers army boycotted the entire season. and because this was before they had renovated there stadium, the stadium fences were small enough so all of the timbers army could watch every game from ladders outside the stadium...
A WHOLE SEASON. ON A LADDER.
there has been many things that have caused are dwindling support, from FO working against us more often then with us, steep rising ticket prices, bad weather with no roof or shelter, bad on pitch performance, us not being organised enough and the list could go on.
people talked about protesting all the time against such things on the boards....but we didn't do a whole lot about it, all we did was a few small things such as North End doing some dollar sign tifo (which was the best effort on the issue) and Red Patch boys telling other fans not to sing...neither of them was enough as we should of forced these issues until they were solved or at least did some sort of display like North End did every week!
Last edited by james; 05-31-2012 at 08:35 AM.