—by Garrett Dittfurth

At first I thought that saying Portland had a European atmosphere at Timbers games it was sort of complimentary. I guess it is in a way. In reality in speaks to the misinformation of the media covering soccer in this country. Most of the non soccer media holds the English Premier League on a pedestal and from there falls La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, and the rest falls out somewhere from there. In my own personal opinion the EPL is a very good league. Bundesling and Ligue 1 offer far more entertaining soccer than the EPL and Serie A is boring beyond belief. The South American leagues are really entertaining as well they're just harder to find on a TV dial. I'm not even going to start on the Scottish second division because I don't want you to stop reading now out of sheer boredom.

Here's the thing. The Wall Street Journal wrote an article about soccer in the Northwest. Hannah Karp took every stereotype of the Northwest and made it part of her story even to the point of including one of the rare dread-locked Timbers Army members as her main picture to introduce her woefully misinformed article. I'm going to attempt to not get riled up that she doesn't even know the difference between a hipster and a hippie and get back to my point. OK I can't stop myself. Hannah, we have a website. You can contact us. Next time you want to write an article stereotyping people in Portland and Seattle I'll be happy to sit down with you and make sure you don't write another uninformed piece to run to a national audience where you mistake hippies for hipsters or do people in New York not know the difference? Are your offices located so far from Williamsburg you've never seen an actual hipster in person? Don't get me wrong. I just take issue a writer from the Wall Street Journal focusing on a stereotype of the Northwest and running with it to reinforce to their readership that the Pacific Northwest is still a provincial place full of drunks who live in a constant state of inconsequential argument about meth.

Should I really even start in on Hannah's writing about the dumb internet debates where Seattle calls us meth heads and someone from Portland insults people from Seattle for their love of boating? Wait...where the hell did that even come from? I've been in Portland 14 years and never once heard someone insult Seattle because they like boating. I don't even know if that's true. I went boating two weeks ago. Am I like a Seattleite now? Thanks for the new info, Hannah. I'm now writing a chant about Seattle's love of boating for our July 10th meeting.

Back on point. This European thing. Several years ago I probably would have welcomed it. We were much smaller then. Having one thousand people singing and chanting would have been great and comparing it would have been easy. Here's the thing. We do not create a European atmosphere. In the latest New York Times article we have once again been compared to that. I appreciate the coverage of soccer culture in the U.S. but I'm getting irked on one thing that seems to be common in their articles.

What is happening here and yes in Seattle and Philidelphia and Toronto isn't European. It's American. North American to be really honest. We have taken elements of English support, Serbian support, Italian support, Spanish support and melded it with Bolivian support, Mexican support, Brazilian support, and yes even native United States and Canadian support. What we are creating is not European. It is definitely influenced by Europe and a lot of other countries but it is decidedly North American.

I am not going to try and speak to what is going in Seattle as they are creating something that is unique to their town and decidedly not Portland. What I can say about Portland might be best quoted from a statement from a friend of mine made.

"I would go a step further, I think is uniquely Portland. "American" is too broad. The fan culture we have developed here is very distinct from that of Chicago, DC etc, and I would argue distinct from our Cascadian rivals. Its unique to Portland. I can see a lot of European (continental not British Isles) influence, (tifo, Eastern European style chants, but also the South American elements of the drums, trumpets etc.) I would argue that it is an atmosphere unique in the US and Canada, therefore not "American," or "Cascadian" but "Portlandian."

Here's the deal. Soccer in North America isn't trying to copy anymore. We don't need to have our stands filled with fake London casuals in their latest Puma gear for legitimacy. We have our own thing. Sure there is some influence from England. There is also influence from South America, Eastern Europe, and Italy. Thanks for leading the way. So a note to journalists writing in the future. Please quit comparing us to Europe. It's not Europe. We've got something different. North America is a melting pot and so are the soccer supporters in this part of the world. What happens in Portland is no more European than what happens in the student section at University of Michigan hockey games or Utah State University or are they just really European too?

I wonder if Dirk Nowitzki goes back to Germany to play for the German national team and talks about how the crowd acted so American?

This is an opinion piece and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the 107ist or the TA.