Sports Jul 8, 2010 at 4:00 am

Portland Soccer: Where It Began, Where It Is, Where It's Going

Comments

1
i do not care about soccer.
2
I'm astonished to admit, I'm with douchey!
3
I don't care about basketball.
4
I am reminded of a quote about Punk music, "Punk isn't dead. It just doesn't care about you."

Similarly, Soccer will thrive in spite of douchey comments.
5
Nice local spin on a common and currently spotlighted subject.
6
Excellent article; however, I am reminded of a Mike Ditka quote: "If God had wanted man to play soccer, he wouldn't have given us arms."
7
Excellent read, thanks, Brian.

I'd like to encourage anyone who is curious but hasn't yet attended a Timbers game to do so. While it's still as cheap it is!
8
Soccer rocks! Portland soccer rocks!
9
I remember "soccer made in germany" in the eighties- there was an English commentator that was fucking hysterical " hanging his head after a schoolboy mistake"-"lucky to get a second bite of the cherry". Note: actual British person, not like you wankers that started watching 2 years ago and do the fake British accent etc. Please die. Personally soccer was hard for me to find too, I grew up playing it in Portugal and France when we moved back to the US in the early eighties is was nonexistent for the most part. Good article.
11
I love the smell of the circus in summer. Where's the bread line?
12
"Still, there are those who would argue that soccer will never be big like the NBA, NFL, or Major League Baseball (MLB)"...If soccer fans in Portland ever gets to be like the snobbery of the NBA where 1/2 the fans don't watch the game, show up after 2 quarters sitting court side texting on their receptionless I-phones instead of cheering on their team...you can bet your sweet ass I'd be glad it never got big like the NBA...It's great to see enthusiasm (unbridled and completely authentic) at Timbers games due in LARGE (ok, arguably completely) part to the Timbers Army. There is no fake sound bite chanting "DE-Fense DE-Fense" at a Timbers game, just honest enthusiasm for the game, the players, and despising (in a caring way) the other team. Yes Portland cares about soccer as evidenced in the rash of bars, coffee houses, and living rooms that tuned in to the World Cup over the last 3 weeks. Yes Portland cares about soccer, just go to a Pilots game and listen to the fans scream for the UP Women. Yes Portland cares about soccer...just TRY to have a conversation about anything OTHER than soccer while watching a Timbers game sitting even remotely close to section 107. Portland cares, whether we think we're too "urban hipster" to admit it or we're only fans of Paul Allen's Titanic Chair Shuffling Fiasco in the Rose Garden front office...we fucking care. And for those few that don't...go watch the Eukanuba Dog Show at the Expo Center because I do think soccer is here to stay.

But your article was much more eloquent than my 2 cents...nicely done young Costello.
13
Well done, Mr. Costello. I appreciated this piece and agree that counterculture helps promote the popularity of soccer in Portland as well as the rest of the USA. Why? Because I don't care one iota whether or not someone else likes or dislikes soccer. I don't feel a need to fight for soccer or make it more popular than it is. I like what I like. You do your own thing. If that thing happens to be soccer, well then, don a scarf and raise a pint at the next Timbers match.
14
Yes, more Portlanders than ever care about soccer, but be careful in your analysis of World Cup fever. There's a lot of Olympics-style fandom out there that will disburse until 2014. Everybody cheers on the national team, and in the course of the USA run-in picks an attractive second side to follow. Just sayin...

@ The Showstopper: Toby Charles, yeah baby! I wonder how many people viewing "S made in G" thought that soccer matches were an incredible, action-filled 60 minutes long.

According to an somewhat trusted source, the new East side stands at $1500 a seat are selling quite well. Perhaps the I-Phone texting crowd is hedging its bet on the next big (sporting) thing?
15
Remember Lord Merritt Henry Hank Paulson the Third’s wife, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Mark Mahar of State College, Pa, Heather Lynn Mahar Paulson the third was caught cheating as a contestant on "The Amazing Race" (CBS 2006-10-01. No. 3, season 10)


Run the Paulsons out of town.
16
Wow, really? THIS is your comment? An Amazing race jab from 4 years ago? Get out of the house more...hey you know there is this thing called soccer that goes on at this place called PGE Park??? Maybe you should try it out...
17
Soccer is boring. It's all about the hooligans.
18
Yeah and with the NBA's top notch citizens, the NFL's boy scouts, oh and the MLB's good straight laced young lads...don't all pro sports have hooligans?
19
If you don't like soccer don't watch it, that means cheaper seats for those of us that do. I wish more people were with eldepeche so I could go see the Blazers live. Soccer is just as excellent a sport as any other...'mon the timbers!
20
Hooliganism is cool, but that's not the only reason to watch the game. I'm still down for starting a FIRM- who's with me?
21
Tiddlywinks dog.
22
That was a great wiki overview of the general picture of American soccer and a cursory run at what the game is about in Oregon. What I find tiring after thirty some years is the discussion of "will soccer ever make it in the US?" and all its variants. The earliest records unearthed show Portland Municipal Judge Cameron donating a cup that bore his name for the State Championship apparently won in 1902 and 1903 by the “winged A's” of the Multnomah Athletic Club (MAC). Which gives special irony to the Timbers' present digs in the shadow of today's MAC Club. The game in Portland has always included an international connection as well. The Portland champions, Peninsula, opened the 1920 season with an exhibition against English sailors from the British freighter, M. de Larinaga, which was loading flour. Much more is known about soccer in Portland and its ebbs and flows, its heroes and champions, its dynasties and its visionaries. The Oregon Adult Soccer Assoc. website has a brief piece from which these items were taken. And, as the OASA historian, I am trying to fill in more about the heroes of Oregon soccer. Some of whom were Timbers. You can find posts at SoddenPitch on blogspot.com
23
There is nothing more repulsive than watching some gay kickball exhibitionist performing the Gay Swann Dance to the tune of “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story sung by the Gay Timber Army Choir while chugging their beers and fondling their neighbor’s nuts.



In America, if you’re too clumsy for baseball, too short for basketball and too weak for football, kickball is your game. And avid kickball fans are almost exclusively located among two groups of people (a) foreigners and (b) pretentious radical left wing liberal Anti-American DEMOCRAT two faced environmentalist bike riding, all self important, arrogant, self serving, white, bourgeois yuppie snobs.

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