Seattle fans threw down the gauntlet big-time with their massive tifo display to honor the first Major League Soccer meeting between the Timbers and Sounders back in May. It was pretty impressive, with huge banners honoring former stars, massive signage reflecting “Decades of Dominance” and a grand finale (read: twist of the knife) featuring notorious Timbers-killer Roger Levesque photo-bombing the whole thing. Even the most hardened Portland fan had to recognize the sheer epic nature of Seattle’s display, and I have no doubt at least a few of the 500+ Timbers Army who made the trip north that day began plotting their response.
Portland fans brashly called with a King high on Sunday, raising their own display before the Timbers fell 3-2 to their arch-rivals to stretch their winless streak to seven.
Members TA spent “several hundred” man-hours creating “The King of Clubs,” which featured a giant, ornate playing card with all sorts of Portlandophilic elements: Crowns of roses, thorns, and hops atop Kings with tiny mustaches and hipster locks, plus chevrons, axes, old-school soccer balls, and even the Rose City’s river-depicting flag.
So whose display was the real banner effort? Does Seattle’s size dominate Portland’s attention to detail? Let’s settle this, Blogtown!
- Brian Gjurgevich
- Portland’s “The King of Clubs” display.
- Rod Mar/SoundersFC.com
- Seattle’s “Decades of Dominance” display.
Don’t forget the “Quality over Quantity” that showed up behind the king when it was dropped down.
Portland fans spent hundreds of hours making theirs by hand in a big warehouse at a mysterious location in North Portland. Seattle fans paid thousands of dollars to a company in Eastern Europe to make theirs.
Portland’s wasn’t even hoisted by the fans.
As one of the rope pullers, I can attest that it was hoisted by fans.
What does “decades of dominance” mean? Isn’t there team like 5 years old?
Portland’s was most definitely hoisted by their fans. What I find conventient that Sounders fans forget is they couldn’t even unveil theirs properly. The whole right side took twice as long as the left side to get in to place.
the Decades of Dominance tifo was created by hand
Seattle’s tifo was all about Portland. Portland’s tifo was all about Portland. Isn’t it obvious who wins in the tifo battle? Making tifos about other teams or other supporters groups is lame. It’s lower division grab-assery.
Portland- only 4 large overheads with only letters. The rest was hoisted with rope (less difficult and involves less supporters). The large card had great detail.
Seattle- 5 large overheads with 3 large drop down banners pulled tight by supporters. Only 1 hoisted banner. Regardless of comments above, all were hand painted by our supporters. Painting large portraits and the hand crushing the timbers logo is not simple painting. Ours was much larger and required more difficult coordination with more supporters involved. We won in my opinion. Timbers was great though.
rdpollard is spot on. For some reason Seattle fans continuously make the claim that Portland is obsessed with Seattle, but the evidence speaks otherwise. Portland is obsessed with Portland, and that’s not always good, btw. However, Seattle is also obsessed with Portland. If you disagree, please take a look at the comments to the NY Times article about the Timbers from a few weeks ago.
BTW, I’m still waiting for any hard evidence that Seattle’s was hand made.
Funny hearing all the claims the the ECS didn’t make their tifo. It’s not hard to find proof.
http://m401.photobucket.com/albums/bighead6/DECADES%20OF%20DOMINANCE
Both were good, but the detail in the King of Clubs is the most impressive of either display.
I have to agree that Seattle seemed a little too obsessed with the Timbers. The two color player portraits are nice but the most detail by far went into recreating the Timbers logo. And while Levesque’s portrait was supposed to be the big middle finger to Portland you could hear Seattle fans collectively moan when he actually came onto the pitch from 200 miles away.