The Timbers Army is famous nationally — the tifo, the scarves, the log-cutting, the sold-out Providence Park. But as MLS grows and Portland gets more expensive, some wonder if the working-class soccer culture that made it special is being priced and performanced out.
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Add your commentTicket prices have basically tripled since 2012. The people who built that culture in the early years are being slowly priced out of the seats they filled. Name a more Portland story. I'll wait.
I was in the north end in 2011 for the first MLS season. It was $20 a ticket and people were genuinely losing their minds every time we scored. That energy was not manufactured. It grew from something real.
Went to a match once, didn't know anyone, stood in the north end, sang songs I didn't know, and felt more connected to Portland than at any other moment in my three years of living here. So yeah. It's real.
the log-cutting celebration is genuinely one of the best things in American sports and if you don't feel something when Timber Joey runs out with that chainsaw you may not have a pulse
I brought my 8 year old daughter to her first Timbers match last spring. She screamed for two hours. She's now obsessed with soccer. That's not performance. That's what sports is supposed to do.
A scarf that costs $65 sold by the official club store is not soccer culture. I'm sorry. That's merchandise. Real supporter culture is scarves people made in someone's living room.
I've been to matches in Dortmund, in Istanbul, in Buenos Aires. The Timbers Army is legitimately impressive by any standard. Not just American standards. Any standards. Respect it.
Can we talk about the Thorns for one second? Same city, same stadium, one of the most successful women's soccer organizations in the world, and they STILL get treated as secondary by a lot of the conversation. Fix that.
The tifo production is a legitimate art form and I'm not joking. The design and engineering that goes into a full-stadium tifo display is serious collaborative creative work. It's just done for love instead of money which apparently makes some people suspicious.
My family immigrated from Mexico in 2001. We don't get the Timbers scene, culturally it's very American-hipster soccer to us, but we go sometimes and we appreciate that Portland has something to care about together. That counts for something.
I know someone who drives from Salem for every home match. Has for nine years. Never misses it. Tell me that's performance.
The away supporter sections at MLS stadiums give Timbers Army a standing ovation. That's other fans, who have every reason to be biased against them, giving them credit. That tells you something.
Rose City rivalry with Seattle is genuinely the best thing in MLS and I say this as someone who finds sports rivalries mostly exhausting. That one has real teeth.
Hot take: Portland's soccer obsession was at least partially a reaction to the Blazers being disappointing for so long. A winning team with a fun atmosphere filled the emotional gap. Now the Blazers are bad again and the Timbers have had rough stretches and I wonder where the civic sports energy goes.
Providence Park renovations were necessary and I understand that. But the new expanded sections feel more corporate. The intimacy is different. I don't know how to explain it except to say that the old park felt more like everyone was in it together.
Any authenticity is real if enough people feel it genuinely. At a certain scale the question stops making sense. Thousands of people screaming together IS the thing. Whether it started organic or not becomes irrelevant.
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