Two soccer teams competing for supremacy in a single match? That’s a game; a futile endeavor of 90 minutes trying to put the ball in the back of the net more times than the other team. It’s merely a simple competition. Now, two soccer teams competing for supremacy of the Pacific Northwest? Well, that warrants a different definition entirely.
The Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders continuously dual back and forth on the pitch a few times a year with such voracity and evenness that it’s not impractical to see this competition as one of the best soccer match-ups in North America. Now they have met in the playoffs for the first time and for tonight’s second match, people are salivating. With such pure competitive spirit on the field and unflinching devotion from the fan-bases in the Pacific Northwest, it seems that soccer may be demanding more national attention than what some people may think.
If you watched the match last weekend or could even get a chance to go to the match tonight, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
The first point that needs to be made is that soccer isn’t a comparable sport to others in the United States like football, baseball and basketball in many people’s minds.
Rivalries exist almost everywhere in the world and not just in sports. It drives capitalism, it helps improve the quality of products for consumers, it makes people choose a side and most surprisingly of all – rivalries build personal memory. Memories are one of the most important and hard to grasp functions in our lives. Memory remarkably is one of the hallmark trades of what keeps a rivalry alive. Each team knows the other and the history between them and almost always, the history is what created the rivalry in the first place.
Look at the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers last week. They understand the historical significance each year when they play and it heightens the meetings into something a bit more than just another game. The game was also a feature of the week on Monday night for the entire nation to see.
Same with the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees; every time they match up, the players put a little bit more into the meetings. Some of the greatest games in pro baseball can be chalked up to the Sox and Yanks. The fans always turn it up a notch no matter the circumstances, just because of the opponent.
So now, even just because of recent happenings the Seattle Seahawks are building a solid rivalry with the San Francisco 49ers because of the strength of the competition. Every Seattle Seahawks fan I asked if the 49ers were a rival all said yes with defiance. When I asked them why, they all harkened back to the games last year and the history between the coaches. Ah and we reach my point, it’s the memory! The history is brought to life through our memory. It alludes to a weathered cause and effect timeline between two organizations eventually sprouting into a teeming and palpable rivalry. Why do you think it was so important to break the crowd noise record for the home game against the Niners and not any other?
Rivalry games just matter more – because of their history and the memories in the minds of the people.
Let’s not get it twisted, the NFL, the MLB, these are multi-billion dollar organizations with well-established roots in their communities and in the hearts and minds of millions. Major League Soccer, to some, is not even recognized as a major sport in this country. On top of that, what history does Major League Soccer even have? With such a young league and no real rivalries the sport has struggled to gain traction without some sort of memory foundation. Maybe that is why the Pacific Northwest has been bubbling over with soccer-lovers. Maybe it’s even because the Sounders and the Timbers have been playing each other for over forty years – long before the MLS even existed!
If you’re a fan of the Timbers or the Sounders, you can feel that unconscious madness that you would do anything to beat the other side and the second by second intensity of the game when they play each other.
Tonight will be even bigger than ever.
With nationally televised playoff games, exciting players like Clint Dempsey and Eddie Johnson on the pitch it makes for a showcase of athletic talent. With over 50,000 screaming fans behind the rave green or the rolling chainsaw revving after every Timbers goal, it shows something to all those nay-sayers and deaf ears that people actually do care about soccer. We experience something that they can’t feel in other cities, even some cities with soccer teams!
Let’s start over: Soccer is very real. This year alone attendance across the league is up 7% to its highest average to date (over 17,000 per match). With numbers like that, the MLS is ranked ahead of the NHL and NBA in attendance per event last year.
One could even say that the Northwest soccer pandemonium has been sweeping the nation and is at the center of soccer’s emergence onto the national sports stage.
Expansion teams like in Vancouver help create fun traditions like the Cascadia Cup only adding to the rivalry up and down the Northwest region. This alone helped attract new fan bases and new reasons to fall in love with an otherwise non-existent sport in this country. Up until the past couple years, most soccer teams were having trouble remaining profitable, attracting players and gaining exposure. That is all beginning to change as the MLS is beginning to take notes and is attempting to start a second team in New York and several other teams in Florida to try and cultivate history, rivalries and reasons to believe this sport can thrive.
For the most watched, participated and invested sport across the globe, America is very far behind and doesn’t even really seem to care. That bothers me. So I’ll do everything I can to make people pay attention of a strong rivalry like the Sounders and Timbers because its history in the making. Not to mention, these teams are leading the charge in setting an example for how to build up fan bases, attract high profile players, create history and define a regions memory of what soccer means to them.
Overnight people can be transformed from passive soccer bystanders to die-hard Timber followers just by beating the Sounders on their home turf. Competition, success and most of all a strong rivalry help the MLS and the sport progress towards competing with the other major sports in this country not just in attendance or billions of dollars but rather in the minds of the people.
Which in the end, is what matters most.
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