When Tom Dunmore and 300 fellow Chicago Fire fans travelled to see their team play Toronto FC in 2007, they were met with incredulity: “When we got there, the stadium security just didn’t know what to do. They had no concept of how to handle people travelling together in a large group to cheer their team on away from home.”
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Major League Soccer’s increasing success is good news for the fate of the sport in the US, but there are still challenges that fans of the game in the United States need to face.
The premier league of the States has 19 teams which compete annually for the MLS Cup. The league is similar in size to the English Premier League, and Spain’s La Liga. Yet the issue is that those clubs make up much of the thousands of miles of land that the United States and Canada occupy. Most away trips for English teams involve under 200 miles of travelling, but for the MLS’S Chicago Fire, 1,000 miles could be classified as a short trip.
The 500 miles between Toronto FC’s BMO Field and Chicago Fire’s Toyota Field did not discourage 300 traveling Chicago Fire fans from seeing their team in their first road game. When encountered with the large group of away supporters, the Toronto FC officials did not know what to do.
Section 8, the Chicago Fire’s supporter’s group, highlight an aspect of the European soccer culture that has had difficulty translating into the US. Half the team’s games will be at nearby Toronto Field, but supporters hoping to catch an away game will have to travel at least 400 miles. (The shortest trip the Fire have will take them 360 miles to Columbus Crew Stadium in Columbus, OH).
The Pacific Northwest’s strong support has the MLS reconsidering their away supporters policies: representatives of 16 of the 19 MLS teams recently met in Portland to formally adopt charter of the Independent Supporters’ Council.
While selling out stadiums and picking up abundant TV contracts are stil problems for these MLS teams, the most loyal fans are seeing their desires respected. This can only bode well for the future of the league.