“… I know there is strength /
In the differences between us /
And I know there is comfort /
Where we overlap …”
-
‘Overlap,’ by Ani DiFranco
Perhaps it’s a sign of the kind of world we live in that nearly everyone is familiar with the German word schadenfreude, which means pleasure derived from another person’s misfortune, but few know the very similar word mitfreude: Pleasure derived from another’s joy.*
FRIDAY 10 P.M.
It’s around 10 p.m. on Friday night in Chattanooga, and the vanguard of the hundred-plus Northern Guard Supporters coming down for the the next day’s game are running around like yearling colts in the first good weather, diverting from the meticulously-pathed pub crawl organized by the hosting Chattahooligans, carousing down the street in a loose cloud of lightly inebriated jollity in search of alcohol both stronger and less filled with gluten than beer, wearing a typical panoply of NGS and team merch – t-shirts, yes, but track jackets and hats and scarves, too, black and rouge dominating, anchoring the dark end of the palette.
The hosts, seeming both delighted and bemused by their wayward charges, followed along in slightly more orderly groups, arrayed in a smaller selection of cerulean shirts, the repetition of pattern and color giving them a feeling of uniformity and calm when compared to the whirligig procession of the Detroiters. 10 minutes before, they’d ventured their trademark “CHATTA … NOOGA!” while the groups were ensconced in the previous destination in the crawl, clearly not anticipating the concussive force 40 drunk Michiganders can summon when given an opportunity to discomfit a few normies, and Northern Guard did not disappoint, immediately dropping into a rendition of the auld pre-game chant, the one about not hearing a f’ing thing, that left the rafters ringing in the moment of shocked silence after its end.
The moment had no chance to turn awkward – grinning Northern Guard and laughing Chattahooligans raised glasses together immediately, and those outside the unspoken soccer conversation were left to grapple with what, exactly, that had represented. The two-piece band in the corner turned up their amps a bit after some cross-talk with the small crowd gathered to watch their performance, which of course NGS took as provocation to repeat itself, thus essentially requiring CFC loyalists to do some singing too – which soon meant it was time to move on to the next place, which was not the next place at all but another, better place we’re making up on the fly to serve the needs of the people around us. Because that’s how we do things.
I
It’s happening. You can feel it, right?
There is a better future for soccer in the USA, and it’s being built right down on the ground, by hundreds of new and elder community clubs, just off the radar of today’s rulers. The most spectacular growth has come in places thought either too decimated (Detroit) or undersized (Chattanooga) to merit massive inflows of disinterested capital. Chattanooga FC are the elder cousin, founded in 2009; our Le Rouge came along in 2012; their successes have been such that neither club could claim to be off of anyone’s radar, anywhere, anymore.
Last Saturday’s friendly in Chattanooga and its upcoming better half this week at Keyworth Stadium are preseason matches and something more. Each of these clubs is a professional side-in-waiting, with economies on a scale that simply dwarf their NPSL competition, growing established histories and recognizable, characteristic modes of support. The average club at this level draws crowds in the low hundreds; Chattanooga and DCFC routinely show up in the top 20 attendances for the week in North America, often closer to five figures than three, which unusualness allows each outsized clout on non-traditional social media spaces that increasingly dominate public perception. This, in turn, has allowed these clubs the breathing room that affords them a rare opportunity to chart a different course – to grow a soccer club rather than purchasing one, to substitute patience, fortitude, love, and rare good luck for that most universal of fertilizers, cash.
SATURDAY 4 P.M.
It’s 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon. The day started perfect, clear and comfortable, and got better, the sun warm but not hot, the sky barely feathered with cirrus clouds, an expanse of blue with white accents, as if to line up behind the home team. Members of the Northern Guard and Chattahooligans were trading drinks and stories under the old-growth trees preserved on one side of the pristine bulk of Finley Stadium when a woman in one of the cerulean shirts approached, a shallow foil serving pan in her hands filled with some kind of fried dough.
“Paczki,” she said, nearly nailing the tricky pronunciation as an elated ‘ooooh’ went up from NGS. “We looked up how to make ‘em for y’all.”
II
None of which is to say that these clubs are similar – they are organic, growing things, and like all organic, growing things, they take on the characteristics of the terroir in which they’re grown. Chattanooga’s massive support seems of a piece with the town’s basic orientation toward civic pride, an underdog tendency traditionally focused on larger regional rivals, while Detroit’s starts in a darker emotional key, representatives of the Great American City strip-mined by late-stage capitalism, refusing to entertain either despair or the dole, built by the works of days and hands.
Shortly after the paczki presentation – just as the line for the exquisite pulled-pork barbeque spread put out by the Chattahooligans was reaching its peak – the Chattanooga police showed up, looking swole and humorless in advance of their gameday security shifts. The natives barely registered their arrival, but the same was not true of NGS, where dozens of sotto voce conversations spread the word: Watch yourself; the Man is here.
SATURDAY 6 P.M.
It’s just after 6 p.m. on Saturday when the bus carrying Detroit City FC finally pulls up to the stadium. The crowd of supporters, now thoroughly intermingled with one another, starts to segregate by shirt color again, the black-and-burgundy ones streaming out from under the canopy of the trees to greet their lads, the sky-blue ones holding back a bit, watching to see what inventive profanity or carefree middle-finger to all and sundry these weirdos from Motor City will summon now.
A curb provides a handy demarcation point for the City supporters, so they fan out along it, lining up just across from where Le Rouge’s bus comes to a halt, singing songs of welcome. A slight woman dressed in black, her head covered with a dark cloth, maneuvers through the throng on crutches. When people realize where she’s trying to go, they make way readily, because this is the Girl Who Lived, Northern Guard capo Amanda Jaczkowski.
The players and coaches saunter off the bus, seeming briefly stunned by the glare of the sunlight before moving down the greeting line, tapping hands and nodding in acknowledgement to their names, shouted occasionally within the larger structure of the singing. At the end of the line comes Detroit City manager Ben Pirmann, faintly thrumming with the tension of pregame anxiety but stopping to hug the small girl wearing all black, careful not to displace her crutches. The singing wobbles badly as the people nearby the hugging struggle not to burst into tears of relief and joy.
The crowd of hosts, a few yards back, were left in the dark as to the details – What’s this? What’s happening? – but when the wind changes, everyone feels it. Whatever was expected, there’s more here than defiance.
III
Of course the actual game of football harnessed the tribalism of both groups – that’s what the game does. But the opposing supporters groups, placed side-by-side in an effort to isolate the ticket-buying public of Chattanooga from the bad words favored by Northern Guard, didn’t descend into feral displays of primate rage. They just sang, drummed, and mocked each other without incident, leaving the CPD hostage negotiator (!) and other officers on site with little to do but tilt at flag-wavers and assist people who’d had a few too many.
In the pubs after the game, both groups agreed: Whatever the future holds for American soccer, our clubs are going to be the ones creating it – are the ones creating it. The first meeting of these two burgeoning supporters groups shows that clubs are fashioned from whatever the local culture has on hand, which means differing resources, attitudes, and approaches to creating a sporting enterprise that will reinforce and draw together communities. A club that defies the larger culture in which it’s embedded will inevitably die for lack of support.
What works here won’t work there, necessarily, and vice versa. Chattanoogans, not steeped in Detroit’s grandiloquent history of triumph and betrayal, tend to follow orders; we decline that invitation; and so on. Imagine those differences multiplied along every conceivable axis, a thousand-thousand variations on the basic idea: Build a team that means so much to the locals that they’ll turn out no matter what; find the sweet spot that generates mitfreude. By that measurement – despite their at-times very different optics – Detroit City and Chattanooga FC are on exactly the same path.
*Huge thanks to Nick Kendall, who featured the idea of mitfreude in this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/pirmas697/status/984979130952437760
Sean Spence writes about soccer and everything connected to it (which means everything). He and his wife Sarah have been Detroit City season-ticket holders since 2015, and live in Flint, Michigan. Follow Sean on Twitter here.
