Soccerland

PHOTOS BY MATT WONG

The day Mayor Sam Adams made Portland Timbers owner Merritt Paulson's dreams come true, he described soccer as the city's door to the global stage.

"To become the most sustainable economy in the world, Portland must build its international profile," Adams said on March 10 as he cemented a deal that sealed a Major League Soccer franchise for Portland in 2011.

"And the language the world speaks most," Adams said, "is the language of fútbol. "

Consider the past four weeks in Portland an advanced language seminar.

The World Cup in South Africa has amplified Portland's soccer buzz to vuvuzela pitch. Hundreds of U.S. fans watched the June 12 U.S.-England tie on a giant screen in downtown's new Director Park. More than a dozen of the city's sports bars—from Old Town standby Kells to Mississippi Avenue's new German pub Prost!—have opened each morning as early as 4:30 to accommodate stein-hoisting footie acolytes watching games 10 time zones away.

The Horse Brass Pub on Southeast Belmont Street, a longtime soccer bar, reports revenues up 8 percent to 10 percent from usual—about the same increase as during the 2006 World Cup.

"We've had to turn people away," said General Manager Joellen Piluso. "Which is really unusual at 7 o'clock in the morning."

Nielsen ratings show the U.S.'s loss to Ghana on June 27 received a 7.5 rating in Portland and a 23 share, meaning nearly a quarter of TV sets that were turned on in the city were watching the game. That's almost exactly the same as ratings for the Trail Blazers' 2007 Christmas game against the Seattle SuperSonics, though not nearly so high as recent Blazers playoff series.

The Timbers have been capitalizing on the craze, unveiling their new logo (later tweaked) and price range for season tickets for the 2011 season—$99 to $1,500 for 20 games. More than 7,000 of us have put down $50 deposits over the past year to reserve those season tickets, and the Timbers haven't decided where they'll cap the reservations. The Timbers' U.S. Open Cup loss June 30 against MLS's Seattle Sounders provided a glimpse of the fervor, drawing a sellout crowd of more than 15,000 to PGE Park.

Of course, soccer is hardly new to Portland. The first version of the Timbers, founded in 1975, drew crowds as big as 30,000 before the North American Soccer League folded in 1985. And this version of the Timbers, currently in the makeshift United States Soccer Federation D-2 Pro League, has averaged 9,044 people a game (second in the league behind Montreal), led by a self-appointed hard-line booster society, the Timbers Army.

But now, with the convergence of the World Cup and the Timbers' impending elevation to MLS, soccer has unquestionably established itself as the city's trendy new pastime: cosmopolitan, imported and allowing for a manageable level of anarchy. A wider swath of Portland is once again learning to speak soccer.

Yet scattered across the city—often at the edges—are pockets of people long fluent in the game, which is expected to draw at least 715 million viewers around the globe (and a Pioneer Courthouse Square showing) for the World Cup final at 11:30 am this Sunday, July 11. And for these immigrant communities, soccer matches—especially World Cup games—have long been a means of asserting their identity.

For the past month, I watched World Cup matches far from PGE Park's section 107, where the passionate and predominantely white Timbers Army gathers. Instead, I sat in more intimate gatherings with immigrants from Ghana, South Korea and Mexico. I wanted to know what role the global game carves out in their lives, what customs they've built around it, and whether their own soccer passion could ever translate to caring as much about the Timbers. In short, I wanted the world to speak soccer to me.

GHANA WITH THE WIND: Ghanaian fans in Portland cheer a goal (upper left), then watch with increasing tension as Asamoah Gyan prepares for a penalty kick. In the center photo, they see him miss. Nii Ardey Allotey is the one on the floor.

Less than an hour after Ghana defeated the United States 2-1 on Saturday, June 26, I got a call from Nii Ardey Allotey. He was whooping into the phone.

"We did it! We did it!" he said, and let out a long yell of jubilation. "I am so happy right now!"

He paused briefly from his celebration. "I guess a lot of Americans are pretty sad, though."

Allotey is one of the few Ghanaian immigrants in Portland. The western African nation is home to 23 million people; probably no more than 200 live in Portland, according to the immigrants I spoke to. Most of them know worldbeat music pioneer Obo Addy, one of the first Ghanaians to move to this city when he immigrated in 1978. Allotey, a drummer and dancer from the capital city of Accra, moved here in 1988 as a member of Addy's Okropong troupe. Now he owns his own drum store, Anansi Beat, which sells African rhythm instruments on Southeast Belmont Street.

There was a large drum in the living room of the Northeast Portland home across from Alberta Park where Allotey invited me to watch the Ghana-Uruguay quarterfinals match the following Friday, July 2. "We don't have vuvuzelas, so we want drums," one of the dozen gathered first-generation Ghanaians declared. The drum was a 3-foot-tall kpanlogo, carved out of a single piece of hardwood; young men wearing white home jerseys of the Black Stars, Ghana's national team, took turns tapping on the rawhide while young women cheered beside them.

The house belonged to James Tetteh, a 52-year-old home builder from Accra and the president of the Ghana Association of Oregon, a group that seems to center most of its sporadic efforts on soccer, hosting the Black Queens women's national team for Women's World Cup matches in 1999 and 2003 in Portland.

Tetteh, who moved stateside in 1981 for "adventure," said he had mixed feelings after Ghana beat the U.S. "When you're happy and sad at the same time, what do you call that?" he asked. "I'm both—Ghanaian, also American."

He had never watched a Timbers game; he was a Blazers man. "I wish LeBron James would come here," he said. "I don't care who we have to trade."

Tetteh's home featured a flag with the words "PROUD TO BE A GHANAIAN" emblazoned across it. Most of the group also had flags, which they waved at the TV or wrapped around their arms. When Allotey arrived for the second half, he wore a flag as a bandanna, with the iconic black star in the center of his forehead.

The room was soon filled with ceaseless yelling in Ga, the nasal tribal language spoken in Accra, punctuated by English instructions from Tetteh, the unchallenged authority figure here. "Let's see the replay before we start screaming," he told the room after a foul call against the Black Stars. "Nobody touched him," he decided after a second look. "That was a floppity flop."

For just 12 people, the group was spectacularly zealous: screaming, dancing, pounding on couch cushions. Ghana scored first—"God is good," Tetteh said, "that was a good goal"—and then fell back to a tie. Tetteh's wife, Beatrice, brought out a bowl of freshly fried doughnut holes called togbei (the Ga name translates to "goat's balls"), but no one felt like eating. As the game went to extra time, Allotey went to the kitchen and poured himself a double shot of whiskey.

With less than a minute left in extra time, as Tetteh dropped his gentlemanly demeanor and began yelling, "Pass the damn ball!," Ghana forced a scramble in front of Uruguay's goal, and Uruguay's Luis Suarez stopped a shot with his hand. At least, I found out later that's what happened: At the time, the Ghanaian fans had all rushed into a semicircle blocking the TV, all yelling at once.

The referee announced a penalty kick. One easy shot, and Ghana would be the first African nation to make the World Cup semifinals. Ghana's star striker, Asamoah "Baby Jet" Gyan, lined up 12 yards away from the goal. The fans in Portland lined up three feet away from the TV, cheering, waving the flag.

He hit the crossbar.

Everyone screamed in horror, then went silent.

Somebody kicked the antique wooden radio in the corner.

Allotey fell on the floor.

The game went to its final stage—penalty kicks for both sides—and, as seemed inevitable to the drained, disappointed people burying their heads in couch arms and arguing with each other about who was to blame, Ghana lost.

Allotey threw on his leather jacket and stormed out the door, denouncing Baby Jet's shot choice in a stream of Ga. Nobody would translate what he said.

"It's just a game!" Tetteh called to his friend.

Allotey didn't seem to think so. He walked out into the rain, and did not return.

KOREA TRIUMPHANT: South Korean immigrants cheer a 2-2 tie against Nigeria from JCD Korean Restaurant in Beaverton.

The tiny woman in the floral-print frock came tearing out of Monica's Hair Design on a late-morning weekday in Beaverton, turned abruptly and sprinted down the sidewalk. The woman, who later inquiry revealed to be owner Monica Han, darted into a nondescript doorway one storefront down, where a blast of cheering had rung out.

The neighboring storefront business was Jang Choong Dong Wang Jok Bal, a Korean barbecue restaurant with a name that translates, more or less, to "Jang Choong Dong's Pig Hock Palace," and is wisely shortened to JCD Korean Restaurant on the signage. The 6-year-old restaurant occupies a half-empty strip mall off the shopping district of Cedar Hills Boulevard, near Panera Bread Co. and a Standard TV & Appliance showroom.

JCD's owner, Sang Kim, agreed to show South Korea's World Cup matches in his restaurant when a customer promised to provide a digital projector. And thus 25 first- and second-generation Korean immigrants sat in rows of wooden chairs in a dark room at 11:30 am on Tuesday, June 22, drinking tall cans of the home-country soft drinks McCol barley soda and Cheon Yeon Cider, and clapping urgently for the Taeguk Warriors—South Korea's team nickname—to beat Nigeria.

South Korea is notoriously soccer-mad. When the national team defeated Greece 2-0 in its first World Cup game last month, the joy climaxed in condom sales across the nation rising fivefold.

The supporters in JCD seemed more restrained—tense, actually. South Korea had lost its second match to Argentina 4-1, and needed at least a tie against Nigeria to advance. The silent nervousness mounted as Nigeria scored first, then the room erupted in cheers and two-handed high fives as Lee Jung-Soo tied the game with a header in the 38th minute. Monica Han wrung her hands in joy.

At halftime, nearly everyone marched outside into the sunshine for cigarettes. I introduced myself to Danny Kim, a 29-year-old who stood out by virtue of his peroxided yellow hair, and for being the guy who brought the projector. "We actually had a bigger crowd than this" for the Argentina game, he explained—that match had aired at 4 am, and Beaverton's South Koreans hadn't wanted to wake their apartment-complex neighbors by screaming at their TV sets at home.

Danny Kim and his friends consider themselves "one-and-a-half"-generation Americans; they were born in South Korea, but their families moved to Oregon when they were still kids. Kim's family emigrated from Seoul in 1992, after he says his father invented an automobile gas-tank cap with a compartment for a spare key. He's been back to his homeland once: "I look like them, I talk like them, but it was definitely a culture shock."

He works at Smokin', a smoke shop on Portland's Southeast 82nd Avenue owned by his 36-year-old brother-in-law, Eugene Lee. Standing nearby, Lee explained that beyond the obvious allegiance to the Taeguk Warriors, the World Cup loyalties of South Koreans were uneasily divided.

The gist, he explained, is that older immigrants tend to be more exclusively Korean in their allegiances—and old World War II grievances against Japan die hard.

"I root for the U.S., of course," Lee said. "But it depends on the generation [of immigrants]. And it depends on who they're playing. If the U.S. is playing North Korea, we root for North Korea. If the U.S. is playing Japan, we root for the U.S. Regardless, whoever Japan is playing, we want Japan to lose. It may not be nice, but it's true. Anybody but Japan."

One nerve-racking second half later, the South Koreans salvaged a 2-2 tie and advanced to the field of 16 for the first time on foreign soil. (Four days later, Uruguay eliminated South Korea 2-1.) "Knockoff round!" Danny Kim shouted on the sidewalk. "Hell yeah! We deserved it!"

There was clearly a respectful division between the generations of fans here—after the match, the younger men bowed to JCD owner Sang Kim as he drove his white minivan out of the parking lot. I walked over to the elder group and met William Kim, a gaunt, mustachioed man in his 40s. He works at a nearby copier-repair shop, and was on a half-hour lunch break that was now well into its second hour.

"We don't have a life," he said ebulliently, perhaps exaggerating. "Soccer is it."

Danny Kim did not think his own enthusiasm would translate into attending any Timbers games next season. "In general, I'm not too much of a soccer fan," he said, "unless Korea makes it."

Monica Han, who had returned next door to her salon, felt a similar motivation.

"We can get reminded to get close to the country," she said, explaining that she had left South Korea 30 years ago. "I don't know anything about Korea right now. I know one thing: soccer."

DIOS MIO: Mexican supporter Gigi (two photos at left) blows a paper horn while other fans at Fandango (above) express distress.

Mexicans usually aren't hard to find at the triangular intersection of Burnside Street, Stark Street and 188th Avenue. This slice of Gresham is one of the closest things the Portland metro area has to a Little Mexico; in this neighborhood, the Kyron Horman alert billboards are printed in Spanish.

But on the morning of Sunday, June 27, when Mexico's El Tri national squad played Argentina, the tiendas, mercados and cantinas were deserted. Everyone had stayed home to watch the game. Eventually, somebody suggested I drive west and try Fandango.

Fandango Restaurant and Cantina is a two-story Old West-style building on the corner of Southeast Stark Street and 122nd Avenue at the east edge of Portland. The bar is conspicuous for its outdoor mural of a purple octopus with a thick mustache and a sombrero, holding in its eight arms two maracas, a trumpet and a bottle of beer with lime, while strumming a guitar.

Inside, I was greeted with honking. Fandango owner Oscar Cortez had provided his customers—about 40 people—with brightly colored paper and plastic horns from Party Town, not as toneless as South Africa's infamous vuvuzela but perhaps more piercing. The small children in the room seemed especially enthusiastic about blowing the horns. One horn belonged to a woman wearing a snug T-shirt that had been bedazzled and painted with the faces of El Tri players. At one end of the room, a Univision broadcast of the game was projected onto a screen. But the nightclub had not turned off its multicolored neon dance-floor light, which ricocheted across the tables and flashed into the eyes of patrons. Some toddlers began to fuss. This, I decided, would be the worst place on earth to have a hangover.

It was not the happiest place to watch a soccer game, either, mostly because the Mexicans immediately fell behind. The Argentinians scored two quick goals—one controversial, one brutally smooth—and after each score, Fandango went silent, except for groans and the children taking the opportunity to honk on their noisemakers.

"This is so stupid," a camouflage military cap-wearing woman seated next to me said of the game, as she drank a Pacifico beer and ate a shrimp-and-octopus cocktail. This was Gigi, a 32-year-old bartender at a Hawthorne-area sports bar. She said U.S. passion for soccer could never equal its impact in her native country.

"You know, back home, in Mexico, soccer is a big deal," she said. "I wish it was here, too."

Sitting with her older sister, Adrianna, Gigi confirmed that most of Portland's Mexican immigrants were viewing the match in their homes. "In Mexico, it is a tradition to watch games at home on Sundays," she said. "Pretty much every Sunday after Mass, we get together at home and we watch two or three games."

This practice, which Gigi's family had brought with them when they illegally crossed the border from Tijuana in 1997, continued in her Oregon apartment complex. "We have neighbors," she said, "and you can hear the TVs and the kids yelling, 'Mexico! Mexico! Mexico!'"

Her family was watching the game in a house with children; she'd come to the bar because her 4-year-old daughter was with her father elsewhere, and she didn't want to join the rest of her family without her girl.

Watching at home had become easier after Univision was added to the basic broadcast dial, explained Cortez. "A couple of years ago, it was only cable," he said, "and this place was packed." Regardless of the smaller crowds, he has continued opening Fandango in the wee hours for World Cup games; one morning last month, two Hondurans arrived at 4 am to watch their team lose to Chile.

In the second half, Mexico's deficit turned into a 3-0 shellacking. Gigi, perhaps by virtue of her bartending profession and perhaps due to the four Pacificos she'd drank, became the cheerleader in an otherwise low-energy room. I asked her if she'd ever watched the Timbers play. "I used to date one," she said. "A long, long time ago. When I was younger, and naive."

When the game ended in a 3-1 elimination, Oscar Cortez went to the Fandango DJ booth and blasted a Mexican pop ballad on the sound system. The song, Cortez said, was called "Tristeza," a Spanish word for sadness. "It's talking about how everybody's sad, and they've got their own baggage," Cortez said. About half the room, mostly the women, sang along. Two toddlers danced on the Fandango stage, in front of a Mexican flag hung on the wall.

It seemed as if, for this group, watching the game wasn't simply an act of fandom; it was a form of nostalgia. I asked Gigi if seeing Mexico play soccer made her homesick.

"That's why I'm drinking," she said. "Because I don't want to think about it. I'm not crying because you're here. If you weren't here…." She trailed off, and gestured as if mascara were running down her cheeks. "You asked me earlier why I came here. Now I know: I came here because I wanted to be closer to home."

Her sister leaned in. "When the United States lost, it felt the same," she said. "We have children who were born here. When the U.S. played, we told them: 'This is your country, this is your flag.'"

Gigi interjected with a laugh: "Then we said, 'If the U.S. loses, then you're from Mexico.'"

"And this," said Adrianna, perhaps feeling a rush of Pacifico sentimentality, "is the last chance to feel something that is good."

That good feeling, which I observed in full flush at all three games I sat in on, is the comfort of collectively living vicariously: We love the Black Stars, because the Black Stars are us.

This group identification is what fans do—whether they're painting their chests orange in Corvallis, taking in one last season of minor-league baseball at PGE Park for old times' sake or chanting obscene "No pity" ditties for soccer games in PGE Park.

I realize this may seem obvious. But what I felt with fans of Ghana, South Korea and Mexico is the exact opposite of the thrill of novelty that most Americans feel popping in to watch an exotic tournament every four years. Fandom isn't a place you visit. It's a place you're from.

Standing outside JCD Restaurant after Uruguay eliminated South Korea, Danny Kim tried to explain why his native country's games had mattered so much.

"In Oregon, it's a pretty small community [of Koreans]," he said, "so whenever you have a bunch of Koreans get together, it makes you feel like there's more of you."

But then there aren't that many Oregonians overall, and we could use any group bonding we can get. We felt that pride—at least a taste of it—when Landon Donovan booted in a last-minute rebound to advance the Americans. Can we keep on feeling it on a local level? Will the Timbers Army enlist all of us?

We'll know it has when some kid 20 years from now sees a Portland Timbers logo and feels the same pang of loyalty Danny Kim feels for the Taeguk Warriors.

This will be Soccer City, USA, when we think of the Timbers and it reminds all Portlanders of home.

WWeek 2015