The Backroom Staff - Ultra: Fernando Xavier

Ultra: Fernando Xavier

Community, activism and fun - life in a supporters' group

Who are the supporters behind the songs, banners, massive tifos, and pyro displays?

Supporters’ groups - or ultras - are the heartbeat of a football club and their local community. Best known for creating incredible atmospheres on matchdays, their impact goes far beyond the stands. Many are deeply involved in everything from advocating for human rights, supporting vulnerable people in their community and around the world and fostering belonging that extends beyond football.

Timbers Army, the Portland Timbers’ supporters’ group, is one of the oldest and most influential in the U.S. In this interview, Fernando Xavier - one of its original members - shares stories from the early days, when it was just a handful of like-minded fans, to its evolution into a thousands-strong movement. Along the way, he’s become a key figure in the Portland football community, met with club and league leadership to advocate for supporters, and even faced a stadium ban!

The interview has been condensed and lightly edited for grammar and clarity. 

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[ Background ]

I've been a soccer player my whole life. I was born in South America and moved to the US when I was young. I played soccer, recreationally and organized - I’m still playing now in a men’s league. We play every Sunday and go to the pub after. We’re a pretty diverse team, I think we have 7 different nationalities - which is pretty interesting because Portland is very ‘white American’.

My grandfather was a huge The Strongest fan. When I was little in Bolivia, it was part of every weekend. We’d go and watch soccer with my father and grandparents. They were pretty hardcore. I guess they were supporters more than fans. Whether they were watching the match or attending in the stadium, it was a ritual for them and a big part of their lives. You knew, if it was Saturday, you’re going to the match - there was no way around it!

Then I moved to Portland. At the time MLS had just started and there weren’t any teams close to here. Then we got a USL team and I went to a few games. The level wasn’t great but it was still fun. The Timbers Army formed from like 10 or 20 people and I joined them. I found that we had similar backgrounds, whether it was music or countercultural type things. We just started building the supporters group and it slowly grew and grew.

The team was rather terrible but people were there more for the party - or the ruckus - we were having the best times, you know the best Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights in Portland. At that time the Blazers were on and off but tickets were so prohibitive. Tickets for the Timbers were super cheap in comparison - a hundred bucks for the season - not bad.

[ Was Timbers Army already a formal group in those days? ]

No, it was just the people that showed up! And little by little, we started getting more diverse people coming in. We had some folks from England and Eastern Europe join. They were like, ‘hey, we need flags, we need songs,’ because we were just playing drums and having a good time.

It slowly got more and more organized where we had folks that brought the drums, and folks that started bringing in flags and we started lighting smoke in the stadium. From there it just grew. People got interested, like, ‘how do these people get away with doing that?’ Back then there were only a couple security people - but we weren’t damaging anything and kept it pretty much within our group. We weren’t throwing any smoke on the pitch or anything.

[ Were other clubs also forming supporters groups around this time? ]

The folks we took inspiration from organizationally was the Chicago Fire. They had multiple subgroups but they formed an overarching organizational administrative group called Section 8, that was basically the spokespeople for the supporters with the front office.

At the same time, DC had a pretty large supporter group. There were supporters in New York and some in San Jose. But we were still in a minor league - the ‘second division’ and we were already bigger than most MLS supporters groups.

[ Do you think this fan presence played a role in Portland eventually getting an MLS franchise? ]

Yeah, absolutely. I think when Merritt Paulson bought the Timbers, his plan was to bring baseball to Portland. His LLC was even called Shortstop, LLC. But then, seeing the challenges of bringing baseball and the investment required and seeing he already had a city with a fan base - it was an easy segue for him. A lot of Timbers Army people went and testified at City Hall and City Council to let them know how important this bid was for the city. Our biggest rival, Seattle, already moved to MLS the year prior too.

I think at that time it was $30 million to ‘buy’ a franchise. Compared to San Diego paid at least $500 million last year. I don’t think there’s much more room for growth in the league unless they start to have punishments for being terrible… We have a lot of mediocre franchises now. You know, New York gets big stars, LA gets big stars - in Portland we could give a shit, we want somebody who’s actually going to win games, not someone who’s basically retired.

[ Is there a difference between ‘fans’ and ‘supporters’ - and ‘ultras’? ]

I think fans just kind of enjoy the sport but I wouldn’t say they're planning to meet on a Saturday night to watch an away game. They’ll go watch a game, maybe buy a scarf and try to learn about the game. Then supporters are active. They're planning ahead, they know their schedules, they are seeing where they can go to catch the match.

For me, ultras are more organized. These are the people who are bringing pyro and flags to the matches. They’re taking the time to paint banners and planning the messages. A lot of their week consists of planning, especially for away days because travel is kind of prohibitive. We’re playing Nashville on Saturday and there’s a hundred or so people from Portland going.

My friends and I, we’re looking at which pub to go to and where we can get the most people and have the most fun. We try to support our friends who own or work at a bar and just pack it in with friends and family. At the same time, our discussions are around the tifos for the next matches or ideas for banners, those types of things.

We’re brainstorming a lot right now, especially with the current political climate and what we feel are attacks in our community. We have a larger Latino presence now in Portland, I’m out there passing out flyers about knowing your rights, how to defend yourself and protect your family. There’s a lot of activism among the ultras - and there’s some crossover with other supporters helping with this. But this is the mentality of ultras, you have to protect your city, your community and you have to be out in your community to do that.

[ What kind of age range is there among these core supporters? ]

I think right now, we range from like 24 to 58 in the supporter groups. And some of the older guys are new, you know, they're like, ‘oh, my kids are at college,’ and are looking for something to get involved in.

The one common thing for us is we all came from the hardcore music scene or punk rock or anti-racist skinheads. Portland was like ground zero for anti-racist action in the ‘90s, so a lot of folks come from that. That’s a lot of the reason why we’re so inclusive and people would say, extreme left. It doesn’t apply to everyone in the Timbers Army but it does apply to the core group of people who do the work and get the word out.

[ Are there specific ‘roles’ or things certain people are responsible for? ]

We have a tifo committee and basically what they are is exactly what their title is, they manage the painting of the tifo, the timing, the materials and so on. A lot of the design ideas come from 4 or 5 designers but even though I’m not a designer, I might have a good idea or something to incorporate into the design, so I’ll send suggestions in.

Then we have people just carry banners in and out. We have a whole team whose job is solely to pass out flags and make sure that the whole section has flags. And then we have 4 people that are in charge of all the smoke.

[ Do you get approval or check things with the club for permission? (especially for pyro) ]

Yeah, we have. They took pyro away from us before we went to MLS but we just did it anyway. So they were like, ‘okay, let’s come to an agreement on how we can do it more safely.’ They provided a smoke bucket with sand and other safety measures for us to do it much safer. So yeah, we do have an agreement with them.

In regards to tifos, we show them a basic outline but they never see the final version until it’s up. The same goes for large scale banners. We encourage folks if they want to make a banner as long as it’s not something hateful or racist or homophobic, bring it in.

[ Can you talk about the scandal in 2019 between the Timbers Army and MLS and the club regarding the Iron Front flag? ]

I wouldn't say it was a scandal. That symbol has been part of Portland anti-fascist, anti-racist actions since the early ‘90s and somehow the MLS front office was trying to tell us it was a political symbol. We told them it's a human rights symbol. It’s literally a sign against, anti, oppression of these rights. And we’re going to continue to fly it.

So they banned the flag. So other supporters like the Chicago Fire folks started flying Iron Front flags. Then people were flying it all around the country and it just came to a head where it was a headache for them to manage it because the story was getting bigger and bigger. You know, ‘why is MLS silencing these people?’

Myself and a couple other folks from Portland and Seattle and from the Independent Supporters Council (ISC), which is a national supporters organization, we all flew to Las Vegas to meet with Mark Abbott, who's like Don Garber's second in command, along with a bunch of his lawyers.

This meeting resulted from a match we had with Seattle, it was rivalry week and a hyped, nationally televised game against Portland. Both sets of supporters stood silent for the first 30 minutes, no one said anything in the stands and the announcers had to acknowledge it and say why you can hear the players instead of the drums.

We told them that this is going to continue all across the league with all the rivalry matches. We had good faith agreements with other supporters that would do the same thing. Finally, they caved and we helped write a new code of conduct that took some of the political meanings away and I think we made it possible for folks to have more human rights, more human centric banners in the stands without MLS saying, ‘that’s a political banner’ and having a new discussion every year.

[ Is there a risk of punishment for actions in the stands? ]

Yeah, we did flares in Salt Lake City in, I think, 2011. The club could only identify two people for certain and that resulted in those two people getting banned. Initially, they were going to be banned for the season, or for life. We negotiated that we would voluntarily identify ourselves if we all got a 6 match ban. So a bunch of us took a 6 match ban and we just watched from the pub across the street and worked out who was going to do the smoke and the other things.

LAFC has done flares and the club was fined $100,000. The Galaxy did the same thing, the club got fined and I know they banned a couple of people for the season and some for life. The flare issue is, it's really hard to do because then you're dealing with the federal government and homeland security and they’re talking about charges of terrorism and stuff like that. So it became pretty real and for us, I don’t think it’s worth the risk of someone getting identified, or wrongly identified and having to be arrested and charged with any of those things.

[ We talked about the relationship with the club, what about with the players - is there some kind of exchange or relationship? ]

Having an ~80% Latin American team makes it easy because there’s no language barrier with me and a bunch of the drummers and capos all speak Spanish. We have a very friendly relationship with a large majority of the players. I think our front office encourages a little bit of separation, you know, not to get too close to us just because of the relationship we've had with the ownership and the management over the last 10 years.

But they'll come to events for us and we usually meet with them once a year. Between our capos and our game day folks, we talk about our expectations on the pitch and ask what they need from us. If they’re brand new to the community, how can we help?

[ You mentioned a couple supporters groups you’re in touch with, how do you form or build these ‘fan friendships’? ]

I would say some of that is the musical and political alignment. We're friends with folks in Minnesota, Chicago and DC. And then, small crews of people across the US. We all have friends from other teams and it’s just based on having the same musical tastes or the same politics. Like, I’m a community activist, or I know they are, and we try to share resources to protect our communities.

There are groups out there that are always looking for, I guess, for violence and those types of things. That’s not encouraged with our folks. At the same time, we’re going to defend ourselves. We’ve had incidents with San Jose ultras, some Seattle folks but smaller incidents, nothing like large scale organized violence.

A lot of my crew and I, when we do away days, we don’t wear Timbers stuff. We’re very subtle and just wear normal clothes and can just go around the stadium and avoid issues. Our group is more defensive. I think, especially with some of the younger folks discovering soccer in Portland, there’s some of that ‘bro culture’ coming in that thinks antagonizing is the way to go. For me, it’s not worth it to go up to like a soccer dad and yell at him, what’s the point?

[ What do you think about fan culture in MLS and the US more broadly? ]

I think there are good supporters, smaller, altruistic groups that try to do their own thing, or model themselves after European or South American style of support. It just depends on their backgrounds and how they can amalgamate all those cultures into one and make it cohesive.

A lot of the other things, like, we’ve had that log cutting ceremony since the ‘70s, I think it’s kind of cheesy and the original person retired but it’s a kind of tradition. But it seems like a lot of teams are forcing that on supporters - like Charlotte has the ‘king of the match’, Zaha scored the other day and was man of the match so he ‘gets’ to sit on the throne and gets a crown. That’s pretty cringey. LAFC has some poor, trapped eagle that they fly out! Atlanta has some semi-popular local celebrity hit a railroad spike and it makes a train noise.

Every team seems to want to try to find something that's super cringey. For me, they should find something more organic, let folks find their own tradition. As strange as I think our tradition is, it was born organically, you know, Jim just started bringing his chainsaw to matches. But just let people come up with their own - like when we play Kansas City, they have a guy called Brisket Bob and every time they score against the Timbers he slices a big slice of brisket for people. That’s great, it’s mocking our tradition in a funny way and they just came up with that, it wasn’t a corporate thing.

[ Are you and your friends frustrated by the structure of MLS - i.e. no promotion/relegation? ]

Yeah, but we also come from an educational understanding of it. We know that it’s a single entity and that there would have to be some sort of financial benefit for the owner to go for promotion/relegation. I get that the USL is trying to do that and uplift the soccer community but at the same time, I’d be stoked to have a USL team if I lived in a small city like Chattanooga.

There’s like a 30 person supporter group supporting a semi-pro team in Akron. They’ve built their own culture, their own traditions and they’re having the best time watching semi-pro soccer. We want promotion/relegation but I think many teams - especially in MLS - don't.

[ How else is the Timbers Army active in Portland, outside of soccer? ]

Every match we have some sort of donation box. Right now we're collecting blankets, sleeping bags, coats, socks and everyday supplies for one of the houseless nonprofits we work with. Year round we collect gently used soccer equipment, whether it's like cleats, socks, shorts or warm-ups and we work with some of our former players to get them sent to Ghana and other West African countries where kids may not have access to equipment.

We do tons around LGBTQ rights every summer. We do fundraisers mostly for teens and young adults who need assistance, whether it’s housing or anything like therapeutic help. And then we do a lot with IRCO, which is our immigrant and refugee community organization - anything from donations to collecting children’s clothes and helping folks resettle. We’re huge advocates of immigrant support.

At the same time, we have the Thorns, one of the largest attended women’s teams in the world. We work together a lot with the Riveters - the women’s supporter group - on community work and activism.

[ Is there a big crossover between the Riveters and Timbers Army? Are there lots of women in the Timbers Army? ]

It’s probably like 70-30 (in Timbers Army), there are tons of women. My partner was active in the Timbers Army before I even met her in the section! Now, the majority of our capos are women too. So yeah, there’s a large amount of crossover.

We share capos and best practices. We also share an event space and merchandise team, so everything is ‘co-branded’ with the Riveters and Timbers Army. We try to make ourselves available to each other. We all want the same things - for our teams to win and have a community that is safe for our members.

[ Who should join a supporters group? ]

Anyone that wants to! I would say, if you want to join a supporters group, you will enjoy matches, learn about soccer, history and politics. You can find people that you align with and a community of folks you can support - and vice versa.

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