Video by Bella Michaels, Charlie Bevins, and Luc Fougere
Chicago is world renown for its rich history in American professional sports. From the 90s dominance of Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippen for the Bulls to the three Stanley cups in five years for Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews and the Blackhawks. Even the 1985 Bear’s Super Bowl win and the Sox’s 2005 and Cub’s 2016 World Series Championships, the city has been gifted with numerous hall of fame teams and sportsman, except for soccer.
The Chicago fire has never felt like a true Chicago sports team. With their stadium located in the inconvenient Bridgeview, Illinois and the teams lack of representation in the MLS playoffs including zero MLS cups, the Fire have always been the outlier in this sport city. The acquisitions of top, but years past prime European players like Bastian Schweinsteiger and most recently Argentina’s Nicolas Gaitan, the Fire organization has seemed clueless in creating a well rounded winning team. Year after year, Chicago finishes near the bottom or middle of the Eastern Conference, creating more and more empty seats at each game.
However, while there has been no well organized push in terms of creating a cup lifting Fire team, this doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a soccer city. Chicago is very culturally diverse city that has residents originating from true soccer cities all around the world. There are endless reasons for fans here to support top European clubs. Whether they have grown up watching their hometown teams play, have a family member who has a local team, or decide to support a team because their jerseys look cool, there are endless reasons to support a club (Article: What makes an American support a European club) Individuals will disagree on who’s club is better, but what they do tend to agree on is supporting anybody else but the Fire.
The lack of concrete support for the ‘hometown’ team has created a specific gap in the soccer culture here. The soccer culture that has taken its place has been an individualistic one. Fans have been left to focus on their favorite European club, which makes Chicago quite unique in this regard. To really observe theses hardcore fans, we decided to go to a local soccer bar called The Globe Pub. We chose to attend the bar on a Tuesday where we could witness how the fans reacted during a big European Champions League Match between Real Madrid and Ajax. While the weekends provide a greater number of fans the chance to come out and support their clubs at the bar, we thought it would be interesting to see what fans would be at the bar at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. Real Madrid has such a large global following and we knew there would still be a good amount of Madrid fans in there to talk to.
Before we talked to the ‘Madridistas’ that took up the majority of the fans at the bar, we noticed lone Portsmouth supporter Alec Archer to listen as to why he chose a more obscure team to support. “My dad took me to a Portsmouth game when I was eight years old, we were in the Premier League, and since then it just stuck,” Archer said. “It is hard because the games are at 9 a.m. …and since Portsmouth are in the third division I have to go to some really weird streaming sites to find the game.” No matter the time difference or the means in which you watch it, fans like Archer will make the time to show their love for their club.
The first Real supporter we talked to was Victor Soto who has been supporting ‘Los Blancos’ for the last 10 years. “I remember Ronaldo, Kaka, Callejon being inside the team, they were my favorites,” Soto said. There are a lot of fans like Soto who chose which club they could support, and he picked Madrid based on their star quality. With all of the clubs games being played overseas in Europe, Soto said, “Soccer I watch on almost a daily basis. Whether it’s here (The Globe Pub), or at home on the internet, I try to follow them as much as I possibly can.”
Friends and native Mexicans, Carlos Adame and Hector Trujillo also came to support their favorite club Real Madrid. Soccer is the most popular sport in Mexico and the fans are known to be some of the most intense in the sport. The intensity comes from the fact that this sport is engrained in their culture and everyday lives. “To me soccer is my life. I can’t live without it,” Adame said, “Soccer is played everywhere, it’s a beautiful sport.” Trujillo felt similar to Adame on it being such a pivotal part of their lives, “Soccer is passion, it is everything,” Trujillo said. “Thats why we are always here at this bar,” he concluded. Fans in Chicago have gotten used to watching all their soccer on the TV, and from that has emerged this soccer bar culture.
The bar culture is an open and inclusive group, no matter your race, nationality or gender, this sport promotes camaraderie. Fans define each other on what club they support, and if you both support the same club, there is already that connection and love for the team and each other. The Globe Pub bartender Kelsey Downey discusses this close community. “I’ve met a lot of really great people working at soccer bars that are customers as well as co-workers, so I love it,” Downey said, “I left one soccer bar and came to another one because I miss the regulars and I miss the atmosphere… it’s very intense.” These regular patrons create their own community with the common interest of their love for soccer.
The void that the Fire has left in creating a city-wide MLS community has strengthened the bar culture, as fans find a new community to share their European club passion with. Chicago is home to some of the most passionate soccer supporters in America, but the main problem for the city is achieving a MLS team where fans care enough to give them that same intensity they always feel for their favorite club. Until big changes are made for the team, Chicago will remain as a passionate viewer of overseas soccer.
Special thanks to The Globe Pub
SOCCER CULTURE IN CHICAGO 