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"Timber Joey," the Portland Timbers' mascot, cuts a log slab after the Timbers scored against D.C. United at Jeld-Wen Field on May 29.
PORTLAND, Ore. -- David Beckham has done and seen plenty on soccer fields across the globe, but he's never seen anything like this. Except on TV.
The passion and intensity of the Portland Timbers' following might remind him of what it was like playing in England, Spain and Italy, but nobody in any venue he's been to was carrying around a chainsaw.
“That's one,” he says, “I've never seen before.”
The Galaxy (12-2-9) step into Major League Soccer's hottest cauldron Wednesday night with their first visit to intimate Jeld-Wen Field, where the expansion Timbers (6-10-4) can count on perhaps the most loyal fans in the league -- certainly on par with those in Seattle and Toronto.
The atmosphere whipped up by the Timbers Army, the club's primary fan group, will be insane, and then there's that guy on the field with that chainsaw and a big lump of wood -- ready to slice off slabs to celebrate Portland goals and victories.
“This is what you want to play in front of,” Beckham said. “You want to play in front of fans like this that are passionate about the sport, about the game and their own team -- and, hopefully, it'll give us an extra lift.”
The Galaxy feeds off the intensity of opposing crowds, like those, especially, in all three Pacific Northwest venues, in Toronto and in Philadelphia.
“We use it as an advantage, having a crowd that's fired up,” Landon Donovan said. “We use the energy in a good way.”
The addition of these teams, especially in the Pacific Northwest, has brought a different flavor to America's top soccer league, new traditions and demographics -- and it's not something new up here. The Timbers date to 1975, in the old North American Soccer League, and the current franchise was restored a decade ago, plying its trade before the Timbers Army in second-tier leagues before arriving in MLS with a distinct culture, built-in rivalries (none more heated than that with the Seattle Sounders) and the backing of a city that has little in the way of big-time pro sports.
Every match is sold out, the waiting list for season tickets is around 2,000, and there's a buzz throughout the city about the club, even if it has yet to stake a place among the league's top teams -- or even its second-tier clubs. Timbers long-timers say some fans will gather on the ground of the old Civic Stadium hours before the match to prepare for the night's festivities.
The cultural shift, not just in Portland but in nearly all of the recent expansion cities, is changing the league in profound ways.
“You get a different demographic,” says Galaxy left back Todd Dunivant, who played here against the Timbers when they were in the A-League, as the U.S. second division was once known. “I think you see that stadiums that are downtown and in urban areas are going to draw well, and they get [a different age] demographic where people are coming to games, they're loud, they're raucous, they're spending all day in the parking lot drinking, they're coming out and making nose for their team. ... It's a little different that some of the other demographics [in the league] where you're looking for families and youth soccer players, and you're not going to get quite the same passion.
“It's a tough ticket to get, a hip ticket to get. You saw that in Toronto, you see it in Seattle now. The whole town talks about it. That's what you want.”
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