I love my arbitrary comparisons when it comes to sport, but let's be honest, there's no real way to compare Detroit and Fargo, or for that matter Hamtramck and Moorhead wherein Saturday playoff opponents Detroit City Football Club and Dakota Fusion Futbol Club games have actually been played.
Per Google, it is 836 miles between the home stadia of the two clubs (Jim Gotta Stadium at Moorhead High and Keyworth Stadium in Hamtramck respectively)
So I'm just gonna reflect on my own experience of Detroit City and their fanatical support as a model.
There is this piece I wrote a while back
Then, it is often pointed out by the organising members of their main Supporters Group, the Northern Guard that flags don't make themselves and neither are smoke bombs free. Supporters are first and foremost encouraged to support a team in this country, in this sport, by the effort made by clubs to reach out to them and offer a compelling reason to spend three hours in often bare-bones surroundings of high school or college athletic stadia as opposed to the myriad other options available on a Saturday (let alone those pesky midweek evenings).
I'll let them tell their own chronology but DCFC and the NGS have offered a visible, audible outlet for a city which had been literally bankrupt. NGS have also added an adult/passionate tone which took the suggestions that their city was dead and had a day of the dead, inviting people to join them or fuck off.
Minneapolis City and their Citizens SG show similar traits although any visitor to the Twin Cities would wonder why they carried the chip on their shoulder from the economic and political center of Minnesota to places much less blessed with historical privilege and/or location.
And so I come to Dakota Fusion. As I said, there's no real way to compare the two clubs or their homes - except to say that for utterly contrasting reasons the urban working class of Detroit might actually have more in common with the farmers of the rural working class surrounding Fargo than they realise. Greg Tehven does a good job of explaining the negative associations of this area's recent past here
The nascent supporter culture of FC Fargo has not been fostered by Fusion ownership. The handful of raucous scarf wearing "Essential Green" founders largely melted away into the winter snows, with no sign of a return as of yet. The club's social media is severely lagging, or lax, or both and there is zero sign of a Supporters Group forming - or even of spontaneous support breaking into the familiar rhythms of chanting.
Case in point, I love this area but I have a full time job and several long term health conditions. When I banged my cane on the fence at the last home game in order to try and get a "Let's Go Fusion" or something going, people seemed either unaware of that well worn soccer rhythm, or disinterested. I don't have the energy to chant alone.
Where Fusion have cultivated support, it is amongst families and whilst this is not a bad thing on its own it cannot be the only thing because they largely do not want to get into verbal jousting. I would also add that it can also not be the only thing when those families aren't procreating fast enough to fill your stands alone. So, Saturday's opponents can hopefully offer some pointers to Fusion management in how they did it and how it could work in Fargo.
A passing thought: Dakota Fusion should really be Fargo Fusion because a) alliteration b) Like it or not, the Coen Bros made Fargo instantly recognisable c) there would be some sense of continuity with the local marketing brand (see the visitors bureau), the local American Outlaws branch and also the predecessor, FC Fargo.
But as I said, there's no real way to compare the two, so I will just wish the Fusion luck in what has to be singly the most difficult game and atmosphere that young club will have faced.
Tim
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