It’s hard to say
With U.S. not in field, will local soccer fans watch event?
The “City of Champions” has sports ingrained in its DNA. With the Steelers, it’s a football hub; with the Penguins,it’s a hockey town.
But as the 2018 World Cup in Russia prepares to start up without the U.S. men’s national team, a question remains: Is Pittsburgh a soccer city?
It depends on whom you ask.
“It kind of always has been,” said Drew Topping, owner of Piper’s Pub on East Carson Street. “I certainly see it that way. We have a professional team here that playsa couple miles down the road for us, and it’s fighting for its place among Pitts-burghsports.”
The American Outlaws are a national group of supporters for U.S. soccer teams with hundreds of chapters across the country. Sam Dalfonso, an officer for the Pittsburgh branch, said rallying local fans can be difficult.
“[The Pittsburgh soccer community is] definitely small,” Dalfonso said. “We face a lot of challenges getting people out because a lot of Pittsburghers, they kind of stay home, and we try to have a central location here inside the city.”
Dalfonso’s group has approximately 400 dues-paying members, but the well-documented struggles of the U.S. inthe qualifying rounds have led to mere handfuls of supporters
Thursday
Match: Russia vs. Saudi Arabia in tournament opener, Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow. When: 11 a.m. TV: WPGH. The skinny: Russia hasn’t won a match since October and Saudi Araba enters on a three-match losing streak. at the chapter’s most recentevents.
“I think we see a lot more participation when the games matter [for the U.S.],” said Geoff Meyer, another officer for the Pittsburgh chapter of the Outlaws. “For the women’s World Cup Final [in 2015] at our old bar, you couldn’t move. It was packed, andeveryone was engaged.”
But for many members of the city’s soccer community, the usual spots will be alive. Piper’s Pub is perhaps the most well-known soccer bar in the city, and Topping — whose family has owned and operated the bar for nearly 20 years — said he expects to see an increase in business, especially with earlier games than in 2014, when Brazil was the host. The earlier times hopefully, will lead to “more lively lunches” instead of displaceddinner crowds.
As for which teams crowds will support, Topping said he has received questions from “every fan base you can imagine” about watchinggames at his pub.
“You never know; my fan bases for every single World Cup have been very different, butit’s a reflection of what you see in the city,” he said. “Every year changes, and every year you wind up with new 16-, 17-, 18-, 19-year-old peoplethat are getting into the gamefor various reasons.”
Topping said the U.S. absence might change things for the city but “it really won’t make that much of a difference”for the pub.
“The U.S. matches would easily be filled no matter what, so you’ll miss it,” he said. “But there’s a lot of other strong fan bases as well; and, as the tournament goes, so does the attendance, so we’ll see. England will be the one that will give you the most because the English [Premier] League is the most supported.”
Even without the U.S. team playing over the next month, optimism exists that the World Cup can unite Pittsburgh’s soccer fans.
“We’ve been discussing just hosting a Final watch party, and we might have a FIFA [video game] tournament — we normally have a FIFA tournament every year, so we kind of want to do that in conjunction [with the WorldCup],” Dalfonso said.
“We know there’s going to be a lot of people that wouldn’t really watch soccer if it wasn’t for the World Cup going on, so we want to show them kind of whatthe Outlaws are about.”