Reaching new heights
Crew fans band together to create massive banners
It was about 20 minutes before kickoff Saturday at the Columbus Crew game, and fan Brian Klein was nervously pacing the endline on the northern side of Lower.com Field.
In a matter of minutes, the hard work of dozens of volunteers over four months would come to fruition in the raising of seven 60-foot-tall banners, each detailing a major accomplishment of the soccer club. Maybe.
If all went well. (And, even if it did, only for a few minutes.)
Buddy Jon Crye stopped to give Klein – the volunteer creative director behind the effort – a big, goodluck hug.
Then, ahead of the whistle, the towering banners rose one-by-one on special rigging in front the Nordecke supporter’s section, culminating in one celebrating the MLS Cup the team won last year. The crowd went wild with each new reveal. High-fives came fast and furious for Klein.
“There were some snags – did you see the tear? – but we did it,” said Klein, breathing a sigh of relief from the main concourse while waiting for friends to buy him a beer.
Tifo: what it is and how it became an integral part of soccer fandom
The choregraphed fan-created art, known in soccer circles as a tifo – a term is derived from the Italian tifosi, which means someone acting in a fevered manner – represented the most massive example, by far, in the Crew's 25-year history.
But like most things associated with the Columbus soccer club, it didn't come easily. The first major tifo at Lower.com Field faced weather catastrophes, technical difficulties and other problems associated with creating something so mammoth.
Plans for it to go up at the stadium's inaugural match on July 3 ultimately were derailed the night before by issues with the venue's special rigging system
“That day was absolutely devastating when we had to make that call,” Klein said.
It was a painful irony that the new netting and pulley system at the stadium – which requires a 15-member team of seasoned event riggers hired by the Crew and which made the new massive tifo possible – was what delayed its first appearance.
But it was worth it, fans said, to see their dream deferred to Saturday, when they ushered in a new era of #tifosweat, as efforts to create show-stopping stadium art have become known by Crew supporters.
And fans won't have to wait long to see the next tifo creation. The group behind the efforts already has its next spectacle ready to rise Friday night – weather-permitting – when the club hosts rival FC Cincinnati.
“It's a reminder of who we are as a team and what we can be,” said fan Kourtney Sullivan, 34, of Westerville, as she helped lay out the giant banners in the stands ahead of Saturday's reveal. “It's a statement to not only the team and fans but to MLS of what we've built and what we almost lost.”
‘It’s not insurmountable’
Five days before the tifo originally was to be raised, Srikanth “Shrek” Meka stood on the loading dock at Historic Crew Stadium watching a torrential downpour decimate the past few hours of work and tried to remain positive.
“It's not insurmountable,” he said to a few of the dozens of people who had turned up to paint at the stadium parking lot June 29. The group had overcome much greater challenges. Heck, they saved their team from relocating to another city back in 2018.
“I wish this was as bad as it's been,” the 35-year-old, who had worked on numerous tifos in the past, continued, almost with a laugh. “It's the Columbus story, the Columbus Crew story – and it always seems to rain at the most inopportune time.”
Weather, especially the fickle stormy summer kind, often plays a role – and not a good one – in the process of making a tifo. That's mostly because one of the fans' greatest challenges over the years has been securing large enough space indoors where they can be shielded from the elements.
In this case, the forecast for the rest of the week called for more showers, making it impossible to plan to paint any more in the old stadium's parking lot. It was a heavy blow to the volunteers who already had cut or sewn thousands of yards of fabric and those who stayed at the former stadium until 1 a.m. for two nights in a row, using a projector to stencil the outlines of trophies and letters.
Even before the weather setbacks, Morgan Hughes, Save the Crew leader and long-time fan of the reigning MLS champions, thought it would be a colossal
feat if the crew could pull off the seven-panel design – 10 to 15 times larger than past tifos, he said –in time for the new field's inaugural match.
“It's every project we've done but doing it like 15 times,” said Hughes, who coined #tifosweat and led the artistic efforts until 2019. “It will be a miracle if we get it done – and not a minute miracle.”
Well, the Crew and its fans are no strangers to miracles. By 5 p.m. on July 2, all seven of the banners were painted and grommeted, with some even attached to the netting ready for a trial run at Lower.com Field.
The tide, it seemed, had turned. The night of the heavy, destructive rain, Klein pleaded on WSYX (Channel 6) for indoor space to finish the project; other volunteers called in favors from anyone who might have a facility to loan.
A few places came through, especially Rosemore Middle School in Whitehall, which allowed the team to lay out and paint three banners at one time in the gym and cafeteria.
“Once I saw we could do all three at once, my stress level reduced considerably,” said Klein, 42, of Franklinton.
Whole families came out to help while others took time off from work. Those who had 9-to-5 jobs came in the evening to relieve those who had been there all day.
That's why Klein couldn't keep the tears at bay when he had to make the difficult decision to delay the rising of the tifo the night before the July 3 game.
“I'm not mad it didn't work,” Klein said then to the small crew helping with the failed “dress rehearsal.”
“I'm not mad it ripped. I'm mad – I'm not mad but disappointed for all the people who busted their (butts) to get this done. Seven banners are painted.”
A shocked buddy exclaimed: “What? They're all painted?”
‘Soccer fans are different from other fans’
If you haven't heard of a tifo, don't feel bad. Hughes had never heard of the term before he and some other Crew fans were tasked with designing one ahead of a USA versus Mexico game in Columbus in 2013.
While most Crew fans associate the word with the larger displays that supporters deploy a handful of times a season or big games or special occasions – Pride night, a player's last game with the team – a tifo refers to any type of fan art, no matter the size of the banner or flag.
Even now, the terraces in the Nordecke
in Lower.com Field are covered with smaller forms of fan art celebrating certain players or club mottos that are taken down and put back up in between games.
And smaller tifos have been around since long before the major #tifosweat projects that began eight years ago. Klein recalled making “two-stick” banners at a bar on Hudson Street as early as 2010 and other fans made them in their basements in the early 2000s.
Julie Stankey, 38, a working mom from Dublin who helped paint some of the most-recent tifo, said she's been creating smaller rail banners the past five or six seasons as a way to show her support for the team – and to unwind.
“After my kids go to bed, I get some wine, listen to podcasts and paint,” Stankey said. “I did 10 (rail banners) last season.”
And while talented artists are involved in designing and sewing the larger tifos, they're also projects with which people of all abilities and ages can help. That's what drew Brent Miller to the recent endeavor.
“There are a bunch of people giving up their free time to make this happen,” the 24-year-old Circleville resident said. “You can paint while throwing back a beer with friends. Anyone can be a part of this. You don't have to be a crazy artist.”
Miller said he initially thought the big banners were made by the team's front office, a common misconception among many who see them.
It doesn't help that tifos don't really exist in other sports, Klein said..
“Soccer fans are different than other fans,” he said. “They'll actively volunteer hours and hours for something like this.”
And they'll donate money or supplies in droves: The most- recent tifo cost upwards of $10,000, all of which came from membership fees for the Nordecke supporters group or fans themselves.
A sense of pride
That's certainly something the players notice.
Klein recalled the night they raised a tifo for former player Justin Meram, and his whole family in attendance commented on the display.
And Hughes still delights in retelling the story about the one fans made for Federico Higuain a few years ago and how the former captain asked to keep it – eventually stuffing his sports car full of fabric to get it home.
“It gives everybody a sense of pride,”
said Steve Lyons, chief business officer for the Crew. “From a player perspective, it doubles down on that sense of support. They know the fans are rooting on the guys day in and day out.”
Tifos can provide a spark for the home team and unnerve the opposing one, Lyons continued.
“They create an intimidating, imposing overall experience when a visiting team comes to Columbus,” Lyons said.
Hughes said the stats match that sentiment. According to his count, the Crew and U.S. national team are 22-4-4 in games when a #tifosweat display was deployed. (Unfortunately, the latest creation accompanied a 2-1 loss to the Seattle Sounders in a rematch of last year's MLS Cup final.)
It was Hughes' idea to ask the Crew front office for a tifo-rigging system he had seen in other stadiums, mainly across Europe – where the practice of making these massive banners is more common – and in newer soccer venues in the United States.
In the past, the #tifosweat team was limited by size and shape in the old stadium and simply raised banners using the crowd to hold it up, he said. The new integrated rigging allows for art that's up to 80 feet tall and 252 feet long.
“I stayed after to talk to the engineers and showed them examples of what we wanted,” Hughes said. “And they gave us exactly what we wanted.”
For better or worse. The well-oiled machine that could create a tifo in two nights now had to figure out how to make something 10 times the size and add depth.
With one already under the volunteers' collective belt now, though, they're ready for their second. The tifo for Friday's match against Cincinnati – the design remains a surprise – has been done for a few weeks.
It helped that they got an early start while waiting for the first one to go up and that they made some adjustments to how they'll present the designs, Klein said.
As they continue to iron out issues, the rigging system should allow volunteers to be even more creative in their artwork, wowing the team and fellow fans.
But it was never about the recognition they receive, according to Meka.
“It's about community, family, friends,” he said. “It's a reflection on our community and saying, ‘Hello world, we are here.'” award@dispatch.com @Allisonaward