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With the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other: Detroit City, MLS enclosure, and the future

August 15, 2017 by Sean Spence Leave a Comment

There are those who would build the Temple,
And those who prefer that the Temple should not be built.
In the days of Nehemiah the Prophet
There was no exception to the general rule.
In Shushan the palace, in the month Nisan,
He served the wine to the king Artaxerxes,
And he grieved for the broken city, Jerusalem;
And the King gave him leave to depart
That he might rebuild the city.
So he went, with a few, to Jerusalem,
And there, by the dragon’s well, by the dung gate,
By the fountain gate, by the king’s pool,
Jerusalem lay waste, consumed with fire;
No place for a beast to pass.
There were enemies without to destroy him,
And spies and self-seekers within,
When he and his men laid their hands to rebuilding the wall
So they built as men must build
With the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other.

  • T.S. Eliot, Choruses from “The Rock”, Part IV

Understand: There was nothing about this season, this golden, precious run of games, which was a failure. We fell at the penultimate hurdle. It happens. The scrapes will heal; it will be up to us to keep the memories alive. It will be important we keep these memories alive.

Because surely 2017 will go down in Detroit City Football Club history as end of the pre-history of City. Like childhood, these memories will acquire the golden hue of myth – Mondi with the right foot, forever, amen – as they should. Cyrus gliding through the middle. Dave, exultant, arms outstretched before us. Sebby’s windmill. Shawn’s scoring streak. Spencer Glass with the volley. Lansing 3-3 City. Bakie lofting through-balls. Mondi with the right foot. Mondi with the RIGHT FOOT!! We will need our mythology, our grounding stories, for the onslaught we are about to face.

Until recently, we’ve been nothing more than a nuisance to MLS’ designs on the Detroit market – but the naked avarice of the Gilbert/Gores cash-grab, combined with the fact that MLS’ recent history in populated markets is more colonial than cohabitational, have suddenly brought our opposing ethos into sharp focus as an alternative. We stand at Ground Zero of the enclosure of American soccer pastureland; we serfs would do well to prepare ourselves for the conflict to come.

Unlike those earlier serfs, we have multiple tools available to persuade against the hedging of our shared pasture. We have begun by demonstrating – to interested outside parties, in a way not possible in pastoral England – that our common land is well-maintained; no usufruct challenge here. How many MLS clubs turn a profit, again?

Then there’s the cultural advantage tied up in the fact that basically any recording of Northern Guard shows that it’s a party you’d probably like to be part of, a multi-hued spectrum of nutjobs and halfway-ins and ironic eye-rollers and pure lookie-loos – everyone fits somewhere. And that’s not by accident. There’s no test. There’s no preferred type. Be who you are (not a dick!), stand up, hoot for City: Here endeth the rulebook. And the whole world knows that already! Would it have mattered during Enclosure if the Midlands village could broadcast a highlight reel of its really bangin’ harvest festival?

We have something very special here, something uniquely special in the wide and mind-blowingly various world of football: A locally-owned, community-focused football club in the United States which is wildly successful almost entirely on its own terms. If it’s to remain so, we all have a lot of work ahead of us. And the opposition won’t be content to play it clean and lose; more hurdles await us.

We are intertwined, though. We bear each other up. We can do this. We must do this. It won’t be easy. But what – worth doing – is?

Filed Under: 2017 Season, Perspectives, Previews & Recaps Tagged With: Spence on City

Post-Joy Happiness Disorder: Detroit City FC 3, AFC Ann Arbor 2

July 31, 2017 by Sean Spence 1 Comment

Transcendence.                             – EPIC photo by Jon de Boer for Detroit City FC

I have a feeling that sharing stories about Tyrone’s winner will become a sort of personal commodity in the years to come, a way of sharing the thing that can only be shared: Knowing. Belonging. Us. These moments of transcendence are not easily brought to be in this world – it’s just too much. Buffer overrun. A burst of white noise like static. I’m crying as I write this – Post Joy Happiness Disorder.

This euphoria was a distillation of an already potent vintage, and on Saturday all of us drank until our only recourse was to hoot at each other in ecstasy, conversations distilled into “!!!!!” and “???!!!!!!” at top volume. Now that we’ve got words back, here’s where I was when Bakie headed that angled ball forward into the space for Tyrone.

The game felt almost too easy until the end. Here was Ann Arbor, these defensive titans, our boogeyman rival, and City had really controlled the game. Caesar tucked the wings in and we played a quicker, short-passing style through the middle, and suddenly the fact that every defender in white was a lights-out tackling machine didn’t matter – City were beating them with movement and technique, and Ann Arbor didn’t have an obvious answer.

If Elon Musk is right, and the universe we live in is a simulation, then apparently Le Rouge is involved in some kinda soccer RPG – how else to explain the absurd pace at which we’ve seen some of these players grow? Omar Sinclar, who last season played centerback in an unsteady defense, has delivered clutch performances on the wing, and oh by the way he’s scored two free kick goals in the last two games, and narrowly missed adding a third with a shot from over 30 yards. Buffer overrun. Wut?

So we rolled into the final 15 minutes two goals clear and it was delightful, I think. There are memories there. I can access them. I don’t quite trust them, though. That person didn’t know.


It was just as Ann Arbor were really coming back into the game – City having abandoned the futsal approach to adopt a more defensive posture – when my wife Sarah suddenly vanished down the tunnel next to where we stand. Before I could turn my attention back to the game, several more people I love hustled into the tunnel, moving with the kind of urgency usually reserved for combat.

This fear has crouched on my shoulder from my first contact with Northern Guard, and I confess it here today: In that moment, I had a vision of the people I love – maybe even Sarah – in a brawl in the very tight confines of that tunnel. And my primate soul ached to join them. There’s so much darkness when people revert to primates down in that tunnel, so much, and football has historically lit that fuse the world over. In one second, I glimpsed that darkness and started to move … when Sarah reappeared, quickly retrieved her camera, and scurried off again,  the vision collapsed, leaving me remembering that fear and the ease with which that feeling came ‘round. But this was not a day for darkness.

It sure would seem like it for a while, though. I asked after Sarah and was told conflicting stories – there was an Ann Arbor fan who started a fight, it wasn’t an Ann Arbor fan it was just some guy, it wasn’t a fight but a kid got hurt. All the while the game is going; Ann Arbor just thwacks away at a corner until they barge it in, and the lead’s only one – ugh. Both Ken and Gene are out of the section, Jackie’s lead capo, Sarge on the bass drum. The universe began to conspicuously tilt toward Ann Arbor’s goal and the Weird threatened to rise up and swallow us whole. The Oak went full Charles Reep, bombing the ball forward immediately every possession, and tied the game through Alec Lisinsky’s quality finish.

My heart in my throat, certain that this fallen universe was about to dispense (yet another!) disquisition on the foolishness of really believing in something, I left my place in the Guard to go look for my wife. I found a steady trail of folks who knew where she’d gone, and pieced the story together from them – the kid who’d gotten hurt was actually Ken’s daughter. (She’s maybe the sweetest kid in the universe as currently constituted.) The guy had been subdued by guys from the Guard, who released him as soon as he submitted. Sarah had gone along to the med tent. It’s 2-2 now, and our guys look tired. Extra time and then PKs? Is Sarah ok?

I came upon Karin, Ken’s wife, and the aforementioned daughter just as I entered the north end. Ken’s daughter had an ice pack on her head, and tearfully needed some hugs as Karin recounted her story: Drunk dude tried to start something, resisted being subdued by grabbing a flag and flailing it around until he cracked Ken’s daughter on the skull. The game rolls into extra time as I hug a crying kid and watch her father approach, his face forbidding and thunderclouds trailing in his wake. We shake hands and shake our heads mournfully, unable to shake the feeling that the ice, as ever, is terribly thin, and the water beneath so unspeakably cold. Fifteen minutes ago, we were leading by two goals and Ken’s daughter was unhurt. Now what?

Ken tells me Sarah’s giving a statement to the police. Is gravity working extra hard right now? Time slows as walk through the north end, turning forward and back to see the field then sweep the picnic area, willing some miracle to happen, worried about my wife. There can’t be much time left now. Stephen Carroll slides a ball forward to Shawn Lawson but Ann Arbor breaks it up – I swivel my head back and see Sarah, perfectly fine, looking away from me because she’s talking to Katie and Alex … Bakie has just headed a half-clearance into space for Tyrone and IT IS HAPPENING IT IS HAPPENING.

Six days ago, one of the best of us, Amanda, was nearly taken away. The ice is so, so thin. The water is so, so cold. And somehow all that pain, all that worry informed this moment, this howling embrace of delight, weighted it, gave it contrast – We that are Us will endure. We will be here for each other. When the ice breaks, we are saved by the fact that we are not alone, that we are interlinked; we bear each other up. And when we witness miracles, we never need fear we’ve gone mad, for here are these eminently reasonable souls feeling the same shock and delight. At some point, everyone stopped hugging.

3-2, Detroit City.

Filed Under: 2017 Season, Previews & Recaps Tagged With: Spence on City

Detroit CIty FC vs Grand Rapids FC Supporter Experience (Grand Rapids Away)

July 17, 2017 by Nick Miko Leave a Comment

I’m finally getting caught up on these.

This is the Detroit City FC vs Grand Rapids FC match day experience from our away day in Grand Rapids at Fifth Third Ballpark.

Please Subscribe here and follow on Twitter @miko_city

Filed Under: 2017 Season, Previews & Recaps, Videos Tagged With: DCFC, miko.city

4:51 – 4:52

July 15, 2017 by guestpost Leave a Comment

editor’s note: this submission is from @namocat.

I looked up as we entered Keyworth, realizing for the first time just how large the gathering storm clouds were. “You might get that first rain game you’ve been wanting after all,” I joked to BeyondTheFail, pointing at the sky. “It looks pretty bad up there.”

“It’s not going to happen,” MentalAbsence said. He’d driven from Ann Arbor to support City; for him the match wasn’t just about playoffs or the #1 spot, but gloating rights over coworkers who had chosen the wrong side. “I’ve been watching the forecast, and the odds have been going steadily down throughout the day.” I wasn’t convinced, but I also wasn’t concerned. I’d stood through 90 minutes of rain at the Lawrence Tech game before the season started; a little rain wasn’t going to bring me down.

At the three minute mark we felt the first drops. By minute four, it was starting to come down. Minute five would never come that night. At 4:51 the lightning strikes stopped the clock, and all hell broke loose as the rain poured down. For the people on the family side it was the end of the night; a time to go back home, maybe change your shirt, and catch up on some Netflix. We weren’t on the family side, though. We were the Guard, and we couldn’t leave until the officials called it off. The lightning couldn’t stop us; the storm would rend the fabric of reality before it could destroy our enthusiasm. If time wasn’t obligated to follow the rules, why should anything else?

The songs continued. The chants persevered. You couldn’t do much for the smoke, but the air was thick just the same. There wasn’t a ball on the pitch, but that didn’t mean your eyes could take a break- signs of what the FO was doing, cues from the capos, the occasional lightning strike all demanded attention, shaping hopes, dreams, energy. And then there were the puddles. First a few small ones, then some larger ones, slowly connecting to each other until Keyworth began to resemble one of those shallow suburban ponds more than a proper field.

“They can’t play on this,” Amanda told us from her capo stand. “It’s not safe.” Fair enough. But the Guard didn’t seem to recognize terms like “inevitable” whether they came from hated rivals or their own ranks, so the fact that cancellation was certain didn’t seem to matter. The songs kept going. We were still in the stands. At least one of the owners came out with his staff and an array of pushbrooms and squeegees, determined to shove the water out of the way while supporters bailed it out with buckets. I couldn’t say whether any of us actually expected this to work. The storm had slowed down but it wasn’t done by any means, and I hadn’t been exaggerating to call Keyworth a pond. Rather than get my hopes up, the whole thing just seemed to add to the spectacle- who ever heard of stopping a storm with a broom?

An hour into it, the madness seemed to set in as I started thinking about which parts of my clothing might be ruined by all this. (My belt, as it turned out.) The storm had seemingly shunted us into a parallel reality, a mirror universe where things that you would have never given a second thought to became tantalizingly possible. Several of the capo stands were vacated; what would happen if I climbed up on one to help keep the singing going? I decided not to find out; I didn’t want to set that precedent for everyone else, or risk being known as the one you had to watch out for. One supporter invaded the pitch, running around with a flag. Security didn’t seem to like that. Perhaps reality still had its limits.

Then Sarge called for a supporter 11 vs 11 match. I held my breath. Surely that could never happen. Could it? If it was ever going to happen, it would be these people, on this night. He called for it again. And suddenly, people were hopping over the sidelines, taking positions. Someone got a ball- I still don’t know how- and the game began, until security decided to red card the entirety of both squads.

The night wound down eventually. For the first time I stayed until everything was put away, then bid everyone goodnight as BeyondTheFail and I walked back to our car. Less than five minutes of soccer had been played, but we still had a great time and looked forward to the match resuming on Tuesday.

When I arrived home from work that Tuesday, I heard the storms begin again. No time to think about it- I needed to cook dinner so that we could get to Fowling and hang out. I’d just have to trust that things would work out and we’d complete the game this time. By the time we finished eating, the storms ceased; BeyondTheFail checked Twitter and saw the photos being posted of Keyworth having once again taken on water. We packed it in and drove to Fowling. 4:52 was not going to be delayed any further if we could do anything about it.

We parked, I checked my phone, and I got the summons to duty via Twitter DM. The match had to go on, and it was our job to make sure it happened this time. We marched to Keyworth nearly two hours before our usual time and waded in barefoot. The next hour would be filled with contradictions in my head: the determination to fix Keyworth mixed with the fear that the match would be canceled again; frustration whenever a puddle got too difficult to bail without the corresponding realization that it meant we were succeeding at our goal. The hypnosis of manual labor had me so focused on the next bucketful of water that I couldn’t remember where we had been five minutes ago or how much progress we’d made until much later, when looking backwards at the dry parts would break the spell.

Despite it all, I was in relatively good spirits throughout the experience. “We’re not going to need axes to chop down that tree- a bucket will do nicely,” I joked. No response. Maybe it was the humidity, maybe it was the timing. Later it came time to name the small lake we had created with our buckets. “Sad Noah’s tears?” Also no response. Maybe I’m not as funny as I like to think I am. Whatever, that isn’t why we’re here.

Eventually the buckets, squeegees, and brooms did their job. I set mine down and walked off the pitch, cleaning my feet as best as I could before walking back to Fowling, leaving BeyondTheFail behind at Keyworth. I met MentalAbsence at Fowling, folded some hymnals, and headed out to march. But it seemed that 4:51’s effects on reality hadn’t lifted yet. We only marched once per match, after all. You couldn’t get more than one speech from Sarge in the same match; fate itself intervened to make him late. We sang Dirty Old Town twice instead; afterwards, there was nothing fate could do to stop us from taking the rest of that second march. And then finally, the clock resumed. The moment between 4:51 and 4:52 was the longest a second had ever taken in my life; the fight had taken several days, but we had conquered that lightning storm after all, in our own way.

In the end the oak tree lived another day- buckets wouldn’t knock it down. After the match, you could feel how tired every player and supporter was, the weekend-long ordeal having demanded our full energy just to see the match to completion at all.

It was the first time I had watched City lose a game. And yet on some level, I’d never felt so victorious in my life.

Filed Under: 2017 Season, Perspectives

Detroit City FC vs FC Indiana Supporter Experience

July 13, 2017 by Nick Miko Leave a Comment

Better late than never here is the Detroit City FC vs FC Indiana Match day experience.

Bonus: here’s the partial video I made while we were away at Indiana https://youtu.be/UIDRUAK7G9g

Filed Under: 2017 Season, Videos

Life On The Joy-Spot: DCFC-AFCAA ppd; Lansing United 1, Detroit City 2

July 10, 2017 by Sean Spence Leave a Comment

It’s been a hell of a weekend, but in the exactly opposite way I’d usually say “a hell of a weekend.”

I’m not saying anyone should live like I’ve lived. But in my life, “a hell of a weekend” could involve lost keys, or sleeping somewhere weird, or a call to bail out a friend, or a daughter’s boyfriend drama, or something more deeply strange … but generally, a voyage deep into the weird is not overboard with positivity, the world being the heavily-shadowed, fallen vale it is. But this weekend was both a hell of a weekend, and something truly beautiful: Our hopes, distilled, given and so given back to us; their good measure pressed down, shaken together, and running over.

In the last 48 hours the Northern Guard have danced and sang, sang and shouted, and all around us was love. We’ve partied through the deluge – our love unrequited – then, scarred but smarter, summoned all our bone thugs and whatever harmonies they offered to come good, finally, in our Waterloo, Lansing. After a stumbling, harrowing start, this edition of the Rogue & Gold are now just a result away from winning the conference outright, raising the possibility that, instead of scouring the internet for streams to watch the playoffs, we could be hosting them.

It’s important to remember, from the euphoric (albeit tenuous) perch on which we now find ourselves, where this club was less than two months ago. City had opened the NPSL season like the first act of a horror movie: Two draws against lesser clubs and a road loss to Ann Arbor had every warning klaxon sounding and every warning beacon flaring – we were in trouble, isolated, wounded, pursued by a feeling that we’d already blown it before we even knew everyone’s name.

And yet here we are, back where we thought we should be from the start, after all this sturm und drang. Nine is a row and counting, an incandescent conga-line of Victory dancing right up the mountainside, and the peak now in sight. It’s important to remember where we were before we were here, because we’ll be there again. Someday. Not today, though.

Transcendence

The world contracts in a downpour

One of the persistent criticisms of the Guard is that we’re not sufficiently wired into the game, that we’re some kind of sideshow wholly independent of the soccer on offer. And, frankly, there’s times where I can see that criticism landing, usually through the happenstance of a really involving chant crossing over a smoke-shrouded something happening on the field.

Then came Friday night, with its dearth of actual soccer, to serve as that criticism’s ultimate refutation: For 90 minutes after the lightning, Northern Guard stood and sang, chanted and danced in an effort to get the boys back on the field in a mood to dominate – and within minutes of the announced postponement, the songs were over, the stands emptying, even though the rain had slackened.

Without the ceremony of gametime at its center, we’re raising a cone of emotional energy to do … what, now? Thankfully we had Alex Wright and his new fiancee (now wife!) to focus our delight upon, but the rest of the monsoon was devoted to the unspoken business of letting the boys know that, like us freaks in the stands, they needed to keep their game-faces on as long as there was any chance of handing Ann Arbor ass-whipping.

It was a remarkable demonstration of group will. The ferocity of the heavier waves of the downpour was astonishing, our songs accompanied by both the static crackle of water-on-water and the basso thrumming of millions of large droplets of water slamming into thousands of human beings. The world contracts to the people one can see, the rest greyed out like they’re being rendered on an outdated video card. We sang on; the drums kept pounding, but the capos became disembodied voices when the rain hit hardest. Every flicker of lightning brought low groans into the music.

Time swiveled and shifted. We’d been here forever and always would be. We’ve been here five seconds and already feel at home. Everyone’s always welcome because everyone’s already here, one becomes by simply showing up and everyone eventually shows up, so everyone becomes us eventually. No one likes us, except us, which means everyone. We hate everyone else, who is no one else, because everyone becomes us eventually.

Part of the price one pays for that bit of transcendence is ‘difficult sight-lines,’ which translates into singing while squinting through smoke and a thicket of hand-made flags to try to see the actual football. So, no, we don’t always see the big goal, or the hard foul, or what have you. And that means that sometimes we’re caught reacting to things a little slowly – but it’s not because we’re not paying attention. It’s that we understand we have a responsibility above and beyond simply observing the football – we’re the chorus of fallen souls, reminding the living players to press on, press on for City, whatever the score, whatever the weather, whatever whenever forever. And because of that, we simply had to do what we did Friday night.

Filed Under: 2017 Season, Previews & Recaps Tagged With: Spence on City

Detroit City FC vs Columbus Crew College Program Supporter Experience

June 8, 2017 by Nick Miko Leave a Comment

This is the Detroit City FC vs Columbus Crew College Program Match day experience

Filed Under: 2017 Season, Previews & Recaps, Videos Tagged With: miko.city

Detroit City FC vs Grand Rapids FC Supporter Experience

June 6, 2017 by Nick Miko Leave a Comment

This is the Detroit City FC vs Grand Rapids FC Match day experience from Keyworth Stadium.

Filed Under: 2017 Season, Previews & Recaps, Videos Tagged With: miko.city

Detroit City FC vs Milwaukee Torrent in 360

June 6, 2017 by Nick Miko Leave a Comment

I’m so excited to post this. It crashed about 4 times on my computer while editing it and took about 10 hours for each render.

You can watch this on your phone in the YouTube app and use your finger to scroll around. This also works in Chrome on your computer. But the best way to watch this is in VR. If you have an iPhone like me Google Cardboard is your best option.

Here’s some cheap Google Cardboard viewers on Amazon

Filed Under: 2017 Season, Previews & Recaps, Videos Tagged With: miko.city

So Quick Bright Things Come To Confusion: DCFC 3-1 GRFC, Indiana FC 1-3 DCFC

June 6, 2017 by Sean Spence Leave a Comment

So quick bright things come to confusion.  – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I, Scene 1

Photo by Tony Long (@tony_long17), all rights reserved

Friday: Detroit City 3 (Dargent 30, Lawson 78, Otim 82), Grand Rapids FC 1 (Timmer 28)

Sunday: Indiana FC 1 (Ahmed-Shaibu 9), Detroit City FC 3 (Lawson 7, Goodman 49, own goal 63)


The Northern Guard Supporters and Detroit City Football Club have developed a delicate symbiosis with each other: NGS bring passion and spectacle, our creativity and rage channelled into something invisible yet palpable, a rare alchemy in a mundane world. The Club exists in that mundane space, enacting the contests and bottling that alchemical product for sale worldwide; like all rare things, its value climbs as word of it spreads. The weekend was a potent reminder of both the power of this symbiosis and of its tenuous nature.

Friday saw more (many more) than five thousand folks turn out for an American semi-professional team mired near the bottom of the table, saw the thousands-strong supporters group again create a cauldron of cheerful smoky menace. But if all that is familiar – and it is, incredibly; it is very familiar indeed – then so, increasingly, is the kind of thing that happened on Sunday. And it’s Sunday’s events that should remind us to cherish, and zealously guard, the incredible symbiosis of passion and freedom we enjoy.

In summary: The game down in HoosierTown was played in a very small facility, one obviously not used to travelling support (or, really, any support at all). As NGS began working its way through its song list, apparently the guy who owns the place and possibly the team became very agitated about profanity, eventually issuing an ultimatum that the next bit of profanity would result in removal of all of NGS. Threatened by the naughty words of fellow adults, he threatened to call the police. Someone called a member of NGS a ‘jagoff’ over the PA system, if that gives you some idea. It was a mess.

This, increasingly, is what away days are like for the Rouge Rovers – we are presented with an ever-growing list of ‘don’ts,’ a list that usually ends with the magical phrase ‘terms subject to change without notice.’ This is the thing to understand about our fallen world: When something says ‘subject to change,’ it sure don’t mean by you or by us. It means by They, by Them. By the Owners. And the changes they make almost always make the alchemy more difficult, if not entirely impossible.

They’ll say “Hey we’re all for channeled tribal passion but maybe with clean, non-tribal-passion language hehhhhhh?” like that makes sense, and you swoon a bit because you don’t want to explain the complex historical and cultural reasoning behind the swearing and the deaths-head get-ups and everything else that outsiders demand justification for, since this cornfield Mussolini is just going to go, “Ayuh, and there’s children here, too” and then your head will explode rather than argue any longer with a guy who doesn’t really give even half a fuck about what you’re saying, because he’s the Owner, goddamit; he told you to do something and that means you do it.

That’s where it gets tricky, because Do we? Do we really? All of this happens in about 15 seconds of real time, generally – some dude we’ve been mocking suddenly stands up and declares a bunch of things verboten.. And yeah, fuck that guy, yeaaaaah, but also we have to exist in the world somehow, and all of us have lives outside of transforming into a foul-mouthed columns of smoke. But how do we react? Do we explode in defiance, KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKERS!, and up the ante, daring them to kick us out, singing “DO YOU HEAR THESE ASSHOLES SING? WE DON’T HEAR A FUCKIN’ THING!” in defiance, just light the fuse and watch the whole damned thing burn, fuck you fuck you fuck yooooooouuuuuuuuu … do we?

Next road game, it will be some other proto-fascist’s chance to make up rules ex tempore then threaten to use local muscle to enforce them. They do this, I think, not for any real concern over ‘the children’ above and beyond a general allegiance to a mealy-mouthed ‘unspoken code of conduct,’ but because they perceive Northern Guard’s posture, words and iconography to be exactly what they are: Dominance challenges. And because they confuse our behavior – which is focussed on supporting our guys’ sense of well-being and undermining their foes’ – with a dominance challenge in the real world, we must anticipate a whole spectrum of power displays, outbursts, or demonstrations of privilege. Because whatever we are in NGS, we’re surely not the Owners.

This is a thing we haven’t settled, entirely, I think. Our leadership has done an incredible job of defusing even the most ham-handed security buffoons and preventing drunk, committed supporters from following their ids into some kind of Green Street Hooligan fantasy. But in a situation like Sunday in Indiana – where an owner who issued no tickets could point to no listing of rules being broken, and yet NGS modified chants and dropped amplification to get along – the halftime performance of the Hokey-Pokey and a quick game of Duck-Duck-Goose were the perfect antidote. We’ll go along to get along, NGS said, but you don’t own even the tiniest bit of us. I love the MC5, too, but Bugs Bunny was a better anarchist.

The actual football

Tweaks, not revolutions: The crazy thing about the entirely more-successful soccer on offer this weekend is how little changed it was from the previous approach – the pressing was still there, the quick transitions, the high line – just all moderated slightly, every edgy choice pulled slightly back toward the center. As a consequence, there were fewer stretches of dominance for Le Rouge, fewer periods during which the ball stayed pinned deep against the opponent’s goal. But the happy effects vastly outweighed the sad; the deeper positioning of the team overall meant the team’s cadre of very pacy attackers had more space behind to exploit, while the defense seemed to relax and play more expansively when not tasked with holding a terrifyingly high line.

There’s a great moment in Bull Durham where Kevin Costner’s wily old catcher tells Tim Robbins’ clueless wunderkind pitcher, “Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls – it’s more democratic.” I feel like Ben Pirmann finally stopped asking Detroit City to strike everybody out this weekend, and the democratic approach worked like a charm. More like this, please.

The attackers: I see that my man Andrew has anointed Shawn Lawson, and I’d like to just add my voice to those chanting prayers over Lawson as the oil soaks into his … game? I’m not sure how far I’m willing to go with this metaphor. Here’s what I see with Lawson: He’s a real striker, a guy who’s got a few tricks and whose every movement is trying to get at goal. He’s not combining for combining’s sake if there’s a shot to be had.

Combine Lawson’s quickness with the outside duo of Tyrone Mondi and Derrick Otim – each of whom has the speed to get behind and the skill to make a play once they’re back there – and this is an intimidating attack to play against. Expect to see anyone who’s scouted City to play deep and narrow and hope to bang one in on set pieces.

Plus ça change: Encouraging to see the more-vigorous rotation over the weekend result in quality minutes for a lot of guys. Louis Dargent showed he’s a real option in the back line, and the midfield didn’t immediately turn into a sinkhole filled with broken dreams in the absence of Dave Edwardson, which surprised this reporter just a smidge.

Filed Under: 2017 Season, Previews & Recaps Tagged With: Spence on City

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Detroit City FC vs Chattanooga FC Away Supporter Experience

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