Not a soccer person? Not even a sports person? You should read Abe Asher’s dispatch from last night’s Timbers game and its 33-minute protest against Major League Soccer’s ban on the Iron Front anyway. I’m not a big reader of sports reporting, either, but this sort of coverage of not just sports but context, to my understanding, is how the best of it is done.
The fact that the Timbers Army could successfully execute this particular kind of protest, on short notice, was a show of force in its own right—a tribute not just to the organization’s leadership, but to the bar the Army has set for atmosphere and pageantry over the last nine years in MLS and in the USL before that.
Also worth noting, if not necessarily reading, that just as the ESPN broadcast did its best to discuss the matter, at least during those first thirty-three minutes, it’s covered on the website, too. Unsurprisingly, they could do a better job regarding antifa, but the fact that antfascist action is being discussed in national outlets at all without any real sneering or dismissiveness is a success in itself.