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 who 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 plays a couple miles down the road for us, and it’s fighting for its place among Pittsburgh sports.”
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. … People have their priorities, so it’s tough to get people [together].”
Dalfonso's group has approximately 400 dues-paying members, but the well-documented struggles of the U.S. in the qualifying rounds have led to mere handfuls of supporters at the chapter’s most recent events.
“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 in the place. It was packed and everyone was engaged. But again, for a game … against somebody nobody really cares about, it’s tough.”
But for many members of the city’s soccer community, the usual spots will be as alive as ever. 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 those in 2014, when Brazil hosted the World Cup, leading to “more lively lunches” instead of displaced dinner crowds.
As far as who those crowds will be supporting, Topping said he has received questions from “every fan base you can imagine” about watching the games at his pub.
“You never know; my fan bases for every single World Cup have been very different, but it’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 people that are getting into the game for 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. He also expects many American fans in the city to “latch on” to another team.
“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.”
But even without the home team playing over the next month, optimism exists that the World Cup can still 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 World Cup],” 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 Final going on, so we want to show them kind of what the Outlaws are about.”
And whether it is a single U.S. fan still looking for a team to latch on to or a large group who has patiently waited four years, Piper’s Pub will be ready.
“You get a lot of people that will support teams based on players that play on the teams they support in leagues regularly every year,” Topping said. “ … But again, it doesn’t matter if it’s one or 100 [fans] because it’s sort of what we do.
Benjamin Padanilam: bpadanilim@post-gazette.com, Twitter: @BenPadanilim
First Published: June 13, 2018, 1:00 p.m.