Liverpool FC fans gathered at the London Bridge Pub to watch the Champions League Final match on May 26.
Casey Peterson's job was to sing.
We've conquered all of Europe. We're never going to stop.
The Cary native looked around at the seventy others singing alongside him, maneuvering down Hargett Street in Raleigh past Saturday-morning shoppers and families who probably wouldn't like the next lyric.
From Paris down to Turkey, we've won the fucking lot.
A pair of high-school girls wearing long wigs and brightly colored costumes studied the red shirts Peterson and his fellow marchers wore. Some were adorned with white text that said "STANDARD CHARTERED" or "CARLSBERG." All featured an image of a tall, slender bird just over the wearer's heart. The girls looked at each other and smirked before heading to the anime convention up the streetsomewhere a little less weird, perhaps.
Bob Paisley and Bill Shankly. The fields of Anfield Road.
A vaguely British accent called out to a man in a crimson Lexus trapped at an intersection: "We love the Reds!"
We are the supporters, and we come from Liverpool.
Peterson was lucky. He'd been to Liverpool three times, which was probably three more times than most of the people he was marching with.
Allez, allez, allez! Allez, allez, allez.
The parade ground to a halt upon reaching the London Bridge Pub, the wide swath of marchers becoming a narrow stream that slipped through the door into the dimly lit bar. Marchers took shelter within the familiar walls adorned by framed pictures of the Queen, a tapestry of scarves with words like "UP THE REDS," and a sign for the "Christopher Walken Fridge." A native Londoner noted that the bar looked just like something she'd see back home.
It was May 26, and there were still two hours until kickoff for Liverpool Football Club's Champions League Final match against Real Madrid. The broadcast from Kiev hadn't even begun. Peterson knew that pints of Guinness and mindless chatter couldn't hold off nerves forever.
Time to sing.
If the Triangle's North Carolina Football Club is ever to compete at the highest level of American soccersomething it unabashedly sees as its destinyit will need fans like Casey Peterson and his obnoxious cohort of Saturday-morning revelers, Liverpool Football Club Raleigh.
Major League Soccer judges potential new franchises on three criteria: a committed local owner, a comprehensive stadium plan, and a history of strong fan support.
North Carolina FC has the first one locked down. Since purchasing the team in 2015, owner Steve Malik has shown his willingness to spend money to promote local soccer. He inked a deal with Capital Broadcasting Company to televise the team's matches, acquired first-rate talent, and relocated a top-level women's team to the area, now called North Carolina Courage. A year after taking over, Malik dropped the Carolina RailHawks moniker, redubbed the team North Carolina FC, and announced his plans to pursue an MLS franchise. He gave himself an eighteen-month window to make it happen.
Less than two weeks later, the league announced its intention to expand from twenty-three to twenty-eight teams within a few years. The ascension seemed fated.
To satisfy the second criterion, on July 19, Malik unveiled plans for a state-of-the-art $150 million mixed-use stadium in downtown Raleigh, designed by developer John Kane. It would be self-funded, Malik promised, though the planned location was on state-owned landwhich, importantly, means the stadium will need the legislature's approval.
That same day, North Carolina FC held a large rally in City Market, a demonstration of the city's support for the franchise for MLS president Mark Abbott, who was in town as part of a tour of prospective franchise homes.
Malik was going to make it happen, if only by sheer force of will.
Except it hasn't happened. On May 29, his self-imposed deadline passed. No MLSnot yet.
The league awarded the twenty-fourth franchise to Nashville five days after unveiling its expansion timeline. A Miami team, pitched by the legendary David Beckham, was announced a month later. And then, last week, MLS awarded another slot to Cincinnati.
That leaves two spots left for ten ownership groups with league-expressed interest.
Malik says he's not worried. The club has accomplished every goal he'd laid out for the MLS bid, including forming a massive youth soccer program, which he considers a personal highlight. In any event, he adds, MLS is running behind its expansion schedule, too.
"I'm happy with where we are," Malik says. "MLS has strung out this process, which has given us an opportunity to get our ducks in a row."
Ryan Jernigan isn't ready to hit the panic button either. Jernigan, who founded the fan group Oak City Supporters in 2014, always thought North Carolina FC was aiming for one of the final two MLS slots. To his mind, the biggest obstacle is the General Assembly, which so far hasn't seemed inclined to work with the team on the stadium site.
"I think we have as good a shot as anybody if we can just have an agreed-upon plan with the land," he says. "Getting us the land is what makes me nervous."
But perhaps to convince lawmakers to get them the land, the team will first have to convince them that there's a real demand for professional soccer in the Trianglethat, one day, North Carolina FC will inspire the same devotion that Liverpool does, the same indelible sense of connection and family.
"The passion's there," says Jernigan, who was inside London Bridge that muggy May morning cheering on Liverpool. "It's just showing people what you want to happen. You've got to show up to games, you've got to show this community that it's there."
Real Madrid, with its roster full of star players called "Galácticos," played the part of Goliath well. Behind their Greek god of a forward, Cristiano Ronaldo, they'd won three of the last four Champions League titles and twelve throughout their 116-year history. The Spanish titans carried the swagger that came with being the most successful European club of the twenty-first century.
Colin Russell is a few years too young to have witnessed it, but Liverpool found similar glory during the seventies and eighties with eleven English league titles and four European Cup wins of their own. For him, watching the Reds started not as an obsession but as a way to bond with his English and Irish grandparents while growing up in Boston.
Russell easily met fellow Liverpool supporters in Beantown but had a harder time finding a bar willing to open for 8:00 a.m. weekend matches after moving to Raleigh in 2011. While in Boston for 2012's international preseason match between Liverpool and Roma, he met two Triangle-based Liverpool supporters by chance at a pub near Fenway Park. LFC Raleigh's Facebook page launched days later, and, by the time the English Premier League season began in August, Darren Bridger had agreed to allow his new London Bridge Pub to serve as the group's matchday home. By 2013, LFC Raleigh was an Official Liverpool Supporters' Club with officers, bylaws, and its own section on Liverpool's website.
Like most of LFC Raleigh's 150 paid and 350 unpaid memberspaying for membership grants discounted merchandise and access to match tickets directly from the clubRussell felt confident that Liverpool's blistering attack and high-intensity style gave the former giant a real shot at proving its resurgence against the defending champions. Their "rock 'n' roll football," spearheaded by Premier League scoring leader Mohamed Salah, had already cut through some of the best teams in Europe.
Rock 'n' roll, coincidentally, is what converted LFC Raleigh chairman Ken Kendra into a Reds supporter in the eighties. He'd first heard of the team from an English youth soccer coach, coming to admire star forward Kevin Keegan mainly because of their shared initials. When he heard fans at Liverpool's Anfield stadium singing at the end of Pink Floyd's "Fearless," it brought him a little closer to his dream of hearing thousands of fans sing his name after a goal.
Kendra admitted that the atmosphere at London Bridge was more important to him than a victory over Real Madrid.
"No matter where you are around the world," he said, "you'll always find a family member that supports Liverpool [and] a friendly place and atmosphere you can go watch the match [and] hang out with other Liverpool supporters. We try to facilitate that atmosphere."
By the time the pre-match broadcast started, Kendra had helped facilitate entry into London Bridge for over 250 Liverpool supporters, twenty or so Real Madrid supporters in white shirts huddled in quiet corners, dozens of wives and girlfriends with varying levels of interest, one family using the viewing party as part of a birthday celebration for their son, two twenty-somethings wearing NBA jerseys, and two dogs. (LFC Raleigh's best guess at overall attendance was "more than three hundred." London Bridge's security detail stopped counting at "overcapacity.")
There was nothing elaborate about LFC Raleigh's pre-match routine as they peered through their digital window into Kiev's Olympic Stadium. After English pop singer Dua Lipa's six-minute set, they clapped politely. When Cristiano Ronaldo appeared onscreen, they booed. When his face was replaced by that of Mohamed Salah, they sang a new song: Mo Salah! Mo Salah! Mo Salah! Running down the wing! Salah, lah, lah, lah, lah! Egyptian king!
The singing began again immediately after kickoff. The opening stages saw Liverpool pushing forward quickly and confidently. London Bridge got a little bit louder whenever a forward player got a touch on the ball.
At twenty minutes in, some unseen conductor began a song in Kiev that was picked up by the drunken chorus of London Bridge. Another offensive chance provided an abrupt coda: "Keep hammering, boys!"
The score remained 0–0 through the first half hour.
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American soccer fans are generally less tolerant of diving than those in Europe. Embellishing contact in hopes of drawing a foul is indisputably part of the game, but Americans are quick to criticize a player's exaggerated facial expressions, illogical physics while falling, and, especially, the habit of immediately hopping to one's feet after being awarded a foul.
Mohamed Salah didn't hop to his feet.
He'd been fouled three minutes earlier by Real Madrid captain Sergio Ramos, a player hated less for his skill and more for his "physical" and "aggressive" style of play. Ramos had received a yellow card from the referee and a barrage of profane insults from one especially loud fan in Raleigh.
It was the twenty-ninth minute and Salah was down again. Play stopped as a camera crew brought close-ups of his tear-stricken face.
"It's over," said a voice in Raleigh. "He's done." Salah wept as he was escorted to the locker room.
A final rendition of "Mo Salah! Running down the wing!" provided the last bit of music for fifteen quiet minutes. A Real Madrid goal just before halftime barely elicited a groan before it was disallowed due to an offside penalty. The whistle blew for the break.
A shower that started at some point before halftime meant that the humidity outside London Bridge had finally caught up to the sweat- and booze-saturated air inside. Kendra stepped out of the pub, quickly finding his wife standing on the sidewalk just beyond the door. He told her that he'd been forced to step in when some of his fellow fans had begun hurling verbal abuse toward a young fan in a Sergio Ramos jersey. She told him she was heading down the street to watch the rest of the match somewhere else.
Kendra slipped back into London Bridge before a large man dressed in black started refusing re-entry into the pub. Even if Kendra had been banished to the sidewalk, though, he'd have heard the silence that struck when Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius turned a routine clearance into a disaster, rolling the ball straight to the feet of Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema just in front of goal. The tap-in couldn't have been easier.
Just six minutes into the second half, it was 1–0, Real Madrid.
LFC Raleigh found its voice again five minutes later when Sadio Mané poked a shot past Real Madrid's Keylor Navas for an equalizer. Casey Peterson's first song of the daythe one about the supporters from Liverpoolbegan anew. With Salah gone, Cristiano Ronaldo became the greatest inspiration for noise in London Bridge.
"Break his legs!" someone yelled when Ronaldo received a pass. "Take out his knees!"
Gareth Bale showed London Bridge a new kind of silence seconds later. He positioned himself fifteen yards in front of Liverpool's goal and waited. A teammate lobbed a crossing pass toward the Welshman, who stepped forward and launched himself into the air. His flight was overshadowed in its magnificence only by that of the ball, which volleyed off his left foot into the top corner of the goal.
There were no complaints, no criticisms of the goalkeeper, no angry looks. Just one voice was heard through the abyss: "Are you kidding me?"
Fans argue over whether the low point for the Carolina RailHawks came in 2011, when the team's assets were listed for sale on eBay, or in 2015, when the then-owners were indicted as part of the FIFA corruption scandal. Even ignoring that dubious history, the team's failure to record an average game attendance of more than five thousand in any season from 2007–15 would hardly have blown MLS officials away.
While being strangled by mismanagement, however, the RailHawks showed flashes of brilliance. The club won the North American Soccer League regular season title in 2011. It also made deep runs in the U.S. Open Cup, eliminating MLS powerhouse LA Galaxy in 2012, 2013, and 2014.
Attendance-wise, the club's high-water mark came on July 12, 2016, when the RailHawks hosted the English Premier League's West Ham United for a preseason exhibition match. While the capacity crowd included East London natives from around the U.S., the majority of the 10,125 fans at Cary's WakeMed Stadium were Triangle residents.
So far in the 2018 season, which began in March, North Carolina FC's average home attendance has been just 3,714 per game, continuing a downward trend that might not bode well for the team's MLS standing. After all, a lingering question is whether Raleigh can support a professional sports franchise, considering that its only other one, the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes, has one of the worst attendance records in pro sports.
By comparison, FC Cincinnati, which just won an MLS franchise, averaged 24,416 fans through the first five games of the 2018 United Soccer League season. Sacramento Republic FC, with whom North Carolina is competing for one of the remaining bids, claims to have sold out its 11,569-seat stadium every home game this season.
Along with Detroit and perhaps Phoenix, Sacramento is considered a frontrunner for the two remaining spots.
Jernigan, of the Oak City Supporters, says the low attendance is a product of bad lucka run of games scheduled during the middle of the week, on holidays, or on days with bad weather. The team is also playing with a revamped roster of players who "haven't clicked yet" thanks to the team's move from the NASL to the USL this season.
"If we're saying attendance is down by the end of July, that would be concerning to me," he says.
Malik says his team's fans are making themselves noticed. He mentions that, at Saturday's match at WakeMed Stadiumattended by 4,039 peoplea rowdy group so irriated FC Cincinnati forward Emmanuel Ledesma that he received a yellow card after complaining to officials.
"That was awesome," Malik says. "They yelled at him so much that it caused a delay of game, and now he has to sit out his next game."
The fans in London Bridge became a little less loud and a little more hunched over during Liverpool attacks. The fantastic sense of adventure that Sadio Mané and his offensive teammates had brought was gone, replaced by an ever-growing awareness of the ticking clock.
"Come on, Redmen!" said one voice.
"It's not over yet," said another.
In the eighty-fourth minute, Gareth Bale fired a hopelessly optimistic shot toward Liverpool's goal from thirty yards out. Loris Karius positioned himself well to make a simple stop, his outstretched hands easily making contact with the ball. The ball then bounced off his gloves and resumed its path toward the back of the net.
Three-to-one, Real Madrid.
Someone muttered that he'd seen better goalkeeping in youth matches he'd refereed in Raleigh. The match commentators asked the obvious question: Could Liverpool pull off a miracle? "It's happened before," came the obvious answer.
Bale made an unsuccessful attempt at a hat trick. Viewers at London Bridge began stacking up their cups of beer. Ronaldo lost the ball in Liverpool's defensive zone. A woman in a red shirt turned around to talk to her friend. Outside the pub, a man in red decided for his friend that a 3–1 defeat wasn't worth coming to blows with a man in white. A half-hearted cheer rose for one final attack.
London Bridge's audio feed abruptly cut off immediately after the final whistle, sparing those inside from hearing about Gareth Bale's immediate impact, Real Madrid's three-peat, or what might have been had Mo Salah been able to run down the wing for more than thirty minutes of the match. LFC Raleigh fell quiet once again.
When you walk ...
The first words of the afternoon's last song came courtesy of a 1963 recording made by Gerry and the Pacemakers, a Liverpool rock band whose domination of the music scene there seems quaint when compared to that of another local band that touched down in the United States a year later.
... through a storm ...
Peterson, Kendra, Russell, and the two hundred others still crammed into the pub sang the rest of the song that had played at every Liverpool home match since the 1960s.
... hold your head up high ...
Those who had scarves held them high in the air. Those who didn't put their arms around whoever happened to be standing nearby. Real Madrid fans shuffled out, quieting their jubilation so as not to disturb the chorus's grand finale.
The song drew to a close. Those inside London Bridge allowed themselves one last hug, one last drink, one last glance at the final score. Then they began the long, silent walk home.
Photos by Caitlin Penna
LFC Raleigh members Ken Kendra, Casey Peterson, and Colin Russell
