Portland Hearts of Pine's jerseys went global, but their debut season on the pitch has proved they're far more than just a cool kit
The drive to Portland is long and dark for Mitchell Ketchen. It takes about an hour, all in, cutting through winding roads and sharp corners. His house is 20 minutes from the nearest shopping center, relatively cut off from the world. He lives in a place where generation after generation have stayed, a town built on basketball, football and baseball.
There isn’t much soccer to be found.
But get behind the wheel, and within 60 minutes, he approaches what has become a mecca of American soccer. And it isn’t even a field. Fitzpatrick Stadium is a public turf, used primarily for Portland High School. You’ve seen it thousands of times – American football goalposts at either end, a track around the edge, bleachers on either side. It could be transplanted in pretty much any town in the U.S.
And in Portland, Maine, it is the hub of a movement, a 6,000-seat fortress of sorts that has housed numerous attendance records in USL League One. This is the home of Portland Hearts of Pine, the trendy hipster brand that turned out to be rather good at this sport.
But more importantly, it is a club that embraced a community – and which rallied around them in return. Hearts of Pine are cool. But they’re also a model of what USL League One football can – and perhaps should – be, a team that not only understands the people it caters to, but also achieves success in the process.
“We've built this beacon of what grassroots football can look like in the States,” Club Founder Gabe Hoffman-Johnson said. “These are all the things we set out to do.”
Bill TrevaskisMore than just cool jerseys
It was the kits that first went viral. Portland nailed them. The Internet said so in its millions of clicks and engagements.
The goal was a mixture of expression and authenticity, Hoffman-Johnson told GOAL last year. The soccer hipsters loved the long-sleeves and the hoops. The Mainers loved the ruggedness.
Throw in a campaign that was distinctly not all that about soccer – a lasting image was a man with a chainsaw, cutting down a tree with a battered undershirt, punctuating with the kit – and they found a crossover that few in mainstream soccer could replicate.
That was only part of the journey, Hoffman-Johnson says.
“The jerseys have gone to every state,” he said. “They’ve gone to 40 countries. But I think there's a love of the way that we celebrate the community, the way that we uplift the community. We do the right things for the right reasons.”
AdvertisementIMAGN'A hard nosed brand of football'
More broadly, the challenge was to develop a product that fans could get behind. There’s no point in having a cool brand if the fanbase can’t enjoy the soccer. Portland doesn’t have an NFL, NBA, MLB or NHL team. But it does have a strong sporting culture, and deep ties to the beautiful game. The fans here expect success.
But many in the world of prediction-making didn’t believe. In the eyes of some, Portland were little beyond a cool badge and striking jerseys. The soccer was a bonus, and it wasn’t necessarily going to be very good.
Ketchen, co-chair of the Hearts of Pine supporters’ group Dirigo Union, rejected that notion from day one.
“Somebody says they're going to come in and they're going to look for good people, they're going to play a very hard-nosed brand of football that reflects the community that they're representing. I'm going to believe that,” he told GOAL.
They were right, of course. Portland won their first playoff game over the weekend. They will face a win-or-go-home conference semifinal against Spokane Velocity – a team they battered 6-1 two weeks ago.
IMAGN'A very strong core'
Portland were assertive in their squad early on. It started with the coaching hire. Those outside of the USL sphere may not know much about Bobby Murphy. There are, of course, hundreds of coaches who have practiced their craft in all three divisions.
But Murphy made sense for a number of reasons. The first was his MLS experience – he worked at Orlando City from 2016-18, twice serving as interim manager. But perhaps more important were the six years in between. He coached at three separate levels, most recently at St. Louis City 2 of MLS Next Pro, building a new side and carrying them to the 2024 Western Conference finals.
Murphy, then, was a serious hire.
“You have this insane coaching staff,” Ketchen said. “You have Bobby Murphy, who has almost three decades of professional coaching experience across every level in America.”
Alongside him, they brought in Alex Ryan, a reliable USL League Two vet, and Yuta Nomura, an experienced goalkeeping coach. Ketchen was impressed.
“That is a very strong core, and it's a core that understands how to develop talent, how to work with young talent, and mold young professionals,” he said.
The squad didn't look bad either. Nathan Messer, formerly of Rhode Island FC, was a shrewd signing at fullback. Ollie Wright was a USL vet who could create and score from midfield. Jay Tee Kamara spent time in the Swedish league and brought experience. Joint top-scorer Masashi Wada played for a decade in Japanese football before being coaxed to the U.S..
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Bill Trevaskis'It goes beyond soccer'
Perhaps more important than all of that were the deep ties that the club worked within the community. Hoffman-Johnson’s journey started with the 2022 World Cup, when he saw the potential that Portland had as a soccer city during a watch party for the England-USA game. It was a miserable contest, but thousands turned out in the rain to see a scoreless draw. That was passion. And his team could tap into it.
Ketchen and co were sold early. They founded their supporters’ group before the club even debuted. They were there in bars and pubs when USL soccer was merely a rumor. Ketchen is a lifelong fan and a stout Liverpool supporter. He used to wake up at 5 a.m. and drive down south to a bar to watch the Reds play on Saturday mornings.
There, he met Hoffman-Johnson. And they just talked about soccer. Ketchen had a podcast at the time. Hoffman-Johnson suggested that if this whole Portland thing worked out, they could perhaps help promote the team.
“It was like, ‘Hey, the supporter group needs some help. And you guys know ball and you're excited about this, so you know, just go talk with them, see what you can do,’” Ketchen said.
That was two years ago. The badge was released a year later, along with some merch. Last month, they added their 850th paying member.
“It's humbling,” he said. “I'm a lifelong Mainer. It goes beyond soccer. We're very sports crazy up here, we're very competitive. We love to talk sh*t. We'll follow our teams off a cliff.”