Matt Welch lives about half a block from the Midtown Tavern, the familiar and friendly Harrisburg staple on the 1100 block of N. 2nd Street.

If you’re like Welch and live nearby, you know it as a comfortable place, just far enough from the center of town not to be too crazy, ensconced enough in a residential district to be a true neighborhood bar. Welch considers it his.

But he has a lot of new company lately. He began noticing a few months ago:

“I get off work one day at 4 and I thought: Ah, I’ll go pick up a beer. And there’s like all these people here who are normally not. I was like: What in hell’s going on?

"It was Tottenham Hotspur.”

As in local fans of the English Premier League soccer club. They were a friendly crew. Enthusiastic about watching their team’s matches. And that team was having a hell of a season.

One of those fans was Tim Smith. At 34, married but with no kids, he has become smitten as many Americans have in just the past several years with soccer. He first became intrigued by the World Cup:

“I still love football. I still love basketball. I still watch hockey. But it’s just a different sport to get into.

“It’s great because there are no commercial breaks. It’s 2 to 2 ½ hours on Saturday and Sunday mornings when, what else are you watching?

“I began to think: I really like this sport. It’s so enjoyable to watch.”

He liked it so much that he adopted a team – Tottenham Hotspur from the Northern edge of London. Not a club with an overabundance of haughty heritage like Manchester United or Arsenal or a nouveau-riche one like Manchester City, but a team with a modest tradition, yet on the come.

And like many American fans who do yearn for the camaraderie of a local team but insist on an elite-level representation of the sport above the often pedestrian U.S. brand of Major League Soccer, Smith chose to follow a league a continent away. It’s not just any soccer, rather the best in the world.

The English Premier League proved it is without question worthy of its name on Saturday when both final participants in the Europe-wide Champions League came from its 20-team circuit. And one of those was, for the first time ever, Smith’s chosen favorite – Tottenham Hotspur.

All of which brought Smith and Welch together on Saturday afternoon at the Midtown in what not many years ago would have been a most unlikely circumstance. Here were more than 100 American soccer fans basically taking over a meat-and-potatoes American neighborhood tavern to watch a soccer match being held an ocean away in Madrid between two teams based in Great Britain.

Everyone seemed pretty happy about it. Welch is getting a kick out of his new company. Smith, president of Harrisburg Spurs Supporters’ Club (@HarrisburgSpurs), has found a new home for his growing throng of brothers. And the Midtown can’t be complaining about packed houses on what normally would be some pretty lazy hours in the slow months of spring.

Smith organized a Spurs fans march uptown at 2 p.m. to the Midtown, culminating with the Champions League final kickoff at 3.

Even Smith has been overwhelmed with the response to his Spurs Supporters Club tweets and Facebook posts during the past several months as Hotspur made an unlikely run into the final.

“We had no idea. We thought it was gonna be me, a friend and maybe a couple buddies of ours. And now, we’ve got over 100 people here. I’m not kidding. Somebody’s counted for me.”

Alas, the fairytale ended for Spurs on Saturday. A dicey handball call in the opening minute delivered a controversial penalty kick to Liverpool that was converted to a goal that slanted the game. The Reds bunkered in somewhat and Tottenham never could quite capitalize on the few legit chances they had, two good ones in the 80th minute. A final clinching Liverpool goal ended it, 2-0.

Spurs fans took over the Midtown Tavern on Saturday afternoon, though they weren't too happy here, moments after a scoring chance went awry.

Still, the takeaway from the afternoon was expressed by a typical American Premier League fan – Harrisburg-native public relations guru, podcast host and nouveau Spurs fanatic David LaTorre:

“Not long ago, you ask anyone in Harrisburg what Tottenham Hotspur is, they’ll ask, ‘What sort of affliction is that?’ Meanwhile, there’s a bar full of 100 people in Midtown Harrisburg for the Champions League final. That shows you what kind of effect and impact the Premier League is starting to have in the United States.”

Actually, an “affliction” might be a pretty good term for it. Smith and Welch, a total convert and a sort of bemused but charmed observer, provided a pretty clear window into the phenomenon on Saturday at the Midtown. Both were present and enjoying themselves in a far corner of the bar, jammed just like every other inch of it.

And both are about as typically Harrisburg as you can get.

Smith grew up in Susquehanna Twp. And went to Bishop McDevitt High. He lives in Midtown, a couple of blocks from the bar. The club needed a new place to go because their original choice, MoMo’s Barbecue on Market St., had just closed.

The intimate McGrath’s Pub in the city housed backers of Hotspur’s archrival Arsenal, the Central Penn Gooners. Smith was hoping for such a place for Spurs fans to call their own:

“One of the bartenders is a neighbor of mine. I cornered her one night back in August and said, ‘Hey, would you open for us early during the season?’ She agreed to do it.”

Midtown regular Matt Welch (left) and Spurs fan David LaTorre (second from left) watch second-half action in the Champions League final.

The Premier League commonly offers a Saturday tripleheader on the NBC-owned stations: the first game kicks at 7:30 a.m. – too early for the Midtown. But if Spurs played in the second game at 10 a.m., the Midtown agreed to open up early. And they were already open for any later matches in the afternoon.

“Usually we get 20 or 25,” said Smith. “But today, we got 100. It’s been a great experience.”

Can he believe it?

“No. I really thought when we started this, it would just be me and my buddies coming here getting drunk on a Saturday morning.

“But once we started advertising it a little, people kept coming and kept coming and kept coming. It was very natural. It just felt organic that it grew as the year went on.”

Welch began deciphering something was going on with his bar around February or March:

“Most of the time the games are on, it had usually been pretty quiet in here.

“A lot of people that I see come in here for these games are people I see other times, too. There’s a lot I don’t see, but a number that I have.”

All of this began in earnest when NBC took over American television’s Premier League contract from Disney in 2013 and then inked an astounding billion-dollar, 6-season deal in 2015. The key was how extensive the coverage suddenly became. Instead of getting one match per week on ESPN, NBC and its family of stations made every Premier League game available.

That allowed United States fans to become totally familiar with a chosen team. From that came the ability for fans to bond as communities as they might with a local team – only thousands of miles away in the brotherhood of fan clubs, often built around pubs. Suddenly, you saw real allegiances with Premier League teams spring up in cities across America.

“It was huge,” said Smith. “Because you could watch any team all year in the States. When ESPN had it, you never knew what team would be on. When NBC got it, you could pick a team and know you could watch all their matches – either on TV or livestream.”

NBC Sports also has a British star on its hands in personable former BBC presenter Rebecca Lowe, its host for the American telecasts. It has been marketing her heavily in its fan festivals during the EPL season in New York and Boston that have drawn massive crowds.

Dave LaTorre found at least a few moments to smile during a frustrating afternoon for his Spurs.

The Champions League matches (telecast in America on TNT and streamed by Bleacher Report) involve only the top 4 finishers of the previous Premier League season, playing against top teams from other leagues all over Europe. They are interspersed during regular August-to-May Premier League season, but are commonly on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 3 p.m. So, fans must leave work early.

Still, Smith said, 15-20 Spurs fans made whatever arrangements were necessary and showed up at The Midtown even for those matches.

Welch said he’s not witnessed the reactions for Tottenham goals during his previous spectator sport experience. He told Smith as much about the May 9 match that got Spurs into the final in the first place. That was a crazy comeback from a 2-0 intermission deficit to beat Ajax in the 95th minute on essentially the last kick:

“As a sports fan my entire life – hockey, baseball, football, basketball – I’ve never lost my s--t the same way that you guys do. That last game in particular where you scored that goal in the last minute? The whole place went kablooey.”

Now for a 3-month Premier League siesta, though the Women’s World Cup will keep the soccer pot bubbling. Come mid-August when Tottenham Hotspur cranks up again, the Midtown will resume its place as the affliction’s epicenter.