Inside an unmarked warehouse in Portland, Ore., a ringleader forbade 30 diehard soccer fans from sharing details of their community art project. She was serious, then bombastic.

“Don’t post photos on social media! You will be shot!” said purple-haired Steph Nova, a giggle playfully punctuating her points.

Nova is a member of the Timbers Army, a supporters group for the Portland Timbers of Major League Soccer. On a Sunday morning in February, before the Timbers’ preseason match against Minnesota United FC, army members gathered in a dark, pigeon-filled space to paint tifo in commemoration of the Timbers’ first MLS Cup win in December. Related Articles Minnesota United acquires striker Kei Kamara in trade with Colorado

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For those unfamiliar with the unique aspects of soccer culture, supporter groups are vibrant fan clubs somewhat akin to student sections at college football games. They create tifo — anything from personalized flags to collective banners expressing love for their club.

Supporters will set off smoke bombs, bellow songs and chants throughout the match, hold up enormous tifo and taunt the opposing team. But they also organize community outreach initiatives through elected members sitting on boards of directors.

As United prepares to join MLS as soon as 2017, its supporters culture is germinating in the second-tier North American Soccer League. United’s few growing supporters groups will bring different songs and tifo to Saturday’s home opener against the Fort Lauderdale Strikers at the National Sports Center in Blaine.

“It’s a really good group of fans,” said United striker Christian Ramirez. “They are loud, and you can see how they’re growing, not only the Dark Clouds, but TNE (True North Elite). So, it’s good to see that there is an environment for everyone at our games. I don’t think you can say that for a bunch of other stadiums.”

United played in one of those revved-up stadiums, Portland’s Providence Park, on Feb. 21. While the Timbers Army was still warming up their vocal chords and letting the paint dry on the tifo, they made things tough on the Loons in the Timbers’ 4-0 victory.

Through Wednesday, the Timbers have sold out 88 consecutive matches, which is every MLS contest since joining the league in 2011. Providence Park has a capacity of 21,144, and the season-ticket waiting list stands at more than 12,000.

ESPN showcased the Timbers Army’s tifo, with the theme “You Always Remember Your First,” before the team’s MLS Cup rematch with the Columbus Crew in early March. Given the public unveiling, the art project’s details are no longer under wraps.

OK WITH ‘CRAZY’

Mike Coleman is vice president of the Timbers Army board and co-chair of the game-day operations committee. (Yes, there is such a thing.) During construction, he estimated the Army would spend about 600 man hours creating the huge canvases that would be displayed for about a minute.

The Timbers Army did 10 tifos of varying sizes last season — six of them in eight weeks during the playoff push. “Myself and other people were literally in this warehouse pretty much every night for the entire playoff run, creating tifo,” Coleman said.

Many new Army supporters willingly hopped on the bandwagon after the MLS Cup victory. Within about 15 minutes of posting the volunteer opportunity online, Coleman said 30 members jumped at the chance to give up their Sunday mornings to paint.

“I’m comfortable with the fact that people probably think we’re crazy,” Nova said. “Every tifo is a memory of each season. … That probably sounded kind of sappy, but I like what we do.”

As the Army’s marching order goes, if you want to be a member, you already are. The Timbers Army started with 10 originals in 2001, well before the Timbers made the jump from the lower-level USL league to MLS in 2011.

Now, the Army has more than 4,000 paid members and always fills the 5,700 general-admission section set aside for them in the north end of Providence Park, which resembles Wrigley Field. The Army loosely caps unofficial membership at about 40,000 based on the number of branded scarves sold.

Despite the quirks, Coleman said they’ve draw members from everywhere.

“We have lawyers,” he said. “We have people with MBAs. We have a doctor. We’ve got plumbers, electricians, baristas, teachers. We’ve got short-order cooks. We have gay, straight, black, white, male, female, kids, seniors. The entire cross-section.”

Coleman grew up in Portland watching the NFL and cheering for the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers. “I got disenchanted with the Blazers,” Coleman said. “There was a period where people called them the ‘Jail Blazers.’ There were a lot of problems with the team.”

Coleman then saw the Timbers’ first MLS game on TV.

“I saw the Timbers Army; I had never seen anything that organic or that authentic in my life,” he said. “I was blown away by the chanting and the drumming and the flags and the smoke — all of it. I knew that I had to go over and be a part of that.”

Army member Stephanie Siewert grew up a big Packers fan in Wisconsin. The closest MLS team is the Chicago Fire, but her family refuses to cheer for anything Chicago-related, especially the Bears. So MLS was foreign when Siewert’s mom, dad, sisters and 95-year-old grandma came to an MLS match in Portland.

“The atmosphere that you feel there,” Siewert said. “They are huge Timbers fans, now. All for that one experience. They wear their Timbers gear all over town. You have to bring someone in that has an open mind and maybe has never watched a soccer game before. I think the experience is a big way to bring a lot of fans together.”

DARK CLOUDS’ TIFO

With the Pandora station “hipster cocktail party” playing in the background, a dozen or so Dark Clouds members made tifo last Saturday morning at a well-lit Summit Brewery meeting room in St. Paul. They sipped Maibock, Extra Pale Ale and other craft brews as they worked on their arts and crafts.

Unlike the more hardline Timbers Army, pink-haired Doreen Hartzell resorted only to suggesting that most of the tifo details be withheld until after Saturday’s home opener. The Dark Clouds’ “tifo czar queen” was willing to share that the tifo will be a 24-foot square made of fleece blankets and other elements. After the match, the blankets will be donated to charity.

Like the Timbers Army, the Dark Clouds have had strong growth, though on a smaller scale. Hartzell, who works as a textile artist, was member No. 86 four years ago, and now the Blaine stadium section for the Dark Clouds is expected to have 800 to 1,000 fans at home matches.

Before they entered into a partnership with Summit this year, the Dark Clouds made their tifo in someone’s backyard or in a parking lot.

“We’re getting to work with them in their space, and this is incredible,” Hartzell said. “Laying out a 60-foot banner when you don’t have to scavenge for bricks and rocks so it doesn’t blow away is so much easier.”

The Dark Clouds’ history with tifo is more about performance art than just massive signs. When some home games were played at the Metrodome, members constructed puppets on 20-foot sticks. They also made a large Loch Ness monster with a Dante quote on a banner: All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

Hartzell also once used glitter as part of a “Loon constellation” when they played the New York Cosmos. Five-year Dark Clouds member Jamie Campbell shook his head in disapproval over glitter sticking to him, but he has stuck with tifo making for three years now.

“We have more of a community feeling with a supporters group than the Vikings or the Twins,” he said. “It’s actually something that is encouraged by the team for us to do.”

Like the Army event in Portland, the Dark Clouds gathering in St. Paul welcomed multiple newcomers.

TNE TUNES

True North Elite, a budding United supporters group, has grown to about 100 members since its founding last year. All five founders of TNE have musical backgrounds, just like United coach Carl Craig, who was a punk rocker in England in the 1980s.

Co-founder Nicholas Bisbee, who sports a handlebar mustache and arms full of tattoos, once fronted a hardcore band. He shared TNE’s song lineup for United matches.

They seek to invigorate the Dark Clouds tradition of singing the Oasis song “Wonderwall,” which became a ballad for Craig and the then-Minnesota Stars when they won the league title in 2011. They plan to modify lyrics to Chumbawamba’s hit song “Tubthumping,” because Craig toured with that group a generation ago. (Don’t be surprised if profanity is introduced.) During Chumbawamba, TNE envisions Craig coming over to their section after wins and clapping along in approval.

They also plan on singing Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” at the start of each second half:

May your hands always be busy.

May feet always be swift.

May you have a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift.

May your heart always be joyful.

May your song always be sung.

And may you stay forever young.

True North Elite envisions holding their groups’ scarves in the air as they sing to “their boys.”

“C’mon!” Bisbee said of that thought. “I got chills right there.”