Anyone who even casually follows MLS has probably seen one of the tifo displays in Portland: elaborate, colorful banners that show support for the Timbers, and take occasional jabs at rival teams. They appear for about one minute and then they’re gone forever, never to see light again.



For something with such a brief lifespan, an inordinate amount of effort goes into it. Most of that behind-the-scenes work happens here. With piles of painting supplies scattered and a colorful collage of paint drippings all over the floor, this former parking garage near Providence Park is now a studio for tifo-making.

As punk rock blares on a radio and rain pours outside the open garage door, a dozen Timbers Army members crawl over a large white sheet and use brushes to fill in charcoal tracings with bright paint. This garage has been the hub of the fan group’s tifo-making operation for this season and, now, on the Tuesday before the MLS Cup, it’s being used for one final tifo.

There is no heat or air conditioning inside, so in the summer it feels like an oven, but this week volunteers are painting with their coats and scarves on to keep warm. It’s well worth it, they say, to show support for the Portland Timbers, who on Sunday will appear in their first MLS Cup final against the Columbus Crew.

“This is how I show my support for the Timbers. I can’t be on the pitch, but they can look up and know they’ve got the Army rooting for them through thick and thin,” said Ina Doerr, a member since 2011. “I’ve neglected painting my living room the past few months to help paint tifo, but the living room can wait. Showing support for our boys comes before a fresh coat of paint in the living room.”

Making grand plans

At the start of the regular season, the Timbers Army knows exactly which games on the schedule they will be doing tifos for. Sometimes they plan well in advance, but many times they wait for inspiration to strike.

“A good tifo starts with a message first,” said Mike Coleman, who heads the tifo-making operation of the Timbers Army. “What do you want to say? What’s important? A lot of times that takes way more time than the design. Once you get a good message, it’s easier to figure out how to represent it.”

Anyone in the Timbers Army can offer up a tifo idea. The final designs, which are finished in Photoshop after a series of email exchanges, come from members who have professional design experience. But no one gets, or wants, any credit. Officially, tifos are “anonymous,” or, as Coleman puts it: “This isn’t for your resumé.”

The mock-up is projected from a laptop onto large sheets in the garage, where volunteers trace outlines with charcoal. A typical tifo requires hundreds of gallons of paint and can take a day to dry. They try to reuse fabric, but the more coats of paint added to these displays as large as 3,000 sq ft, the heavier they become and start to tear.

‘The thing is, most of us don’t get to see it until we go home,’ says Mike Coleman of the Timbers Army. Photograph: Steve Dykes/Getty Images

They won’t disclose what their budget is for tifos, but it’s funded by a portion of annual $25 membership dues from nearly 4,000 Timbers Army members. They’ve produced six home tifos this year and, if they execute their MLS Cup plans, will have done four on the road.

To be sure, tifos require a lot of money and a lot time. Though they create buzz in the stands, the press box and on social media, that’s not the goal.

“People see the ropes hanging or they see the cards out on the seats and they get excited, like ‘Oh, what’s it gonna be?’ Coleman said. “But the thing is, most of us don’t get to see it until we go home. We don’t do this for ESPN, we don’t do it for Fox, we don’t do it for the Guardian. We do it for the players.”

Executing the vision

The Timbers Army, who populate the north end of the stadium with flag-waving, drums and chants, have developed a reputation as the loudest, most colorful supporters groups in North America. But with that reputation comes its share of derision, including accusations that their culture is manufactured by the club.

In reality, the relationship between the Timbers Army and the club is more like an uneasy truce. The group is allowed to show off tifos, as long as the front office can see the final design beforehand. Timbers owner Merritt Paulson has offered high praise for the tifos and the atmosphere provided by the Timbers Army, calling it an asset for the club.

But Paulson has said he was warned to “watch out” for the Timbers Army when he looked at buying the Timbers in 2007, and the two sides have clashed. Last month, rogue members inserted subliminal anti front-office messages into a tifo, deviating from the approved tifo design. A banner knocking the Timbers for being out of playoff position wasn’t well received by club management, either.

“To me, our displays are always going to demonstrate our dedication to the team, our dedication to the ideals we have for the team,” said Jerry Makare, the head of game-day operations for the Timbers Army. “They might not always match what the front office thinks, but we have certain ideas of what we want the team to be about.”

The grandeur of the tifos in Portland is only possible through the rigging ropes and nets in the stadium that allow elaborate displays to be hoisted into the air. But contrary to assumptions, the rigging was not supplied by the front office. Rather, the Timbers Army asked for permission to set up their own system and hired a rigging expert to inspect their work so they could provide safety assurances to the front office, Makare said. The first rigged tifo went up in 2009, two years before the Timbers joined MLS.

“Everything we do, we try to be as independent as we can, so we just ask that we have access,” Makare said of the front office. “They understand that it’s great for them, it’s great for the team, it’s great for the atmosphere, so it would be dumb for them not to let us do it. So there’s a lot of give and take.”

It takes 30 people just to pull the rigging for a display like this year’s final home tifo that referenced FC Dallas. Part of that group is also responsible for bringing as many as 500 flags into the stands that fans can borrow for the duration of the game. The flag group is nicknamed “Team Sisyphus” because they constantly walk up and down the stairs, delivering bundles of flags.

The Timbers Army used to do test-runs that worked just like game days, but they had to stop. Providence Park shares its perimeter with a local athletic club and people inside could see the tifos are started sharing photos of them on social media, spoiling the surprise. Now, test-runs done before game day have the tifos facing backwards with the painted side hidden.

One final tifo

The element of surprise is big part of the Timbers Army’s approach to tifo, an Italian word for fan support that in English is generally used to refer to painted banners. So, what does the group have in store for the MLS Cup? Officially, the Timbers Army won’t say.

“We always say, the first rule of tifo is: don’t talk about tifo,” Coleman said.

The group worked in their garage for two days this week in painting sessions the Guardian visited, but they won’t say anything about their upcoming plans. Will they try to display their handiwork in Columbus? If that is the plan, it presents new challenges.



Traditionally, the Timbers Army only does substantial away tifos for their Cascadia rivals in Seattle and Vancouver. In those cases, the tifo travels by car. To get to Columbus, the tifo would need to travel by plane, either by having it shipped or having a Timbers Army member check it on a flight.

The group has never brought a tifo to Mapfre Stadium and they don’t know if the stadium would even allow it. Minor controversy already emerged Wednesday when the Crew said the Timbers’ ceremonial victory log will not be allowed into their stadium. The team is shipping the log to Columbus anyway.

Whether or not the Timbers Army can pull off a tifo for Columbus, it probably won’t deter future plans. They have a garage full of paint and fabric ready to go. After this weekend, their next tifo will be shown at the Timbers’ 2016 home opener. When does planning for that display begin?

According to Coleman: “We’ll start right after the MLS Cup.”