Ten years ago, Jared Saatela “despised” soccer.

Last week, he was sitting alone in a bone-numbing rain in the front row of a quaint soccer stadium more than an hour before Minnesota United made its Major League Soccer debut on March 3.

Saatlea, of Coon Rapids, had traveled 1,800 miles to Portland, Ore., on his own dime and free will to arrive a world away from how he once viewed the sport.

“I thought it was slow, boring and low-scoring,” said Saatela, 29, wearing rain gear and a gray Loons hat and holding a Portland Cider beer. “Now, it’s my favorite sport.”

The hook for the once standard-fare sports fan was the unbridled passion of soccer supporters. “It’s like a college student section. You stand up, sing and chant,” he explained. “To do that as an adult, it really attracted me.”

Saatela will have his United season ticket punched Sunday and will enter TCF Bank Stadium with more than 32,000 fans expected to attend the Loons’ home debut in the top domestic soccer league.

After incubating for decades under different nicknames in fledgling divisions, big league soccer has returned to Minnesota. And after converting naysayers such as Saatela in 2014, a tide has turned.

Now in its 22nd season in 2017, MLS added its 21st and 22nd teams last week and has paired those expansion franchises — Minnesota and Atlanta — in Sunday’s featured matchup on national TV.

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The league has 12 bids from cities across the country contending for its next four franchise slots, and the winners will fork out entry fees even larger than the $100 million Minnesota and Atlanta paid. In 2016, the league set its third-straight attendance record of 21,692 fans per match, and the most diverse sport in the U.S. is attracting younger and better players from leagues around the world.

MLS clubs, from the front office to players, credit not just fans but the die-hard supporters groups for setting the foundation and helping construct the pillars of its growth.

“Everything we do as an organization, we have to think about them,” Minnesota United head coach Adrian Heath said. “They are the ones that pay their hard-earned money to come and actually support us. We have to give them a performance at the weekend, and that is as important to me as anything.”

Heath won’t guarantee a victory over Atlanta, or a bountiful amount of goals scored, but he made bold predictions about what soccer laymen will experience at the club’s temporary home on the University of Minnesota’s campus.

“This will turn their life around forever in terms of a sports fan,” Heath proclaimed.

POSITIVE SUPPORT

Minnesota’s mainstay supporters group is the Dark Clouds, a play on the club’s old Thunder moniker from 1995-2009. The Dark Clouds were founded on an online message board when the Thunder played home games at St. Paul Central High School in 2004, growing from a dozen or so early adopters to nearly 1,000 members today.

“The Dark Clouds are very organic,” said Jim Crist, a middle school teacher in St. Paul and Dark Clouds member since 2006.

The Dark Clouds and other supporters groups will set up in the enclosed end zone at TCF Bank Stadium and chant, sing and bang on drums throughout the match. Unlike other sporting events, during which a public address announcer or scoreboard message instructs fans to yell, soccer supporters provide the match’s soundtrack — including music.

To display their tifo — large sign in soccer-speak — the Dark Clouds wanted to use TCF Bank Stadium’s pulley system that raises a net behind the football field goal posts, but that goal will have to wait as they work on an arrangement with the U. The supporters also wanted to uncork a smoke bomb or two during the match, but that idea has been bottled up for now with U concerns believed to be about setting off smoke detectors.

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Around the world, soccer supporters are often linked to hooliganism, sometimes linked with racism or discrimination, that has given the sport a black eye. A small example came last Sunday during Atlanta’s stunning home opener before 55,297 fans at Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium. During the 2-1 loss to New York Red Bulls, some fans chanted an anti-gay slur and threw cups at players on the field. Atlanta’s front office has since strongly condemned the chant and said it plans to root it out if it occurs again.

But the Dark Clouds and True North Elite hold themselves to a different standard. They have a board of directors that sets a code of conduct, and it’s Silver Lining charity has helped communities from Eagan to Haiti.

They organizes tifo designs and construction, as well as the chants and songs during games. For previous teams, they’ve rewritten Backstreet Boys and Notorious B.I.G. songs into odes for favorite players.

“It isn’t hooliganism in it for us because there is good nature in it,” said Crist, a former Dark Clouds board member. “Obviously, we want the other team to lose, but how we express that isn’t done typically through negativity; it comes through creativity.”

United supporters group True North Elite was founded by five guys in 2005 and has grown to more than 150. They’re more intense and often have more tattoos and facial hair than their Dark Clouds comrades, but they’ve drawn a similar bright line.

TNE’s mission statement, if you will, is to be “anti-homophobic, anti-racist and anti-sexist, non-violent group,” said Nicholas Bisbee, a Minneapolis bartender and TNE co-founder.

Bisbee was among more than 150 Loons supporters who traveled to Portland for the club’s MLS debut. Although the cold and rain in Portland had fans in rain gear and wrapped in team scarfs, Bisbee was a shirtless ringleader with a crazed look in his eye.

“What it comes down to is maybe violent words, but not fists,” Bisbee explained last week. “We sing that we’re going to ‘leave you black and blue,’ but that has to do with tackles (on the field), not that we are going to bloody somebody up outside the stadium.”

UNITED IS LISTENING

Plans for United’s new stadium in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood include a 3,000-person section set aside for supporters in the 19,916-seat arena to be built in the next two years. The stadium’s section will be designed as a “safe-standing” area as seen in other venues, with a rail between the rows to help prevent injures as supporters might try to cram closer to the field.

Supporters groups have the ear of club owner Bill McGuire and team president Nick Rogers, who have consulted with them on club matters. United incorporated longtime supporters in its digital billboard campaign with players to promote the inaugural season and have attended supporters’ tailgating parties when the club played in a lower-level division at the National Sports Center in Blaine before this year.

Those tailgate parties won’t be allowed at the start of this season, which riles up many supporters who want to drink and be merry the way Gophers and Vikings fans do before a game. But U spokesman Steven Henneberry said, “We’re still working with United on a resolution” to bring tailgating to some of United’s 17 matches at the U through October.

For many older soccer fans, tailgate parties were the lifeblood at old Minnesota Kicks matches at Metropolitan Stadium in the 1970s. The Kicks were Minnesota’s first pro soccer team in the North American Soccer League until they folded in 1981.

Taylor Twellman, a former MLS and U.S. men’s national team member, is the son of former Kicks midfielder Tim Twellman, who played his first match with the Kicks inn 1977.

Once on a commute to The Met in Bloomington, Tim turned to his wife, Moochie, as they were stuck in “awful traffic,” Taylor recalled of a story he’s heard many times. Tim asked: “ ‘Where is everyone going?’ and he looked at my mom and he goes, ‘This is for the game. I think it hit him then” how big soccer could be in Minnesota.

United will honor Tim Twellman and other members of the Kicks, Thunder and Stars during pregame ceremonies Sunday. Twellman, who will call the game on ESPN2, said it’s a good sign that the club is honoring its past as it starts the future.

“Sunday will be an example of where this team can go, especially when this stadium is built,” he said. “It’s going to be a community and a market where people are going to want to go play because of the fans, the atmosphere and it’s a top-notch organization.”

‘NEW’ SPIRIT

United has about 11,000 season-ticket holders and would would love to push attendance to the 40,000-plus who regularly came to The Met to see the Kicks. Current supporters groups have proliferated, with geographic-based offshoots in the Pioneers United Supporters Club of St. Paul and WolfsHead Supporters Group in Duluth and Superior, Wis.

The Dark Clouds and True North Elite preach inclusivity, and the Dark Clouds have hosted an “academy” the week before the home opener to teach newcomers about what they’re about, including a “march to the match” from the lawn of the McNamara Academic Center to TCF Bank Stadium.

“There are going to be a ton of new people this year, and probably a lot of people that ended up in the supporters section because it sounded like fun,” Crist said. The member outreach is about “how would you like to go forward, what can you bring to the group and how can we make this thing even better.”

There are other existing United supporters groups, and new ones could sprout up Sunday. But the existing ones left an impact on United captain Vadim Demidov when they cheered for the squad after a 5-1 drubbing to the Timbers.

Demidov has played for clubs with strong supporters cultures in some of the world’s top leagues — the German Bundesliga and Spain’s La Liga — as well as SK Brann in his native Norway.

“I’ve been playing in clubs that when we lose, the supporters won’t even clap for us after the game,” Demidov said. “But for me, it was really heartwarming to see the supporters were still on our side after a difficult loss when we didn’t play as good as we can. It was a new feeling I haven’t (had). I haven’t been in that.

“When we lose and the supporters still got your back like that, it shows us that we owe them big time.”