Supporters
Grassroots support was instrumental in bringing top-tier women's professional soccer back to the Philadelphia area. The Philadelphia Independence masterfully cultivated relationships with Philadelphia-area girls' travel soccer teams, offering workshops all over the region with Independence players at reasonable costs, sending emails about games, inviting teams to have a formal relationship with the Independence, having local girls' teams on the field for the teams' introductions at every game, and having all players on the field for an extensive post-game autograph and conversation time after every game. It is unknown, however, if there was a formal grassroots support group for the Independence.
For men's soccer, this backing came in the form of a supporters' association known as the Sons of Ben, named for Founding Father and Philadelphia icon Benjamin Franklin, founded in January 2007. The Sons of Ben petitioned the men's Major League Soccer league to expand to the Philadelphia market until the official expansion announcement of the men's team, later named the Philadelphia Union, was made in January 2008.
Read more about this topic: Philadelphia Independence
Famous quotes containing the word supporters:
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition. It reduces their supporters to that tractable number which can be managed by the joint influences of fruition and hope. It offers vengeance to the discontented, and distinction to the ambitious; and employs the energies of aspiring spirits, who otherwise may prove traitors in a division or assassins in a debate.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)