Local News

Sketched March 9, 8:28 p.m.
When the Sounders season kicks off Tuesday night against the LA Galaxy, Brougham End is the place to be at Qwest Field. I joined the frenzy here this week for a preseason game against Colorado, and the energy was already full-on, even though this was a friendly match.
The Emerald City Supporters take the bleachers at the south end of the stadium and chant for the entire game’s 90 minutes. It’s a choreographed performance as riveting to watch as an actual game. They jump on the stands, raise their arms, wave flags and scarves, and sing their hearts out for the Sounders.
Letricia Johnson, one of more than 2,000 members of the six-year-old fan club, said they pass around song cards for those who don’t know the lyrics. They always start with “Bluest Skies,” which opens with a colorful line: “The bluest skies you’ve ever seen are in SEATTLE!” Also on the song sheet: “I Am a Sounder,” “Take ‘em All,” “Sky of Blue, Sea of Green” and “We Came to Drink.”
On Tuesday night, I, too, will be drinking to a Sounders victory.
Blog extra!
Before the game started, I mingled with ECS members and did a few more sketches that you won’t see in tomorrow’s print edition of the Seattle Times. Here they are in their uncropped format:

Before every game, expect a friendly crowd of ECS members at Fuel sports bar in Pioneer Square. Owner Mike Morris said the soccer matches bring more than 40,000 people to the neighborhood who didn’t come here before. The Sounders have been really good for the city, he said.

Italian-born Gregory Mockos, a civil engineer by day, is co-president of the Emerald City Supporters. He’s lived in Seattle since the year 2000 and attributes the success of soccer here to the great number of people who play the sport in amateur leagues like GSSL. “There are thousands of people who play,” said Mockos, including himself.

Like Mockos, Robert Logue also likes to play soccer. An army soldier with the Fort-Lewis Stryker Brigade, Logue recalled playing soccer with Iraqi army soldiers during his deployments. “The Iraqis were really good,” he said.

I had to wrap up talking and sketching at Fuel because the march to Qwest Field was about to start. I tried to make some marks on my sketchbook as I walked next to the group. Cheering fans clapped, made the sign of the horns with their hands and sang following directions from “il capo,” who held a megaphone and had to walk backwards at times to face the cheering group. This European-style chanting always makes me feel as if I was in my soccer-crazy hometown of Barcelona.

Once in the field, the first spectator I approached with my sketchbook was Aaron Hogue of Poulsbo. He had brought pretty much his entire family to the game –not everyone is shown in the sketch. He also played the sport growing up. “Since he was 6-years-old until he was 18,” said his proud soccer mom sitting next to him.

Letricia Johnson and Liz Neal were on first row at Brougham End. Johnson said the more combinations of blue and green you can wear to the game, the better. For Neal, that meant sporting a blue wig. Johnson had a cool hat with a green and black checkered pattern.
Links
Find out more about the Emerald City Supporters at www.weareecs.com. They have videos of their songs and a downloadable song sheet pdf that I’ll be bringing with me the next time. Go Sounders!

Sketched March 9, 5:38 p.m.
If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you know that I was at last night’s Sounders game. I’ll be posting more sketches soon. In the meantime, meet fans Matt and Jennifer Johnson. Like me, they boarded the light rail at Westlake Station to go to the stadium. The family of four –I didn’t have time to sketch their children– was excited to go to the game. When I asked if their kids were also into soccer, Jennifer pulled out her cell to show me a photo of her son’s room, all painted in green and with a custom-painted Sounders logo in the middle of the wall. That said it all!
I used an XL Series Canson 7″x10″ Mixed Media sketchbook for this drawing. Ink on location, color added later.

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It’s been so long since I went to my last Barça game: almost ten years! I watched them defeat Italian team Fiorentina 4 to 2 in a qualifying UEFA Champions League match on Sept. 22, 1999. My American girlfriend at the time, now wife, and I sat in one of the rows farthest from the field in the huge Camp Nou stadium. I could barely see the players, let alone sketch them.
Things were quite different for me on today’s game. I was much closer to the field, right behind one of the goals in fact, as part of the media. But a lot felt the same way.
Stepping on the light rail to go to the stadium was like taking the subway in Barcelona. The crowd wearing soccer jerseys and the roar of the Sounder fans, cheering their team for the entire 90 minutes of play, was like going to any game in Barcelona. What a great experience, here, in Seattle.
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Drawing at the game was a new thing for me though. For a moment I thought I should be in the bleachers. But then I heard someone yell from behind: “Hey, sketcher!” Big Lo, aka Seattle’s biggest sport fan, told me how much he liked my work. I was flattered. If Big Lo says so, maybe it doesn’t hurt to let a sketcher in the game every now and then. “When are you going to sketch the Seahawks?” he asked. I’m ready to mark my calendar.
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I bought one of the half-Barça, half-Sounders scarves many people were wearing today as soon as I arrived at the stadium. I couldn’t have imagined anything better for this Barcelonian transplanted to Seattle. Ryan Sales was also wearing one. “I’d like to see Messi score and the Sounders win,” he said after having someone take his photo in front of the giant inflatable soccer ball set up next to Qwest Field.
Sales got half of his wish and I got mine, seeing Barça win and adding a new team to my scarf. Go Sounders!

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The best team of the most popular sport in the world is in Seattle. FC Barcelona, aka Barça, is playing a friendly game against the Sounders FC on Wednesday as part of their summer tour in preparation for the Spanish soccer league, which starts at the end of the month and goes until May.
They are the team of my youth growing up in Barcelona and throughout college, before I came to the States in 1998. They are still my team, but I haven’t been a very good fan for some years now. Hopefully that will change with this visit.
This morning I went to their training session at the University of Washington. I could hardly tell you who is who. I recognized head coach Pep Guardiola and defender Carles Puyol, but that was about it. Guardiola played the match against Italian team Sampdoria in 1992 when they won their first European Cup title, later rebranded as the UEFA Champions League. I have a vivid memory of watching that game with my roommates in my last year in college. We watched it on our small tv set in the kitchen and jumped off from our chairs when Ronald Koeman scored the winning goal. Since then, Barça has won the most coveted title in the sport two more times, against Arsenal in 2006 and Manchester United in 2009.
I know it’s hard for most people here to get excited about soccer and that’s probably why my own fervor faded. But things are changing. “This game will help bring more fans to the sport, especially when we have the best player of the sport here, Lionel Messi,” said Emmanuel De Leon, of Redmond, who came to watch Barça’s training session this morning and bought his tickets for Wednesday’s game against the Sounders three months ago. De Leon was wearing the team’s jersey and was thrilled about the opportunity to see the players so close. He was hoping to get Messi’s autograph later.
Hussein Rajab, of Virgina Beach, had flown to Seattle just to see the game. “It’s very dissappointing there’s nothing in the newspapers about it,” he said after realizing I worked for The Seattle Times. I reminded him of José Miguel Romero’s story on the Sports section on today’s edition. But he had a point, how come the best team of the most popular sport in the world is not on the front page?
Maybe tomorrow, or Thursday.
Foooooorça Baaaaarça!