The atmosphere of Keyworth Stadium, home to Detroit City FC, has been described as the epitome of lower league soccer. Not American lower league soccer, lower league soccer around the world. Yes, the accommodations may lack in some areas if you are used to a D1-level experience, but the raw energy that fills the place during matches is enough to make up for any other shortcomings. The stadium fills with the Northern Guard Supporters every homematch, several thousand every match, and with them comes the smoke bombs, the chants, and some of the best banners and tifo you’ll see anywhere in the world of soccer. It’s apparent that DCFC fans are some of the most dedicated in the country, but all of that atmosphere requires a tremendous amount of matchday organization. Each member plays a role in creating an environment that sets City up for success, so I sat down with one of the primary players, the “Mayor of Tifotown,” to talk about how he got involved in the sign game.

“I’ve been around Detroit City, basically since the beginning. I happened to be out of town for the first home match, but was in Buffalo, NY for work when DCFC played their first away match. I took off from work that day, went to Old Navy and bought a shirt that was rouge. And showed up for the game.” When he got back to Detroit, Joe Novak went to the next homematch and as he put it, “bought a single ticket on the way in, bought a season ticket on the way out. And we’ve been season ticket holders since.” As the years progressed, Joe’s wife and daughter got into the club and “now we’re a DCFC family.” Just last week, Detroit City made a fund-raising shirt featuring one of Coraline’s (Joe’s daughter) designs. The money raised is being donated to Michigan Humane and, as you might expect, the shirt sold out quickly.

How Joe became Mayor of Tifotown (a nickname given to him by his daughter) was a product of the NGS organization. Early on, members were discussing what they brought to the table, either through skill or employment and Joe laughingly commented that his job as a project manager would be of no help to the group. He was instantly put in charge of the tifos. “I’m not really an artistic person, so, at first, I was just there to make sure we didn’t spend too much money on paint...but since then, I’ve flourished and I’ve found my artistic side.” His touch, both in banner inspiration and style, is seen every Detroit City home match.

But as the club has grown, so has the crew that works with Joe every match: designing matchday specific banners, creating and painting, hanging and distributing, removing and storing. Banners have to be retired when they become damaged, usually from sparks from smoke bombs, but some favorites get repaired. The average lifespan for a banner is a season or two. While some banners are recycled from season to season, used over and over again, Joe likes to focus on keeping things fresh. “Every match, we have to have a few trash talk banners for the visiting club.” Recently, when Stumptown AC came to Keyworth, GK Kevin Gonzalez got the treatment with a specific banner referencing “Kevin the Tree.”

For the more traditional tifos, the large-scale banners that demand months of planning and preparation, Joe works with his fellow designer, Paul Snyder, and “a whole team of people.” That team has to paint and construct the tifo itself, then plan out how it will be rigged. Joe points out that Keyworth “isn’t blessed with a second deck, so we have to improvise. One woman on our team is a structural engineer and I just come up with crazy ideas and she comes up with a way to hang them. I have a lot of ideas that keeps the train rolling, but there’s a cast of thousands that help.”

Too often, when people see pictures of the stands at Keyworth - packed with people, draped in banners, smoke filling the air - it’s assumed that it happened effortlessly. That there’s just something special in the water up there and soccer fans grow on trees around the stadium. The reality is that soccer fandom, real club support, requires sacrifice and effort. Clubs cannot create match day atmosphere without the dedication of fans like Joe, the Mayor of Tifotown, a guy who thought his skills didn’t match any need, but instead, working with a team of dedicated, like-minded fans, makes every match day in Hamtramck more colorful and lively than any other city in lower league soccer.

- Dan Vaughn