CHESTER, Pa. − Before the FC Cincinnati soccer players took the field for the Eastern Conference semifinal game on Thursday night, seven FC Cincinnati die-hard fans piled in a van at 1 a.m. that same morning to drive roughly 600 miles to see their favorite team play in Philadelphia.
For them, it was a duty.
"It’s the MLS playoffs, and we’re here to cheer the boys to victory,” said 35-year-old Jamie Amis from Union Township, Ohio, one of the seven in the van. "We'll do our part. They'll do their part," his carmate Alex Bernard, a 30-year-old from Bellevue, Kentucky, added. "We'll all be happy."
The seven road-trippers were a few members from the FCC supporters group called Queen City Mafia, a group, nay family, of fans dedicated to screaming their lungs out to root on the Orange and Blue. About 14 of their crew – women and men, parents and their kids, ranging in age from their twenties to their late fifties − came out to the historic game.
They were one of many groups who came to (just outside) the city of Brotherly Love in hopes of cheering FC Cincinnati to victory. They were one of many who boarded planes or drove for nine hours and hundreds of miles to see fifth-seed Cincinnati take on first-seed Philadelphia Union for the chance to advance to the Eastern Conference Final and, then if all worked accordingly, the MLS Cup.
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