Welcome to the new Stumptown Footy!

As is the natural end for all sports blogs, we're a newsletter now.

Well hello there. Good to see you!

Welcome to the new Stumptown Footy!

As you might be aware, Stumptown Footy, the SB Nation blog site covering the Portland Timbers and Portland Thorns, learned that it would no longer be supported or monetized by Vox Media back in January. Since then, the team has been working on identifying the best place for us to move the site in order to keep it alive and well.

After months of research, Slack messages, and general anxiety, we can reveal that this is it: the Stumptown Footy Substack.

We know you might have a few questions, and I’ll try to answer a few of them now.

1. Why Substack?

I know, I know: we’re a newsletter now. It feels cliche — but it also feels right.

Our priority was to create a space where we could get our content to you as directly as we could, and also create a space where the fan community of PTFC can live on. Substack presented itself as the best place for us to do all of that, with the lowest amount of lift on our end.

We also wanted a space where contributors could be adequately compensated for their work. None of us do this as our day jobs (yet?). We write about these teams because we love them, and love writing about them. STF is truly a labor of love, and as a team we believe that we deserve a degree of compensation in order to keep this labor somewhat sustainable. Therefore the ability to generate some money so that the team could be paid back just a bit for their work was also a goal of ours, and that led us to Substack.

Paid subscriptions are going to be going live soon (for now everything is free), and we’ll be sure to put up a post letting y’all know what that’s going to look like.

We know there’s other options that we could have chose, and maybe some of you would have preferred that we went in one of those directions. We respect that, and we also believe that this was the best move in order to keep STF alive, and continue to keep covering the teams we love.

2. What’s going to be here?

If you’re a reader of the old site, all of the same types of posts you’re used to! Game recaps, match threads, previews, player profiles, analysis pieces — the whole 18-yards.

For new folks — hi! This will be a site that will cover all things going on with the MLS team the Portland Timbers and the NWSL team the Portland Thorns. That will include previews and recaps of matches, comment threads where you can react to the games and deposit your takes of varying spiciness, and analysis and commentary on the state of the teams.

We’ve also got some new fun things in the works that we’ll be rolling out in the coming weeks, which dare I say will make this new version of STF better then the old one (*knocks on wood*).

The bonus benefit is that much of the content will be delivered to your email inbox if you subscribe, for ease of reading.

Oh, and live-tweeting matches ain’t going anywhere either. So yes, we will still be asking you what you’re drinking at halftime.

3. What isn’t going to be here?

Unfortunately, due to the transition we weren’t able to bring all of the old features from the old site.

Fanposts aren’t going to be able to be a thing anymore. And while you might start to see stories from the old site pop up on this site, we weren’t able to save the comment section from those posts. So if you have some sort of earth-shatteringly hot take in the section you want to live on, be sure to go copy it and bring it over. The earth could use a bit of shattering here, to be honest.

We are working on creating some sort of forum for the spirit of Fanposts and fan engagement to live on in the new site, and we’ll be sure to let you know when that’s rolling out.

4. So, um, there isn’t a ton here yet.

Yeah I know. Like moving to any new space, it takes a while for it to feel like home. We’re still getting things moved over from the old site, and the team is still getting our feet underneath us and planning out the first set of posts.

But fret not dear reader, over the next few days we will have plenty of stuff going up around the Timbers and Thorns. The season marches on, and so does our team.

What you can expect from us soon:

• A preview of Saturday’s 2022 NWSL Championship rematch between the Thorns and the KC Current. (UPDATE: It’s live! You can read it here).

• A preview of the Timbers’ annual early-season foray to Texas, when they take on FC Dallas. (UPDATE: It’s live! You can read it here).

• Match threads for both games for y’all to engage and comment.

• Recaps of the Timbers and Thorns matches.

• A feature piece with Thorns ‘keeper Shelby Hogan talking about her journey to the Portland, as well as an interview with Timbers GM Ned Grabavoy discussing Portland’s SuperDraft picks and the development trajectory of Timbers 2.

So we hope the promise of future goodies draws your mouse cursor to that subscribe button below. We believe in the stuff we’re doing here, and our passion is sharing it with you all. And we promise there will be more soon.

Alternatively, if you just want to disagree with us, then hey, subscribing is the best way to have access to us to let us know your thoughts, so hit that button anyway!

5. Anything else?

We can never say it enough: thank you. Thank you for supporting us, for reading our words, engaging with our posts, and sharing the same passion for the Thorns and Timbers that we do.

Portland is a special soccer town. It ain’t called Soccer City, USA for nothing. Covering these clubs is a privilege and joy and for all of us, and we are eternally grateful for having a platform to be able to share our thoughts and words.

This whole thing is going to be a work in progress, so if you’re here now you get the bonus privilege of seeing us build the plane while learning to fly it (don’t worry, we’ll give you a parachute).

But we couldn’t be more happy that you’re here, and that you’ve still got our backs.

Lots, lots more to come. Can’t wait for you to see it.

Onward,

The Stumptown Footy team.

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