EDITORS NOTE: In order to file this story we were required to keep the location and names of the people herein anonymous. The following contains redacted locations and team names, and pseudonyms to protect their identity.
REDACTED - REDACTED supporters group members "David Jefferson" and "Kelly Landow" (names changed to protect their identity) have long followed the saga of other groups in the United States and Canada including the Atlanta Silverbacks and Detroit City FC in an effort to figure out how to save their own soccer culture from being absorbed into the upper leagues and reborn as a different club. The two hit on a methodology at keeping their team their own as they stated to The Nutmeg News, "We just stopped talking about our club, and try to encourage other members of our supporters group to appear apathetic about soccer online."
"Yes, I would like to talk about soccer that exists somewhere within the borders of North America. No, I would not like to show you."
"Attracting attention to yourself is death in these countries," stated the duo, "and we have watched people who have drawn attention of the league front offices to their own passionate love of soccer who end up watching their creation and energy pilfered by the so-called big leagues of the area in the USL, NASL and MLS. We have decided to take down our pictures of games from our private servers, ensure that people do not post to facebook, take down our twitter page, and we have stopped inviting people to go to REDACTED games with us."
Reportedly, the two have gone to extreme levels to protect their fun by "wearing code" as they eschew things that supporters in North America typically use like scarves, team apparel, flags or anything with imagery associated with the beautiful game.
"We dress to ensure that no one knows we are going to have fun with our friends for 90 minutes at a soccer game," stated Ms. Landow. "We also ensure that we tell NO ONE of our team, our fun, or our passion. We ensure that we use smoke not as a celebratory device but as a way to hide our true numbers so that people can't say, 'look at all the passion for soccer here, we should talk expansion.' It's that important to us."
Mr. Jefferson stated to The Nutmeg News that the group has a code for meetups which include adapted statements from the 1996 book Fight Club as the group states, "THE FIRST RULE OF redacted IS THAT YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT redacted."
The Nutmeg News would have more on this but we were informed that the groups 15 minutes of TracFone time was up and they had to throw the burner phone away.