Bright lights for the Sons of Ben

The film highlights soccer fans, soccer players, soccer coaches, and soccer balls, but, says director Jeffrey Bell, it's not a soccer movie.

It is instead a tale of passion and faith, of an improbable Philadelphia sports victory that sprang from two crazy ideas:

One, that a big, active fan base could develop to support a team that did not exist. Two, that the ceaseless efforts of those fans could help bring that hoped-for team into being.

Implausible, but true. And now, immortalized.

On Wednesday, scores of people will gather at two Center City theaters for the Philadelphia premieres of Sons of Ben: The Movie, a documentary that explores the creation and triumph of an unlikely soccer movement.

"It's such a unique story, and I wanted to share it with the world," said Bell, a New York City filmmaker.

Today the Philadelphia Union draws near-sellout crowds to PPL Park in Chester. The Sons of Ben, who led the drive to bring a pro soccer team to the area, pack the 2,000-seat stands in the River End, keeping up a drum-thumping energy, and leading chants and songs.

It's a Major League Soccer success story. But the film shows the pain behind the achievement, how the main players faced life-altering struggles - leukemia, marital strife, addiction, and job loss - as they strove to land a team.

From soccer fans to movie stars - none of them imagined that, or that the work would bring any larger glory, said Brad Youtz, an early Sons of Ben member who appears in the film. They just wanted a team.

"It was like, 'Let's do something. What can we do?' . . . We love the game, and we love the city. At its base element, you don't need anything more than that."

In a way, the story of the Sons of Ben began in 1996, when Major League Soccer started play, fresh off the U.S. success in hosting the 1994 World Cup.

Philadelphia was not among the original 10 teams. It seemed a shoo-in for expansion - but that didn't happen either. For a decade, ownership groups and stadium plans came and went, while frustrated fans saw new clubs go to other cities.

Salt Lake City? Seriously?

In 2006, MLS was again thinking of expanding, and a few fans here, led by Bryan James, whose father worked for British soccer clubs, began discussing how to show that support for a team ran deep.

The Sons of Ben was founded the next year - on Jan. 17, Ben Franklin's birthday.

The group created an edgy logo - the now-familiar Ben Franklin skull, with its Liberty Bell crack in the forehead - and started a Sons of Ben website, spreading word of its goal on social media.

"Think about the caring. Think about the want . . .," radio personality Anthony Gargano says in the film. " 'You're not going to give us a team? I'll tell you what, we're going to show you that soccer can work in this town.' "

The SoBs, as they sometimes call themselves, traveled to MLS games in places like New York, attracting attention to their cause by annoying surrounding fans with loud chants:

We don't have a team.

We don't have a team.

We've won as many cups as you and we don't have a team.

Despite the effort, it seemed as if the group couldn't make headway. Every event drew the same 20 people. The founders wondered if the movement had failed.

Then a couple of things occurred.

Sports Illustrated ran an item about the fans without a team. FourFourTwo, the big soccer magazine, printed a full-page story on the group.

Nick Sakiewicz, a business and soccer executive, saw the magazine piece. And he didn't think the idea was crazy.

The Sons snagged an appearance on ESPN, and membership took off.

"We went from eight guys to 60 guys to 500 guys to, like ... there's a thousand guys in this!" SoB Corey Furlan says in the film.

Sakiewicz began writing a blueprint for an expansion team and called the Sons to talk strategy.

The group sharpened its point, lobbying MLS executives to grant a team and government officials to allot money to build a stadium. It gathered 7,000 signatures on petitions that began, "We the soccer people," and presented them to State Sen. Dominic Pileggi, a former Chester mayor who was then Senate majority leader.

MLS was moving fast to add three clubs. San Jose got a team in July 2007. Seattle won a club in November.

Suddenly, only one slot was left, and the pressure was on. By January 2008, expansion had become a two-city race: Philadelphia had strong ownership but no stadium deal. St. Louis had a stadium plan but weaker owners.

Late that month, then-Gov. Ed Rendell announced the key provision of $47 million in state money, cementing the funding for a new stadium. In February, the league named Philadelphia its 16th club.

Bell, not a big soccer fan, happened to see the celebration on TV. And he noticed someone - Sons president James, who, weirdly, was a childhood friend from Wilmington.

They talked. Bell began shooting footage at tailgates, traveling to away games, and interviewing key people like Sakiewicz, who became team CEO.

The film shows how promises of new Chester apartments, stores, and offices - which let government and team officials portray the stadium as a development project - have never been fulfilled. And how the Sons campaign has become a national model, replicated by hopeful fans elsewhere.

Louisville City FC took the field this year after a two-year campaign by the Coopers - the name refers to the job of building bourbon barrels - to place a team in the United Soccer League.

The Brickyard Battalion helped get a club in Indianapolis, and the Borough Boys helped revive the Cosmos in New York, both in the second-tier North American Soccer League.

"The Sons of Ben are probably the most unique supporters group in North America," said FC Tucson fan Keaton Koch, president of the Cactus Pricks. "They brought a team to Philly."

Now the movie is headed here, too, after winning the Grand Prix at the Tokyo International Football Film Festival.

"We're bringing the story home," Bell said. "What I've gained from this is, we can all be bigger than ourselves."

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The Wednesday red-carpet premiere at the Trocadero Theater begins with a happy hour at 6 p.m., followed by the movie at 7:30. A second, movie-only premiere starts at 7 p.m. at the Ritz East.

Tickets and information: www.sonsofbenmovie.com

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215-854-4906@JeffGammage