You know what feels weird to a longtime Toronto FC supporter? Winning.
It’s been a strange and surreal past week or so as the city’s home team — the “other” major league sports club in this city — played their first Major League Soccer playoff games and came away from both victorious.
TFC’s stunning victory against New York City FC last Sunday included the stuff of sports lore we’d long decided would never be ours: A late and dramatic goal from Jozy Altidore, fans leaping from their seats and cheering wildly, the south end supporters’ section completely on fire. Players leapt into the stands with gratitude the way they did that night, banging drums and chanting along with fans in a packed house.
We’ve never seen anything like it — and we’ve been in those stands for 10 years.
The electricity of the playoffs is a feeling other Toronto teams have experienced in the past year or two, thanks to the runaway success of the Blue Jays and the “We The North” sloganeering of the Raptors. It’s the unifying feeling that draws in band-wagoners, packs bars and makes a city proud.
Now it’s our turn. And we’re starved for it — so starved we didn’t know we were hungry.
Let me tell you what it’s like to be a Toronto FC season ticket holder most of the time: You show up at BMO Field year after year, because the team has kept the full season prices virtually static lest they lose fans sick of seeing a team repeatedly lose. You get there late, buy your overpriced Budweiser, maybe some nachos. You skip games because it’s inconvenient to cross town and you’re hard pressed to fill your vacant seats when you can’t make it.
You don’t wear the scarves they send you with the tickets because nobody is holding them aloft like they do in those raucous European stadiums (though you might wear them when it’s blowing snow, as it does). You can barely hear the supporters’ section from across the field and you might even leave early to catch the train because, hey, that parking lot is hell. The stands are never full.
But even when the team offers a public apology due to a stunning – stunning! – string of losses like it did at the end of the 2010 season, you hang on. Winning would be nice, but that’s not what it’s about. We go to spend time with family, and, when the weather’s nice, there is something very relaxing about clutching a beer in the sunshine with a view of the lake and players crisscrossing the field playing a game they love — that all of us who schlepped it down to the lakeshore love.
In many ways, the playoff action after a decade of ho-hum feels like a reward for long-suffering loyalty, for all those games we sat through, pelted with rain, hail and that brisk wind off Lake Ontario. And it’s validating, too. Soccer is a passion around the world and an after-thought in Canada, when it comes to the sports we care to love. And in a city boasting so many residents from these soccer-loving nations our team deserves a bigger following, and, frankly, a better fan experience.
Toronto FC may be lacking a Drake. There are no cheerleaders, no furry mascots. But now we can feel the heartbeat of the city at BMO Field for the first time in club history. That we had to wait so long to register a pulse should give MLSE the motivation to keep it pounding much harder. We’ll raise our overpriced beer to that.
Sportsnet’s Soccer Central podcast (featuring James Sharman, Thomas Dobby, Brendan Dunlop and John Molinaro) takes an in-depth look at the beautiful game and offers timely and thoughtful analysis on the sport’s biggest issues.
