Little did I know that six whole years later, when the team finally managed to get out of its own way long enough to triumphantly earn the sixth-place spot in a 10-team conference and the knockout game that came with it, the moment would bring nothing more than another embarrassing thrashing, another blank sheet on the road, another evening in which I was reminded that the spiritual company of fellow long-suffering supporters is, at virtually every moment, the only redeeming quality of calling myself a fan of Toronto FC.
In the event that you've stumbled across this story and are wondering A) who I am, and 
whether this collection of words will ever move beyond navel-gazing, your answers are that I used to write here quite a lot (it's true, look it up) and no, probably not. But for the sake of it, I'll furnish you with all of my tactical analysis as it relates to the 2015 edition of Toronto FC:
- Sebastian Giovinco is good at soccer. I liked watching him play for TFC. I hope I'll get to watch him play for TFC again.
I'm not a coach, and I'm not a general manager, and I'm not a player. I don't know what it's like to step on the field for a professional team, nor do I know what it's like to manage one, or attempt to set up the roster for one. So I'm not going to pretend to be in any of those positions. What I am is a fan. What I am is someone who has decided that emotionally affixing myself to a piece of laundry that ostensibly represents the jurisdiction in which I, through no choice of my own, happened to have been born is a productive deployment of my finite time and psychological resources.
And in the case of Toronto FC, that playoff game was -- above and beyond anything else -- a reminder of how finite my time and psychological resources truly are. Because if you'd asked me, on that night back in October 2009, how I'd be feeling on the day TFC played its first-ever postseason match, I'd likely use words like "overjoyed", "excited", "relieved" and so on.
But as it happened, on October 29, 2015, the words coursing through my head -- as I sat glued to the TV, watching my hometown team from 3,000 kilometres away -- were more along the lines of "resigned", "worried" and "inevitable".
It's easy for sports fans to attribute certain properties to a team, as if the organization itself remains an unchanging monolith. Yet it's foolish. Toronto FC 2015 bears literally no resemblance to Toronto FC 2009, beyond the name; hell, it bears little resemblance to Toronto FC 2013 or 2014, if you're talking about personnel. The idea that weakness in central defence or a proclivity towards conceding goals in Tobias Time or [etc, etc] are somehow ingrained into the DNA of Toronto FC is silly, especially given that the team generally purges itself of on- and off-field talent on a pretty much annual basis.
So thinking that TFC would lay an egg against the Montreal Impact on Thursday night simply because they laid an egg against New York in 2009, or against [insert team here] in [insert year here] was, objectively, foolish. Thinking they'd lay an egg because their back line was comprised of two mid-season pickups and a guy who isn't a defender -- that was reasonable. Thinking they'd lay an egg because they'd lost to Montreal four days earlier and that Greg Vanney likely wouldn't make necessary adjustments -- that was reasonable.
But that's not why I thought they'd lay an egg. I just knew. Which is to say, I didn't know. But, y'know, I knew.
And that's not a healthy relationship to have with anyone or anything. Being worried about past events but deciding to fully invest emotionally anyway (see: Canada vs. Honduras, two weeks from now) is one thing. But having been completely drained of the capacity to even envision the possibility of a desired outcome? That's some grim territory indeed.
What do I want to happen to the team next? At this precise moment, I don't much care. Maybe Vanney will get fired, maybe he won't. Maybe Giovinco will be back, maybe he won't. Maybe the team will entirely remodel itself (again) and put a shiny new advertising campaign out (again), maybe it won't. But when nine years of accumulated anticipation ends with a resounding thud, it takes a bit of time to replenish one's reserves of giving-a-hoot.
It won't be replenished by the time the team kicks off its 10th MLS season (oh man, we're getting old) next spring. There is literally no off-season acquisition or string of acquisitions that could make a noticeable dent in my ossified pessimism about this team. A hot first few months won't do it. Even a finish close to the top of the conference won't do it. There must be a true breakthrough moment, however and whenever that may come -- and even then, who knows if I'll be able to crack a smile.
We won't even entertain the notion of cutting ties with the team entirely; the fact that I'm still writing this and you're still reading this means we're both in it for the long haul. We've decided -- through some horrible combination of masochism, stubbornness and the sunk cost fallacy -- that "being a TFC fan" is still a label we'll willingly wear.
Just don't expect us to have fun doing it... because we sure aren't.
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