Welcome to the morning Montreal becomes the nineteenth franchise in Major League Soccer.
L’Impact – or whatever other name emerges – will join North America’s premier non-Mexican soccer league in 2012. With Toronto FC already there, and the Vancouver Whitecaps launching next spring, Canada will have a sealed and significant place at the highest available level of pro footie.
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All of this was all-but-utterly impossible five years ago. Canadian soccer was a perpetually struggling minor-league venture back then. Talk of an all-Canadian league had crashed and burned horribly, one last time.
Let’s be clear on a couple of key points:
- The birth of Toronto FC did not kill the dream of a Canadian league.
- The success of Toronto FC clinched there won’t be such a league for years or decades to come.
The plain, simple fact? With the odd exception of the Canadian Football League, pro sports in Canada needs American teams – and lots of them. Remember, this is a country that has been globally dominant in ice hockey since the late nineteenth century, and does not have its own professional hockey league.
An MLS franchise is a fairly modest undertaking, compared to the megabuck monstrosities the other big pro sports have become. But even there, a huge city like Toronto could not generate real buzz, genuine passion, and consistent crowds of 20,000 fans until MLS came along.
A level down, in Minor League Soccer, both Vancouver and Montreal have been thriving. They compete, not against Calgary and Halifax and Quebec City, but against Rochester and Portland and Puerto Rico. Crowds are modest, but strong ownership and prudent planning have now brought both cities to the top level.
And that, for Canada, is as far as MLS is ever likely to go. The league has never, to my knowledge, even hinted at exceeding 20 teams. Only Ottawa remains as an outside longshot, and their stadium problems appear – for the next few years – to be insurmountable.
So, that’s it? No Canadian league, and only three cities in the soccer spotlight?
Not at all.
See, a funny thing happened a few years back. Canada’s national soccer supporters’ group, the Voyageurs, donated a cup for whichever division-two team did better against the others over an entire season. No one much knew about it, and Montreal won it six seasons on the trot.
And then – well, as you know, CONCACAF created a Champions Cup, gave Canada a spot, and the CSA huddled up with the three teams and created an official Voyageurs Cup tournament. It’s been all Toronto-Montreal-Vancouver, of course, but Edmonton has a new D2 team and will be joining the dance next spring.
Ottawa could easily be playing D2 three years from now. So could Hamilton. Quebec City and Victoria are being glanced at, as people wonder who will take the places of Vancouver and Montreal in the lower league?
Here’s what I think is going to happen:
Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal will all be small, strong, fervently supported squads in MLS. Edmonton and Ottawa will struggle, but survive in D2.
And, along the way, the Voyageurs Cup will unite us all. The annual tournament will provide just the right number of all-Canadian games between the two levels. Toronto and Edmonton will get to know each other. Ottawa and Montreal will cook up nicely, just as Montreal and Toronto did.
When American soccer bloggers look north, they can’t understand why we can’t have our own pro league up here. They don’t get that Canada, population-wise, is longer and narrower than Chile: that money is scarce, travel is prohibitive, and the crowds just won’t turn out unless American teams are in the mix.
Understand, too: there is an appetite for all-Canadian soccer matches, but it isn’t as voracious as you might think. Imagine living in central Ohio, as many Canadian soccer-bashers tend to. How much Indianapolis, Muskegon and Quad Cities do you want before someone offers you a tasty slice of L.A.?
I’m not saying Canadian cities aren’t major-league. But we are so used to pro sports teams crossing borders, it’s become a conditioned appetite up here. The Voyageurs Cup is a shining and wonderful exception – but there will never be enough MLS-calibre franchises in this country to create a consistently interesting national league.
But with three MLS franchises, and the V-Cup offering instant derbies and rivalries for any Canadian town that rises as far as D2, pro soccer’s healthy place in the True North sporting landscape seems secure.
I’ll be watching the Montreal announcement this morning, fondly remembering the scathing e-mails I used to get, back in my Sportsnet days, when I dared suggest Canada could – nay, should! – have at least one team in MLS.
Three teams was beyond any delusional fantasy even I could concoct. And this morning – hallelujah! – here we are.
Nobody else’s soccer set-up looks like Canada’s. Scotland’s probably should, but who am I to interrupt an epic tragedy that’s been writ that deep?
However odd and strange, though, Canadian pro soccer has never been stronger than it is right now. Room for growth is clear, as well.
Anyone who’s ever been part of either the debate or the process – fans, owners, players, bureaucrats, writers – can certainly stand and take a little bow this morning.
We did it.
(And we ain’t done, neither.)
Onward!