Okay. The Columbus thing was cute.
1-1 with the defending champs, keeping them winless in a game Toronto FC could – and likely should – have lost. The Crew pressured the Reds off the ball for huge stretches of the game, but missed a couple of fat juicy empty nets before halftime. Poor finishing cost them, and they still haven’t won.
Funniest suggestion I heard yesterday was that two – and only two – Toronto fans should journey south for the July rematch in Ohio, and put up a large banner in the empty south stand at Crew Stadium:
“Actually, it’s your fault.”
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
I don’t take a particular editorial stand on this one. I just know it’s funny.
The Toronto-Columbus rivalry is more friction than fact. For fans of Canada’s three men’s professional soccer clubs, the real rivalry games start … now.
And yes, I know the Canadian pro championship tournament has a corporate sponsor, but there’s any number of other places you can read and hear about that. Here at Onward!, it’s all about the Voyageurs Cup.
Now up for grabs for the eighth time, the cup was dreamed up, commissioned, paid for and donated by members of the Voyageurs, Canada’s national soccer supporters’ organization. Until last season, it was competed for only by Canadian members of USL-1 or the old A-League. The Montreal Impact have won it all seven times the mug’s been on offer.
Last year, when CONCACAF gifted Canada with a spot in its new Champions League, the V-Cup went prime time. Toronto FC, the Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps played a six-game round robin – which Montreal famously won.
V-C VIII kicks off this Wednesday evening on the Toronto waterfront, with the USL-1 champion Whitecaps visiting a rebuilt and resurgent TFC. A year ago, Vancouver won here on Canada Day – and that loss was the crucial block that allowed Montreal to squeeze home victorious, launching their giddy run to the continental quarterfinals.
Since then, Vancouver has become an MLS team-in-waiting. When that deal goes down in 2011, these two teams will likely be playing each other four times a year, and time zones be darned!
That’s a lot more rivalry fodder than yellow shirts and boorish cops. It was nice of the Crew to be the last team in before The Show starts, though. The contrast should be apparent to everyone.
Odd situation, yes? Toronto FC’s hottest MLS rivalry pales by comparison to the Canadian derbies – even when the yellow guys are carting around the MLS Champions Cup.
It’s not that the VC is a bigger, better cup. Any Toronto fan would love to celebrate an MLS championship some day. It’s not even right to say the Voyageurs Cup is more attainable – because that opens the door to the obvious flaw that the only other two sides eligible for the thing play in a lower league.
What is certainly attainable though – regardless of league, as Montreal proved last summer – is a place in a high-level international competition that feeds directly to the World club championships, where TFC/Impact/Whitecaps might one day lock ankles with Manchester United or Boca Juniors or Barcelona or Flamengo.
And along the way, six fine rivalry matches – which all have upset potential, and which will all deepen and fire up Canadian pro soccer history, which had suffered dreadful, debilitating neglect these past few decades.
For many Toronto FC fans, this week’s Vancouver game – and Montreal’s hotly anticipated visit on May 13 – are THE games of the TFC home season. The tournament’s capper – Toronto at Montreal on June 18 – is a very hot ticket, even though the whole thing could easily be sowed up by then. Toronto fans I talked with over the weekend said the Montreal trip was either the nexus point of everything, or what-the-heck-a-trip-to-Montreal?
Columbus, bless them, can’t match that.
By comparison, July’s what-the-heck-a-trip-to-Columbus? is a glacially cold ticket here. (And while glaciers may be melting everywhere else in the world, this one’s firming up just nicely, thanks.)
New York, Chicago and Boston could probably heat up to this level with Toronto fans some day, but the on-field history just isn’t there yet. (Toronto’s NASL Soccer Bowl finals were against Minnesota, Tulsa and Chicago. Chicago was a rivalry, but the league folded almost the next day.)
The TFC fan phenomenon is based on a real team, a real stadium, and real fans who’d never had either until just two short years ago. The only missing ingredient is intense rivalry. MLS is a league where all teams are created pretty much equally, and it presently lacks an enticing geographic hook for Toronto sports fans. (Columbus is close, and things got nasty. That’s it.)
The Voyaguers Cup solves this problem – in just exactly the right dosage.
Toronto’s still here, MLS. The season still matters and the playoff hunt’s still on. But you’re just going to have to excuse us if we’re a little bit … distracted for the next six weeks.
Onward!