Every rare and fleeting home game for Canada’s national men’s soccer team is a snapshot of where we stand.
Saturday’s 0-2 loss to young, rebuilding Peru was a disappointment on the field, with the attacking trio of Dwayne de Rosario, Rob Friend and Simeon Jackson producing zero dangerous combination moves.
So I want to put some attention onto the other ongoing story at BMO Field that night – the stands.
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Empty seats, alas, were the dominant life form on the night. The north and upper-west stands were completely empty, and what remained was no better than half full. Attendance was announced at 10,000, but was two-thirds of that – tops.
Of that number, Peruvians outnumbered Canadians. But the Canadian support section, behind the south goal, sang, stomped and thundered all night long – not even slightly subsiding when a brief and heavy rainfall soaked and scattered the Peru people just before halftime.
Typical BMO Field weather, by the way! Wind, cold, and rain, followed by hot, gleaming sunshine.
I don’t much feel like declaring a disaster here. It’s the down-point in the international soccer cycle, and Friday of the Labour Day weekend is probably the lowest-population day in Toronto’s entire calendar.
But I do have what I hope will be a helpful suggestion for how those acres of empty seats should have been filled.
The minute we know we’re only selling half the tickets – and that wasn’t exactly a secret – here’s what the Canadian Soccer Association ought to do:
Get on the horn to every youth soccer club in the GTA, and offer the empty seats to groups of young players – at five bucks a pop.
I stood high atop the west grandstand, looking down at thousands of empty seats, with a tight smattering of Peruvians below. That view would have been improved greatly by dozens of busloads of youngsters from Oakville, Glen Shields, North Scarborough, Pickering, Woodbridge, Newmarket, Ajax – any and everywhere the beautiful game is played in and around Toronto.
This, by the way, is exactly how the Montreal Impact jammed the Olympic Stadium for the Santos Laguna CONCACAF match two seasons ago. Sell as many as you can, and deal everything else cheap to the kids.
Right away, the energy level gets cranked up, along with the volume of pro-Canada cheering. The kids get to see their national team play, and who knows who gets inspired to do what after that?
Saturday was the first time Canada has played on real grass at BMO, and that’s a big step forward. But the attendance problem has to be addressed.
The actual number of Canada fans in the park was almost certainly below 3,000. (Call me a liar all you want, John. I took the time to count the Peruvians and empty seats.)
These aren’t the dark days of the “Sack the CSA” black shirt protest of 2007. Many things have changed since then, largely for the better. But that’s a dismal number of fans showing up to support Canada – worse, I would argue, than the Canada-Honduras night of horror in Montreal two years ago.
As long as such things are possible, sailing half the tickets to the clubs simply has to happen. Tomorrow’s fans and players get a cheap, exciting treat, thousands more seats get filled, and the CSA actually makes a bit more cash on the deal.
Given how little was actually on the line, it wouldn’t be fair dismiss the Peru match as a step backward. But we sure didn’t go forward on the night – and here comes Honduras-in-Montreal II on Tuesday night.
So – where were you on Saturday?
Onward!