Probably not the TFC guy (right) winning this year
Can you be a sports fan and be content that your team is out of contention? Maybe you can.
I was a fervent supporter of the Canadiens around the time that the Toronto Maple Leafs were winning Stanley Cups by beating them. Then I grew up. Since then I've been a pretty casual sports watcher, not much invested in winners and losers. It would be fun in Toronto if the Leafs won a championship again. But I can wait, you know. I do follow the Tour de France and to root for the Canadians in it, but I follow the show more than sweat over who may win.
A few years ago, to my own surprise I did drifted into watching soccer regularly, occasionally at the stadium, more often on television. Soccer has two big attractions for me. The pace is such that you can actually follow it, and after a while one begins to see how teams develop their attack and plan their attack. The strategy can be comprehended -- and observed as it plays out. The other thing: unlike hockey and football, at least, you can follow a team and quickly find that all the individual players are bareheaded and can actually be identified and followed. Also you can see them play live without taking out a mortgage for the tickets, and the crowds are small enough to make it kinda homey.
So I've become a Toronto FC supporter. If you are going to follow a team, it might as well be your hometown team. Happily, I got into this just as they became the best team in the league and brought home all the trophies.
They don't do that now.
Watching TFC means watching them lose... a lot. In the last week or two, they desperately tried to win one or two games to clinch, not even a real playoff spot, but a chance to join a "play-in" to determine the final entrants to the real playoffs. I felt for them every time they controlled a game and failed to score. Or got blown out. Or blew a lead by starting fights and getting their stars thrown out of the game.
If they somehow qualified, they were going to be eliminated fast They really did not look like a playoff team. So what the hell, why pollute the real competition.
I'm not much disappointed that their last loss -- allowing a goal in the dying moments of extra time after dominating Inter Miami for most of the game -- eliminated them and ended their season before the playoffs started. They ought to be out. They ought to start improving the team now, not in another month or so.
I hope enough of them get to stay around that when next season starts, I can still identify most of their players on the field. Meanwhile I'd do something else Saturday nights.
