Fans celebrate after Toronto FC defeat the Montreal Impact 5-2 during MLS action on Nov 30 2016.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
In one year, Toronto FC went from playoff patsies to a spot in Major League Soccer's championship game and became a sporting metaphor for the city itself.
Long known as Canada's city of losers, Toronto saw its populace sour as the years without a major sports championship passed. The Maple Leafs will hit 50 years without a Stanley Cup this spring, the Blue Jays have not won a World Series since 1993 and the Raptors have never made an NBA final in their 21 years of existence. TFC matched its corporate siblings, the Leafs and Raptors, in mediocrity over its first nine seasons after Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment paid $10-million (U.S.) to the MLS for the expansion franchise.
But TFC capped a renaissance that began among Toronto's professional sports teams two years ago, when the Blue Jays, owned by Rogers Communications Inc., made the first of consecutive appearances in the American League Championship Series and the Raptors followed with a playoff run to the NBA's Eastern Conference final last spring. After winning a wild final leg in the two-game aggregate MLS Eastern Conference final over the Montreal Impact, TFC will now play host to the MLS Cup at BMO Field against the Seattle Sounders on Dec. 10.
Since TFC arguably has Toronto's most diverse fan base and unquestionably its loudest and most loyal, it is fitting that it is the first team under the MLSE umbrella to make a major championship final. While the Maple Leafs still have that corporate audience that sits in the near-silence crowds were known for in the white-bread era of Toronto The Good, TFC and its raucous supporters are the vanguard of a new age where fans represent all of the city's population groups and, perhaps coincidentally, they are rewarded with success. Either way, it has produced an unusually strong bond between TFC and its fans.
"We know this city has been waiting for a championship for a very long time," said TFC midfielder Jonathan Osorio, who knows how long since he grew up in Brampton, just northwest of Toronto. "We want to give it to them. We know we have the team to do it.
"I can't even explain it. It's been a long time. The supporters have been waiting a long time. They deserve it because most of them have stuck through everything."
Even those who have been in Toronto a relatively short time do not take any prodding to talk about how much they want to win a championship for the city. TFC players Michael Bradley and Drew Moor don't know much about the rest of Canada's long delight, for example, to see the Maple Leafs' perennial stumbles. They only see a large city with a lot of rabid sports fans who have been frustrated for too long.
"It is so special, and you can feel it," said Moor, who spent the first 12 of his 13 MLS seasons with the Colorado Rapids and his hometown FC Dallas. "I live downtown and I walk out my door and I can feel it. You turn on the TV, you open social media, the sports teams mean a lot to this city and the fans have been incredible.
"I haven't been here long but I want to win it just as much for the city of Toronto, and the people, as I do for my team and myself."
The play of TFC and the Raptors represents a major turnaround for MLSE. For years, the company's teams, in particular the Leafs, were known for on-field bumbling while the profits rolled in thanks to a blindly loyal fan base. While the turnaround started shortly before he hit town in early 2013, former MLSE president and chief executive officer Tim Leiweke can take, at the very least, a long bow for it.
Leiweke's 2-1/2-year run with MLSE may be remembered now as mostly a lot of bluster and some missteps such as talking about a Stanley Cup parade route, but he was still the first MLSE honcho to talk loudly about winning championships. He also talked a lot about how the makeup of Toronto had changed since the white-bread 1960s and how this might mean soccer and TFC would some day rule the Toronto sports scene. And he liked to say he thought TFC would become the first team under the current makeup of MLSE to win a championship. Leiweke loved TFC so much he made sure he was present for all of this fall's big playoff matches.
"He reminded me of that last night," TFC president Bill Manning said Thursday, following TFC's win over the Impact. "[Leiweke] lobbied the [MLSE] board to make some capital investments in this team, which are now paying off nicely. Tim was bold and I think this organization needed to be bold to get where we are now."
The capital investments were mostly the $100-million-plus spent on star players Jozy Altidore, Sebastian Giovinco and Bradley along with a state-of-the-art training centre in Downsview and $120-million in renovations to BMO Field. There was also an investment in management talent, with Leiweke pushing out a coach and general manager and bringing in GM Tim Bezbatchenko and head coach Greg Vanney. Manning, an MLS veteran executive who made Real Salt Lake a perennial contender, was added a year ago by MLSE chairman Larry Tanenbaum.
"What drew me here with MLSE is they wanted to win," Manning said. "The No. 1 item is winning championships. All three of us, [Leafs president] Brendan Shanahan, [Raptors president] Masai Ujiri and myself, we all feel it.
"If I had any fear that TFC would be put in the background, behind the Raptors and Leafs, it hasn't been that way at all. TFC has been part of the conversation [with the MLSE board of directors], right there with the Raptors and Leafs. The resources that our board has allocated to this team, there's nothing better with any team in the league."
While TFC, the Impact and the Vancouver Whitecaps and MLS are still not on the same level in Canada as the NHL, NBA and Major League Baseball, there are signs of significant progress. The Eastern Conference final was watched by total of 97,000 spectators at Olympic Stadium and BMO Field. On television, the audience for the second game of the final attracted and average of 1.4 million viewers on TSN and RDS, a record for an MLS game in Canada. It was also a remarkable 35-per-cent jump from the first game, which was a record until Wednesday night.
This audience was 2.2 million fewer than the average audience for last Sunday's Grey Cup game at BMO Field. However, the 3.6 million viewers for the Grey Cup was the lowest audience for the CFL's championship game since 2005. And the organizers had to paper the house with ticket giveaways to draw a crowd of 33,421, definitely not the case with the 36,000 fans who watched TFC march into the MLS Cup.