Lord help us, it’s hard to be a TFC fan. And sometimes in North America, it’s just hard being a soccer fan, period.
Soccer is undergoing extraordinary growth right now on this side of the Atlantic, despite the best efforts of the people who actually own the teams and promote the game. That’s because the internet has magnified the fan experience, allowing trans-national rivalries to grow between supporter groups much more readily, and because MLS has cottoned on to the “fan experience.”
And the fan experience is what soccer is about. It’s about supporting a club, being part of a community. When TFC came into the league seven seasons ago, the efforts of supporter groups to create the right atmosphere in BMO is what sold the team to the city.
No amount of delusion by those working for the club at the time will change that, because in every other respect, TFC has been a disaster. It has higher ticket prices than most clubs in Europe, yet can’t sign a consistent scoring threat. It’s finally gotten a back line leader in Stephen Caldwell just this season, after seven years of futile defence. It’s been a clearing house for pampered, soft, spoiled Canadian international players. And it has blown every draft chance it has had to build a winner through the traditional route of consistent losing.
Truly, if one were to look at the first seven years of any sports franchise on Earth, it would be hard to find one that has been more horribly messed up.
And yet, by financial measures TFC has been a golden goose.
The trouble is, that’s how its owners have looked at it. And there is no Golden Goose, just a golden level of fan support.
If the Toronto Argonauts move into BMO field, the city can kiss TFC goodbye. It will be the final straw, the last example of pinheaded executives with too much clout and not enough knowledge of the game destroying what made it successful in Toronto at the gate.
And yet that is the rumor, that the end of the lease deal at Rogers Center means a move to the smaller venue.
On the simplistic face of it, it makes sense. Most stadiums are underutilized, Montreal benefited from a move to a more cozy environment, and the league’s most successful fan franchise, Seattle, plays on turf.
But like I said, that’s incredibly simplistic.
For one, Seattle fans have never had grass or a Soccer Specific Stadium. They’ve had an NFL stadium (narrower than CFL) with upper deck covered seats throughout. That wouldn’t have worked in Toronto, because it’s larger, with more pro sports options. The sole reason Toronto fans bought into the team the way they did was that it represented proper professional soccer for the very first time in the city: a soccer-specific venue that put fans on top of the action along the sidelines and which, eventually, had the right playing surface to support the game.
For another, Seattle has put decent teams on the field. Every move Toronto has made on the pitch has not only been a god-awful disaster, it’s been a predictable god-awful disaster to anyone with even a modicum of football intelligence. Hands-off upper management has allowed a handful of smooth, underperforming corporate hucksters and former players not only weasel their way into roles they obviously can’t handle, but it has left them there.
Toronto FC has become the epitome of corporate hubris over perception; the profit has left it with the utter delusion that it’s something more than a bubble about to burst. But if the Argos move into BMO, Ryan Nelsen won’t have more than next year to turn it around. Even a winning team won’t be enough to make up for field turf and gridlines. The sophisticated fan, which makes up a fair chunk of TFC’s rapidly dwindling season ticket base, just won’t stand for it.
In the last few years, several of which were part of my former career as a journalist, I’ve had the chance to talk to quite a few football executives in Canada, all with losing teams and businesses failing at varying speeds. They all had the same things in common: they all thought that work with vast sums of money in other areas of expertise somehow gave them ability in the football world. What they should have done was hired successful, experienced people to do it for them – and I don’t mean at the corporate level, where success is the right handshake at the right time away and people who do little more than break even are lauded as saviors. Hiring the right president is based on his or her ability to lube the business community into backing a product – anyone who’s worked for a large company knows it to be true, knows that half the corporate presidents out there literally couldn’t do the jobs of many of their underlings. It’s not their strong suit.
What TFC has needed from day one is a previously successful manager with a transfer kitty, a staff budget, and an ownership group that will otherwise get the hell out of the way. That has never happened.
Even some of the people who’ve had prior success, such as the new president Tim Lieweke, show a profound and startling naivete publicly at times, such as announcing outwardly their upper limit for a single player DP as $25 million. Great. Now they’re going to end up paying something close to that for any major target. Why? Because if I’m an agent, I know they’re willing. Or Kevin Payne, announcing we’re about to bring a great player in because that player’s club, Napoli, has accepted a transfer fee … but before the player has agreed a deal. How bush league is that? Jesus tap dancing Christ, even the most average Football Manager fan learns not to mouth off publicly. Most football business should be kept close to the chest and one gets a feeling that over the years, TFC has hired a lot of loudmouths who say a lot, but don’t get a whole lot done.
Go ahead, put the Argos in BMO. And you think hardcore fans won’t care?
You know what? You’re right. We almost don’t care anymore now, and that’s after seven years, every minute, every game.
But hey, maybe I’m wrong. I’m just a fan.
|