One by one the players have trickled back to Toronto. Whether they are fresh faced supplementary draft picks or former German internationals, it’s like Christmas morning at BMO Field with Aron Winter a Dutch version of a moderately dysthymic Santa.
Fans, of course, are the Grinch – well, a more sarcastic, less hopeful and generally bitter version of him anyway.
After all, they are living through year six of Mo’s five year plan, rather than the second of Winter’s three year one. They keep the noose off the neck only with the realization that they aren’t Whitecaps fans preparing to see Martin Rennie’s great D2 in MLS experiment play out.
They also have five games with the Impact to look forward to – no such thing as too much of a good thing in MLS 2012! Tic tac and all that.
But, by and large though this isn’t baseball – you’ll find no over the top, sappy analogies about the meaning of life and glory of $13.75 beers in soccer. Nope, there is no poetry in soccer. Just pain. Lots of pain.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
Pain of another damn year without a centreback in Toronto, apparently. Hopefully that’s a “yet” and Winter and Co are going to fix that glaring problem soon. Those nooses might go on the necks if we hit year seven of the Scotsman's plan.
A Red Dawn will appear during the pre-season. It shall provide all the links, snarky comment and occasional insight that any Reds' fan could ever need.
Will it provide hope too? Sure, it will. Against our better judgment we do have hope for Toronto in 2012. You’d think that the law of averages would set in at some point. Making the playoffs in MLS is the epitome of shooting low hanging fruit in a barrel (or something like that anyway).
However, we’ve also been there. We’ve heard the promises and followed the infamous chase for the great centreback pairing of Du’etime and I. M. Minent. Our cynicism is well earned.
It’s said that the definition of insanity is to repeat the same behaviour over and over again while expecting a different result.
Welcome to 2012 – let’s get crazy!