By: Michael Crampton
Three years ago, fans of Toronto FC packed BMO Field for a CONCACAF Champions League qualifying round match against the Puerto Rico Islanders of lower tier USL. While the match was part of that year’s season ticket package demand was strong enough to induce the club to sell tickets in the temporary seating installed in the north end of the stadium for the friendly against Real Madrid. Two years ago, a draw in Honduras against CD Motagua and qualification to the group stage of the tournament was heralded as a historic step forward for the club. Last year, as the club neared the end of the season, debates raged amongst supporters over whether the team should rest players in league matches in favour of solely prioritizing the Champions League. The final group stage game against Dallas was viewed by groups of fans at home and in bars across Southern Ontario and Toronto FC organized an official viewing party at owner MLSE’s Real Sports Bar & Grill. Only months ago, over 40,000 fans, the vast majority wearing the red of TFC, filled the Rogers Centre in early March for the CCL quarterfinal against the LA Galaxy and created one of the most memorable nights in Toronto sports of the last decade.
Tuesday night, in El Salvador, Toronto FC will play CD Aguila in a true must win match needing victory to keep alive their slim hopes of advancing in the 2012-2013 edition of the tournament. For the most part, few people – fans, supporters, consumers, or otherwise - seem to care very deeply. Only the hardest of die hards, those with a seemingly incurable addiction to the travails of Toronto FC, are likely to make a point of actually tuning in. On their fourth foray in and the fifth edition of the tournament the scales have fallen from the eyes of Toronto fans: their club has little chance of winning the CCL title and, short of that, there’s little glory to be achieved in continental soccer in North and Central America.
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Part of that is down to changes in the format of the tournament, part is down to experience, but, more than anything else, it’s just down to Toronto FC not being very good. It’s very hard to sustain the illusion that your club is competing in an elite tournament for the best clubs on the continent when they’re capable of losing nine matches in a row to start the season, not winning again for ten in a row later in the year, and currently bring up the rear of their entire league by a considerable margin. That such a club is capable of comfortably beating their opposition for Tuesday night 5-1 at home was a welcome relief on the evening but hardly a sign that Aguila are a continental heavyweight worth investing significance in defeating. Granted, on the day, Aguila may have been tired and unmotivated but they have subsequently, as expected, lost both their matches to Santos Laguna and currently enjoy a -13 goal differential at the bottom of Group 1.
The change in format to this season’s CCL has been a double negative for Toronto. In previous years it’s virtually certain that a club like Aguila would not have made it through the qualifying round and into the group stage. The fact is that Central American soccer only has about four to six clubs capable of making serious progress in the Champions League. TFC would have been grouped with one of those clubs, another American MLS side, and a Mexican club for six meaningful matches with, notwithstanding their horrible form, a reasonable chance of advancement. Now, they essentially face a home and away knockout tie with Santos Laguna with the banana skin of two matches against Aguila thrown in on the side. While travel, expense, and impact on league seasons has been reduced by shortening the group stage it has, for Toronto FC, resulted in a particularly unpalatable mix of little hope and few meaningful matches.
In the end, regardless of interest in the match, Toronto FC simply must win. They’ll likely have to do so without Richard Eckersley who picked up a concussion in Saturday night’s match in LA and joins the list of expensively remunerated injured Reds. Aguila will surely be better than they were in Toronto and, even though they’ve already been eliminated, one would think that pride in the badge would provide ample motivation to avenge their embarrassing performance in the first match of the group. Away in Central America is always tricky and it’s far from impossible that Toronto might slip up and lose or draw rendering the final game against Santos Laguna moot. At this point, in a season of misery, an early end to all illusions of progression might be a final mercy; more likely though, it would just be another stick for critics to beat Toronto FC with.