By Mike Crampton
In the context of MLS, and possibly North American sports more generally, there may be no more overly discussed notion than the concept of parity.
Hang out in an online message forum dedicated to some aspect of the league for any length of time and you’ll quickly learn how much of a hot button issue it is for many fans: some cherish it, others begrudgingly accept it, while still others revile it with the sort of white hot passion normally reserved for opposing teams.
Through all of the discussion there is one central notion that goes virtually unchallenged: that MLS is a league designed for parity. What parity means in practice – is it more of a year-to-year thing or closer to visionary NFL commissioner Bert Bell’s famous concept of “any given Sunday”? – may not even be agreed upon but virtually no one disputes the central premise.
Draft picks, a uniform salary budget, allocation order, weighted lotteries, allocation dollars for finishing out of the playoffs... it sometimes seems like the league has more pages of rules design to induce parity amongst its members than there are actual Laws of the Game of football.
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Of course TFC fans learned a lesson in 2012 previously reserved for fans of teams like D.C. United in 2010 or the New York Red Bulls in 2009: while the rules of MLS might make it harder to be a truly great team for a sustained period of time they certainly can’t prevent you from being terrible in the short term.
Bone-achingly, excruciatingly, grindingly terrible.
Toronto FC’s 23 points from 34 games is the sort of form that would see any team “relegated by Christmas” in one of Western Europe’s top leagues.
Yet through it all, one of the biggest sources of parity, the most obvious really, is so easily overlooked and taken for granted: the game itself.
In the end, in a game of football, both teams get to start with 11 players, the score begins at 0-0, they’re each playing by the same rules, and the referee is (theoretically) not favouring either side.
It’s how, even with a difference in resources that dwarfs anything imaginable in MLS, Freddy Eastman can become a legend at Southend United by scoring the goal that eliminated Manchester United from the League Cup in 2006. Or, more locally, how a tiny island nation like St. Kitts and Nevis, with a population smaller than North Bay, Ontario, can tie a G7 country like Canada in a game that was officially part of the FIFA World Cup.
British football even has an expression, “it’s a funny old game”, to sum up these sort of incongruous results. It’s a sport where you can dominate for 89 and a half minutes, fail to score, and lose because your goalkeeper let the ball roll over his foot on a back pass.
So TFC fans take heart; your team still has a chance. It even looks like they’ll be able to field 11 players in red at the start of the match. It’s not likely that we’ll get to see what new coach Ryan Nelsen means by “defend to attack” as a philosophy in practice or really get to see how Kevin Payne has started to rebuild this team but they’ll still have a chance.
With the late news, courtesy of the Toronto Sun’s Kurtis Larson, that, in addition to goalkeeper Stefan Frei, three presumed opening day starters – midfielder Julio Cesar and attackers Luis Silva and Justin Braun – are not even with the team, and with the club waiting on the papers to clear on at least one new signing, projecting a formation or starting line-up for TFC is a effort in futility.
You can add to that questions over the fitness of centre back Danny Califf, who seemed as though he was being protected during the club’s few preseason matches.
In fact, one suspects that it is only the domed roof of BC Place that is preventing TFC from considering literally parachuting a player in ahead of the opening kickoff of the season. Based on the time difference between the west coast of North America and the UK it’s even possible that Ryan Nelsen is actually in a helicopter circling over London’s lower league grounds desperately looking for another player or two on the morning of matchday.
Watch out Brentford! That cup performance at home against Chelsea turned heads and Toronto is a club on the move!
But, for all that, they’ve still got a chance.