There’s that lovely moment in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when the local bartender is finally convinced that the world, which is about to end, might actually be about to end.
“Lucky escape for Arsenal, if it does,” he says.
Apparently, if you believe in a vain and vengeful universe, and are convinced Saturday is the 7000th anniversary of Noah’s flood, you’re either packing for The Rapture, or bracing for tomorrow’s global earthquake, followed by five months of apocalypse, and the end of everything on October 21.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
All this after those nice ancient Mayans went to all that time and rock-walloping to tell us the ultimate deal actually goes down just shy of Christmas, 2012.
And what to make of the breaking news that former wrestler and pop-culture icon Randy “Macho Man” Savage (Do the thing! Yeah!) tragically lost his life in a car crash in Florida this morning? If the brilliantly strange and violent Savage is the first one Raptured up, we are dealing a situation no religion or sacred text in history has prepared anybody for.
October 21, as it turns out, is the day before Toronto FC’s final match of the 2011 regular season, home to the New England Revolution. If the Reds aren’t safely in the MLS playoffs at that point, that might indeed be the end of some folks’ world, in some strange and trivial respect.
BMO Field – with its graceful views of both land and sea – would be quite a lovely place to watch the world end. If you’re holding tickets for New England, you might want to show up a day early.
I’m not going to be irresponsible enough to look ahead to Sunday’s TFC match in Colorado and try to flag which players on both teams will be Raptured out of the lineup. But I do have good news for the city of Denver on the predicted global earthquake front.
If you’ve ever dabbled in the science of plate tectonics, you already know that every mountain range everywhere is the result of slowly moving tectonic plates colliding over millions and millions of years. Earthquake country, in other words.
Ah, but hold the phone! The old-testament timeline of this particular apocalypse scenario rejects plate tectonics. Its backers claim the world is only a few thousand years old, not nearly long enough for what actually happened. “God made them mountains, not earthquakes.” Therefore, if they’re right, Colorado is not an earthquake zone.
Which means the non-Raptured players of Toronto FC – fixture-backlogged, jet-lagged and lucky beyond words not to have been beaten by three clear goals in the Voyageurs Cup in Vancouver – will have to find a way to get a result against the MLS champions, who enjoy the snarkiest nature-induced home advantage in the league.
Dick’s Sporting Goods Park (worst stadium name – ever?) sits a mile up in the thin, chilled air of the Rockies, and of course sports the largest, longest, widest playing field allowed by FIFA rules.
This mean-minded “advantage” didn’t exactly make the Rapids champions a year ago, as they lost two and drew five of fifteen league home games. But it’s a heck of a thing to run into at the end of a road trip – and The Rapture.
Assuming he hasn’t been taken up by then (and – again – no judgment in that), young Joao Plata has been really lighting it up for the Torontos, with dashing runs and fine passes on the left side. Problem with that, of course, is that it isn’t enough. Vancouver Whitecaps defender Jonathan Leathers let it be known before the V-Cup game kicked off that he planned to offer the young, diminutive Plata some “special attention.”
As it turned out, Plata left Vancouver largely unleathered, but one has to assume that the MLS defenders left behind after The Rapture will likely be of the crunch-tackling persuasion. That means Toronto needs to cook something up on the right.
In Vancouver, that was provided sweetly by a series of darting runs – and a fine late assist – from Nick Soolsma. Only problem? Pretty much everything he did well was built off the same little stutter-step run – something every defender in MLS is being briefed on as we speak. If Soolsma is still upon the planet come kick-off, he needs another way to fool people. The ongoing development of Toronto’s attack could be shut down, if not.
It certainly doesn’t mean the Reds can’t score. Maicon Santos’s de-flick-tion goal was a lovely little piece of soccer magic – and both Plata and striker Alan Gordon have showed they can find net out of nothing as well. But creating something out of something – consistently – is a far more reliable way to make the playoffs.
There’s no guarantee that any of these youthful bouts of creativity will help Toronto earn a result in the airless vastness of Colorado. But there are, at least, some signs that things are moving forward – even if the team, overall, is still far too interested in going backwards.
These things take time, and it’s important to see if TFC is willing – and able – to add useful strings to their long-suffering attacking bow.
But, either way, it won’t be the end of the world.
Onward!