First off, congratulations are in order to Real Salt Lake, which on Tuesday night became the first MLS team to qualify for the final of the CONCACAF Champions League, beating Deportivo Saprissa 3-2 on aggregate. Kinda wish the team to earn that designation had a less embarrassing name, but hey, you take what you can get.
But there's more than regional chest-thumping involved in supporting RSL in this ongoing quest. There's also the prospect of some real benefits materializing in the years to come.
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For Canadian supporters, the most obvious benefit is the invaluable experience being gained by 24-year-old Will Johnson, a key midfielder for RSL and an increasingly integral part of the national team setup. If Canada is to have any hope of qualifying for the World Cup, they'll have to excel in environments full of hostile fans -- exactly the sorts of places RSL has had to play games during this CCL run, such as Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama and Toronto.
RSL's success (and it ain't over yet) is also helping to, let's not kid ourselves, legitimize the tournament in the eyes of northern North American fans. As RSL general manager Garth Lagerway told The American Soccer Show, the team made a conscious decision to prioritize the CCL over, say, useless midseason friendlies -- and it's paying dividends. If RSL can win the whole shebang and qualify for the Club World Cup, we're then presented with a Major League Soccer squad playing against, potentially, Barcelona or Manchester United (or Schalke, at this rate) in an (ostensibly) meaningful tournament.
The average North American fan may not quite grasp the significance of the CCL as of yet; but having the MLS marketing machine (hey, stop laughing) throw its weight behind a meaningful (again, ostensibly) matchup between RSL and Barca/United/whoever could only do good things for the perception of the CCL in the United States and Canada.
By extension, it creates ever greater awareness of the down-the-road potential of winning the Voyageurs Cup. Now, does FC Edmonton have a particularly good chance of ending up in the 2012 Club World Cup? I'm gonna guess not. But the ability to present Nutrilite Canadian Championship games as not just a regional rivalry, but as the potential starting point down the road to playing against Barca/United/whoever... that could have some power. If nothing else, it helps reinforce the inherent connection (deny it as some MLS diehards might) between our funny little setup in northern North America, and the beautiful game as played everywhere else on the planet.
RSL's success doesn't just give northern North American fans the chance to cheer an MLS squad this year, it also lays down the template for how your team could do it next year. After the Montreal Impact's surprising (and inspiring) run in the 2008-09 CCL, many Canadian fans were convinced that the V-Cup winner wasn't merely an also-ran participant in the continental tournament -- they could be a real competitor!
Sure, TFC's subsequent two performances kinda 86ed that optimism to some extent, but the visions of 55,000 at Stade Olympique for Montreal v. Santos Laguna surely surely still dance in the heads of many fans in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and now Edmonton, dreaming that it could be their side participating in a showcase event like that.
Perhaps I'm only preaching to the converted a little here. I'd wager that most soccer fans in Canada and the United States are unaware of -- and frankly, couldn't give a toss about -- Real Salt Lake's victory on Tuesday night, and their upcoming appearance in the CONCACAF Champions League final, against either Monterrey or Cruz Azul.
I'm not claiming that RSL's success will instantly lend the CCL legitimacy and attention within Canada and the U.S. But when any cultural or attitudinal shift occurs, the groundwork is always laid at some time, by someone.
Think of it this way: Ten years ago, if someone had told you that TSN, during hockey season, would be leading off an edition of SportsCentre with a soccer game between Vancouver and Toronto, would you have believed them?
This run by RSL could be a one-off anomaly. Or it could be the start of something really significant. We shall see.