Even if you aren't from Montreal, there's a decent chance you experienced bouts of delirious excitement during the Impact's run as Canada's first-ever representative in the CONCACAF Champions League, back in 2008-09.
They were, after all, a scrappy second-division squad that featured a Canadian head coach and a half-dozen Canadian regulars, drawn into an imposing group with the three-time Mexican champions and the 25-time Honduran champs. And while some hardcore partisans will feel differently, the truth is that Impact's disastrous collapse against Santos Laguna in the quarterfinals broke plenty of hearts right across the country.
Now here we sit, again on the precipice of history, as the Vancouver Whitecaps prepare to begin their journey as Canada's first-ever representative in the MLS playoffs. But oh, how times have changed... or so it appears, anyway.
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Right off the hop, some would take umbrage with my reference to the Whitecaps as a "representative" of Canada in this tournament; indeed, while the winner of the Voyageurs Cup is officially Canada's representative in the Champions League, each MLS club ultimately represents nothing but itself in league competition.
Still, in a largely asymmetrical bi-national league such as MLS, it's tough not to feel that the fates of the three Canadian clubs are -- if nothing else, at least perceptually -- intertwined to some extent. More to the point, the fates of the three Canadian MLS clubs are intertwined with the country's development system and the men's national team.
And that's what raised some hackles about the Whitecaps -- particularly among some from outside the Lower Mainland, it's worth noting.
Whitecaps president Bob Lenarduzzi's efforts to reduce or eliminate the Canadian quota, combined with the reluctance of successive Whitecaps head coaches to give playing time to Canadian youngsters such as Philippe Davies and Russell Teibert, has led to a belief among some that the Whitecaps are not only indifferent to the advancement of the game in Canada, but an actual impediment to it.
Those buying into this belief system could be forgiven for failing to extend their best wishes to the Caps as they prepare to take on the L.A. Galaxy. But Lenarduzzi has defended his stance on the contemporary quota by suggesting that he's playing the long game -- establishing the Whitecaps as a successful franchise now, in order to fully ensconce the team in the market's consciousness and lay the groundwork for future generations of Canadian talent.
The fates of Canadian franchises in two other major sports seems to lend some credence to this theory.
Major League Baseball has seen an unprecedented uptick in the preponderance of legitimate Canadian talent over the past decade, in the likes of Joey Votto, Russell Martin, Justin Morneau, Jason Bay, Eric Gagne, Rich Harden and a number of others. All of those players would have been wide-eyed kids just as the Blue Jays made national headlines with their World Series triumphs in 1992 and 1993.
Skip over to the NBA, and those close to Canada Basketball are excited about a forthcoming surge in our national team's hopes, buoyed by the likes of current NBAers such as Joel Anthony, Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph, but also by kids such as Andrew Wiggins, a potential number-one draft pick down the road. What was happening while these guys were wide-eyed kids? The Raptors were making their first charge in the NBA playoffs, one missed three-pointer away from reaching the conference finals.
Sure, those could all be coincidences. But this small sampling of anecdotal evidence -- and just common sense, really -- would suggest that when young athletes have something to which they can readily and identifiably aspire, it drives their desire to maximize their own potential.
Just ask former Canadian men's national team captain Jason de Vos, whose mind was made up about pursuing soccer (rather than hockey) after he saw Canada qualify for the 1986 World Cup... which would have happened when de Vos was in the same "wide-eyed kid" bracket as previously mentioned.
So a deep Whitecaps playoff run in 2012 or 2013 may not do very much for Teibert, Bryce Alderson or Caleb Clarke. But we can only imagine what it might do for youngsters watching the games on television in Vancouver, elsewhere in the Lower Mainland, or anywhere in the country.
All of this grand theorizing doesn't do much of anything for the men's national team in the short term (and may end up having no actual impact in the long term either). Nor does it do anything to placate Whitecaps fans who are sheepish -- even disappointed -- about their team's qualification for the playoffs, insofar as it would seem to validate an approach with which they don't agree (head coach Martin Rennie's widely-questioned "Scottish experiment").
Also, the nature of soccer is much different than baseball or basketball. The Whitecaps face a win-or-go-home scenario on Thursday night. Even an upset victory would guarantee them nothing more than two more games, a home-and-away showdown with San Jose. It's not especially conducive to the sort of ongoing captivation that a hard-fought best-of-five or -seven series can provide to a wider audience.
Still. All it takes is one game, one moment to light a spark within a player. For a kid, thinking of pursuing their sporting dreams, such moments can be magnified.
And so while, yes, my support naturally drifts towards Toronto FC; and yes, there are some flaws in Lenarduzzi's reasoning at it relates to the quota; and yes, even some dyed-in-the-wool Whitecaps fans are taking the "let's just be happy to be here" approach, I will be hoping for a Vancouver playoff victory.
Because whether or not they're "Canada's team" (no club side ever truly is), they are a Canadian team. And at the end of the day, that's good enough for me.
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