Media Coverage of MLS Supporters
Steven Wells has begotten quite a spawn: ever since Britain’s punk-poet threw a shaky spotlight on MLS supporters’ groups, and pumped up by the arrival of David Beckham, there has been a torrent of articles in the media supposedly shedding light on this heretofore unknown world.
This week have come three more articles in the mainstream press: one in the Washington Post, as Josh and Max noted yesterday, was excellent; another, in the New York Observer by Vince Levy, was also very good; and today comes a piece in the Guardian by John Doyle, on Toronto FC fans.
There is no doubting the success of TFC thus far, and much credit goes to U-Sector and the Red Patch Boys. Our very own RPB, Michael, has covered it here. It’s certainly good to see them get major coverage overseas, so credit to the Guardian on that score.
But to completely ignore the years of solid support for other MLS teams (as documented so well by David Montgomery in the Post today in DC’s case), as this article does, strikes me as pretty churlish.
In other MLS cities soccer barely registers. Here, there was immediate fanaticism. Nobody had to explain to the offspring of Italian and Portuguese immigrants - or those from England, Scotland, Ireland, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Poland …keep going until you’ve got the most ethnically diverse city mix imaginable - what to do at a game and how to enjoy it.
. . .
Fans who couldn’t get tickets for the first FC games had to watch on TV. Now, other MLS teams are lucky if a game is shown on the obscure cable channel ESPN 2. Here, Toronto FC had an immediate TV deal with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), an over-the-air channel, publicly-funded, available to anyone in Canada, free.
ESPN2 might be a cable channel, but it’s hardly “obscure”: the arrival of Thursday night soccer on that channel has been a small but important step for the league, one that has to compete with a panoply of sports deeply embedded in American culture. The sudden success of Toronto doesn’t negate the slow but steady growth of soccer in the U.S. since 1996, nor the tireless work of Barra Brava or Section 8.
I don’t really understand why reporting on the success of Toronto FC so far — which has undoubtedly been good for the league — has to dovetail with an unnecessary denigration of soccer south of the Canadian border. Toronto needs MLS as much as MLS needs Toronto, let us not forget.
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The Guardian’s contributor of that piece is a Canadian TV critic. Remember that it’s awfully tough to get into a comparative cross-border discussion of shared segments of North American popular culture without tripping over the disproportionate role of anti-Americanism (benign or not) in defining Canadian national identity. That kind of thing is especially common in sports, unfortunately.
Just a quick thought, which I’ll try and expand upon a little later, after getting some work (blah) done.
Toronto FC and its fans have certainly provided a fine spectacle for the league in their first year. I’ve got plenty of admiration for them. But between their horn auto-blowing (fair enough, everyone has a right) and eagerness to cast themselves as something above and beyond anything ever seen in North American soccer…something ought to be considered.
There would be no Toronto FC, Red Patch Boys or any of that, were it not for the ESC, Screaming Eagles, Section 8, and other long-time supporters organizations - all of which have been every bit the equal of Toronto’s fans, and have proved durable too, each through some pretty lean stretches (some leaner than others.) Because MLS (I am convinced) would have ceased to operate long ago, or at best would have dissipated into a totally anodyne and irrelevant experience, without those groups bringing what they bring to the show. So, good job Toronto and please keep it up, it’s great to be excited about your side…but don’t get too far ahead of yourselves. Speaking as someone who remembers when 21k in the Swamp on a Wednesday night was a bit of a letdown.
People may not think so but a lot of Toronto supporters do realize and respect what other groups around the league have done and endured over the last decade plus. I know I do. They also have observed how fast things can change in some MLS cities. Call me bias (I am from Toronto afterall) or call me ignorant but have we ever seen anything like Toronto FC in Major League Soccer before?
It’s one thing to have large passionate supporter groups, they are all over the league, but when have we seen such a demand for tickets in any city in MLS? 14,000 season tickets, a waiting list of over 5,000 that grows bigger everyday and every ticket for this season sold out before a single game was played. All this with very limited marketing from the management, no gimmicks and no crazy priced tickets just because some English soccer/pop star was showing up.
Don’t get me wrong even I’ve heard enough about Toronto this season and some of the stories are just ridiculous, ignorant and to a point almost embarrassing. However in the end I’m not sure this league has seen anything like this before. Hopefully the clubs which have attendance issues and the new expansion clubs can look to why Toronto FC has been so successful thus far.
Ah, Canada…
Can anyone answer me this: Why do they insist on maintaining the CFL? Do an extra man and 10 yards really make the game that different?
But, I digress. It’s annoyed me this entire season that Toronto’s fans seem to think that they are somehow God’s gift to the world. What particular aspect of that belief annoys me the most still escapes my complete understanding, but I still try to figure it out.
Perhaps it’s the fact that they’ve been around for one year, supporting a very mediocre team, and yet they act as though they were a well-established and storied Barra Brava direct from Buenos Aires, which has just been discovered by soccer anthropologists from the States who only this year decided to look NORTH of the border?
Or maybe that, although they are passionate, they are still in anglophone North America, so soccer is still laughed at by a large part of the population (so who really cares that 20 000 screaming fans show up)?
Or that these Canadians continue to drown their Gold Cup sorrows, not by rightly claiming that the goal should not have been called offsides, but rather by claiming a superior supporters group?
Whatever the most annoying aspect of the Toronto FC fans is, it’s awfully annoying.
I’m not sure I see your point Matth? It takes a rather large and loud group to be so annoying. Whether you think Toronto supporters are arrogant or ignorant or both, what has gone on in Toronto this year can only be good for the league.
Soccer may not always be front page news in Toronto but it’s far from being laughed at by the population, and that was the case well before Toronto FC arrived.