Big Story
The dramatic failure of Toronto FC this year, after a struggling season was concluded as the club blew its chance of making the playoffs by getting torn apart 5-0 by Red Bull New York, has thrown the entire direction of the team up for debate as well as the future of general manager Mo Johnston.

Paul James in the Globe and Mail says TFC have been ignoring the basic requirements in the recruitment of the team, concluding that “without a clear vision as to where you are going and then a plan as to how you are going to get there, you really have very little chance”. Meanwhile, TFC’s owners, MLSE, are forced to defend Mo and the two-year contract extension they oddly granted him in the middle of a mediocre season saying that “the direction is the right direction”. I barely dare ask if TFC fans agree: the club may be profitable, but failing to make the playoffs in its first three seasons is obviously unacceptable performance-wise.

Johnston is lucky that TFC do not have the same system as Seattle, where the supporters’ membership get to vote on their general manager every four years and can call a special election in between. Drew Carey, the Seattle Sounders celebrity part-owner, is interviewed by the Sports Business Journal, and says it was this system itself that prompted him to get involved in MLS, as he discusses the highs and lows of ownership.

Self-aggrandizing perhaps, Carey says he loves being involved with Seattle because “you can see which teams are run by people who love the game and which teams are run by accountants. There are a lot of teams out there strictly run by accountants,” pointing at the riches being made by the ever-struggling Detroit Lions in the NFL.  Carey continues, “Joe Roth, me, Adrian Hanauer, Vulcan Group, we’ve all got plenty of dough. We’re only in it to win and to put out a good product. Nobody buys an MLS franchise thinking, “Oh, I’m going to make so much money.””

Toronto fans may beg to differ as they consider the business plan MLSE has demonstrated so far. Perhaps it’s time MLSE demonstrated some commitment to the fanbase that’s making them a lot of money and gave them a say in who runs the club.

Worldwide News

• Sid Lowe in the Guardian asks if Athletico Madrid are Europe’s worst-run club, ahead of their clash with Chelsea today — that would be quite an achievement, but he makes a pretty good case.
• The financial mess at Hull City is broken down by Matt Lawton, who reveals the alarming fact the club spent £5.5million in agents’ fees in the two years Paul Duffen was the club’s chairman and chief executive”, with a £40 million wage-bill threatening the future of the club. New Hull City chairman Adam Pearson tried assuage fears by saying the club was in “no danger”, but it remains unclear how the £22m the club owes can possibly be repaid.
• A Member of Parliament on Tyneside has called for Newcastle owner Mike Ashley to reconsider selling the naming rights to St. James Park.
• UEFA boss Michel Platini again discusses his plans for reform and regulation of European football, believing it would ultimately benefit English football’s financial model. His more than reasonable explanations of his reasoning deserve more consideration than screaming tabloid headlines about the Frenchman’s plans to destroy English football.
• In what could have been an interesting article but ends up being a bit of direction-less ramble (as is common on goal.com), a strangely uncredited author looks at Kawasaki Frontale’s disappointing failure to live up to their promise once again after the defeat to FC Tokyo in the Nabisco Cup final. We need more articles like these in English on Asian football, but we do need them to be edited a little better.
• EPL Talk looks at the surging ratings for EPL games on Fox Soccer Channel, which have grown a remarkable 69% in the past year with highs of almost 300,000 viewers becoming a regular occurrence despite its continued niche status on cable networks, reaching only 34.7 million homes. With the channel going HD in January and the Premier League rights sewn up for a few years ahead, the future looks very bright for FSC. MLS ratings grew even faster, up 89% and averaging 51,000 per broadcast.
  
• One of the better blogs out there, Some People Are On The Pitch, celebrated its 1,000th post today. Keeping a blog going with good quality posting for three years is a tremendous achievement. Check it out as they move towards the next thousand.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Tifo by the North End Elite, Toronto FC supporters' group. It marks the first ever goal in the team's history, scored by Danny Dichio, who retired this season. Your editor was there, supporting the other team. The Red Patch Boys had an even larger tifo as well.

Photo credit: sjgardiner on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

Big Story

Danny Dichio‘s retirement last Wednesday meant emotions ran high during the 24th minute of the first half during Toronto FC’s 3-2 win against the Colorado Rapids yesterday at BMO Field.  It was the 24th minute when Dichio scored Toronto FC’s first ever club goal against the Chicago Fire on May 13th 2007, and fans in the south stand have chanted his name at the same minute of play at every home game ever since.

Still, Dichio wouldn’t have been accorded the honour had he, like many other MLS overseas players who have come here in the twilight of their careers, slowly faded into obscurity.  Danny Dichio’s success (he is Toronto FC’s all-time high scorer despite missing a slew of games to injury) was the exception that proved the rule; TFC’s troubles over the past three seasons can be in part attributed to a record buying ill-adjusted players who have fallen out of the European merry-go-round. Players like Laurent Robert, Rohan Ricketts and Collin Samuel arrived with great fanfare only to be dropped quietly at the slow end of the news cycle.  And they are not alone in Major League Soccer.

That’s why Dichio’s short time in MLS is a model for aging or out-of-favour players planning on a move to North America.  His success with Toronto FC grew from his dedication to the organization and the city. Dichio and his family got immediately involved in communities on and off the field.  He was an active participant in local charities.  He was skilled at ingratiating himself with club supporters, and he spoke frequently about staying on with the coaching staff.  But perhaps most importantly, signaling that Toronto would be Més Que un Club, Dichio became a permanent resident of Canada.

Perhaps in the spirit of Dichio, owners and general managers in MLS might look to asking overseas players not just to join a club, but join a community, a city, a region, a country.  Goodness knows we can do better than paying them 100 million dollars only to lend them out on loan to AC Milan for half the year.

Worldwide News

• The Boston Examiner interviews the head of a New England Revolution Hispanic supporters group to find out why the club garners so few Hispanic fans.  The answers are a tad depressing.
• Manchester City don’t blink when Arsenal equalize and go on to win 4-2 leading Paul Wilson to compare Mark Hughes to Sir Alex Ferguson.  Manchester City finished tenth last year under Hughes, who was heavily slated for the axe before the start of the season.  That was of course before Tevez, Barry and Adebayor.  Simon Kuper laughs and laughs.
• American MLS players on the US national squad might think of posting this article up in the dressing room if they qualify for South Africa 2010: Fabio Capello urges David Beckham to get the hell out of MLS and back to Europe if he wants to be ready for success at next summer’s World Cup. *cough* Confederations Cup *cough*
• Bolton fans might remember Johann Smith. So will Toronto FC fans.  Now it’s Croatia’s NJ Rijeka’s turn.
• Iain Plenderleith counters the conventional wisdom which holds that Landon Donovan is a) overrated and b) incapable of playing in Europe.  Maybe MLS is damn lucky to have him.
• Paul Hayward wonders allowed about what we’ve all been too scared to ask: Is Zlatan Ibrahimovic worth 66 million Euros?

Big Story

It’s that “crisis” word again.  Following the Sweeper’s report last Friday on the SPL’s growing financial troubles, the Argentinian Football Association has announced it is canceling the league season’s August 14th season opener across all divisions due to unpaid club debts totaling USD$182 million.  The culprit seems to be irresponsible spending and bad accounting on behalf of Argentina’s club directors, hardly a new development in South American let alone European club football.  What is interesting is the AFA’s strategy to save the league season: seeking to end its current $69 million television rights contract with Torneos y Competencias (TyC) so it can get a $154 million dollar deal with government-run Canal 7.

As in Europe, securing a generous TV rights package can mean the difference between success and insolvency in South America.  However in Argentina there is a hefty political element as well: TyC is owned by the same group that publishes the Clarin newspaper, which has been critical of the Argentinian president, Cristina Fernandez.  TyC is unsurprisingly opposed to the AFA’s desire to kibosh a deal it won in good faith simply to pay for the expensive whims of Argentina’s club directors. Needless to say, the dispute means it is unlikely that the AFA’s debt crisis will end any time soon.

While measures of the sort the AFA is imposing aren’t yet a realistic possibility in Europe, Argentina does provide a revealing worst-case scenario of what can happen when clubs spend without a care for spiralling debts.  Europe’s footballing leadership should take careful note.

North America

• Real Madrid‘s 5-1 win in a friendly against Toronto FC at BMO Field on Friday certainly sparked some surreal moments, like the Gol TV’s colour commentator remarking after Gabe Gala’s miraculous goal, “Danny Dichio there just rolls Metzelder.”  Colin Smith bucks the trend among negative TFC supporters and gives a positive spin to the proceedings.
• Meanwhile, MLS commisioner Don Garber used the friendly as an opportunity to tell Montreal soccer fans they will have to wait beyond 2011 to see their city play in the league.  The news comes as disappointment for Montreal Impact fans clinging to Garber’s earlier statements in an interview with Forbes as proof he might act sooner, but he at least reiterated negotiations with Impact owner Joey Saputo are still ongoing.
• DC United couldn’t beat Real Madrid either, losing at 3-0 at FedEx Field, but at least they managed to garner an hilarious lede sentence from ESPN.com.
• Landon Donovan scores a lovely goal against the New England revolution, embraces David Beckham, slowly turns heads toward former laughingstock LA Galaxy.  Grant Wahl be damned.

Europe

• The Offside finds a real life refereeing dilemma in the Norwegian Cup semi-final worthy of the Guardian’s You Are the Ref: if the ref doesn’t blow the whistle, is it okay to score on an injured keeper?
• Newcastle‘s ownership negotiations ar at a critical juncture.  The Guardian reports if Barry Moat’s buyout proposal falls through, Mike Ashley will appoint former Villa skipper David O’Leary manager.  If the deal goes through, Alan Shearer will stay.  Out of the kettle, into the fire?
• Twohundredpercent reports on the BBC‘s first attempt at the “The League Football Show.”  Can Football League coverage help boost the Beeb’s sagging reputation as a trusted footballing authority?  Yes and no.
• Sport is a TV Show gives us a visual taste of Getafe‘s unique campaign to get more supporters through the turnstiles, as first reported by FourFourTwo.
  
• Oh yes, Manchester United lose to Chelsea in the Community Shield, Sir Alex Ferguson blames poor officiating, world rotates 360 degrees.

Daily Talking Point

There’s considerable debate about the value of the MLS All-Star game going around today. A sold-out Rio Tinto stadium in Salt Lake looked impressive last night, but the tepid match and the penalty kicks to determine the result seemed rather pointless — does anyone actually care that Everton won?  Steve Davis, writing on the official MLS site, comes to the rather generous conclusion that “it now looks more like a real game than a friendly.”

Like in the NFL, though, the whole concept of the All-Star contest as a “real game” has a real problem — there’s a reason the Pro Bowl takes place after the NFL season, and is little more than a procession. As soccer is also a sport dependent on physical contact, would we even want our MLS players going for it balls-out and risk getting injured with half the season still to go?  It doesn’t make any sense for the All-Star game to be vaunted as a serious contest.

At US Soccer Players, J Hutcherson has a potential answer as he argues that what the event needs is actually less substance and more flash, with the return of a skills contest and a fan-orientation. “Say what you will about baseball’s version, but it’s setup as an outward event. Same with the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League,” Hutcherson writes. “Not so much for MLS, who have instead turned it inwards.  A destination for sponsors and once, current, and future League employees.  Everybody else, thanks for buying a ticket.” Would a more fun set-up make it easier to avoid pretending it’s a serious contest and market it otherwise? Or would it just make the whole world laugh at MLS All-Stars kicking balls through hoops?

The fact that the All-Star game went on as an MLS team were playing a continental Champions League game that actually means something seemed rather perverse, and at MLS Talk, Daniel Feurstein comes to the opposite conclusion from Hutcherson and says “it’s time for MLS to end the All-Star game.” It’s hard to deny that with all the other high-profile friendlies going on in the US this summer amidst a glut of competitive soccer proceeding in parallel shadows, one more or one less game just doesn’t make much difference.

Brian at the Run of Play addresses all of this with his usual elan, as he notes that “if there were a player who showed the kind of craft and subtlety that we routinely employ in judging the importance of soccer tournaments, he’d be spending the summer professing his loyalty to his current employer while not saying anything to discourage Real Madrid.”

Americas

• MLS’ woes continued in the CONCACAF Champions League, with Toronto FC losing 1-0 at home to Puerto Rico Islanders of the USL. With the Red Bulls representing the league tonight, things can only get worse, one would expect.
• Meanwhile, at the 24th minute, Duane Rollins points out the curiosity that with ESPN planning to show MLS in England, it’ll be easier to watch the league a Canadian team participates in from across the Atlantic than in Canada itself, where MLS games are rarely shown outside of Toronto FC. This seems like a situation MLS should really work to fix ahead of further planned Canadian expansion.
• The Designated Player rule is apparently up for debate, as Steve Davis reports that “I’m hearing that big hitters in the league are talking about ways to get more teams on board with the Designated Player initiative.” This makes sense; the $415,000 hit to a team’s $2.3 million salary cap puts too many eggs in one basket, and there are only one or two DPs in the league right now justifying that on the playing field.
• In WPS, Boston Breakers Coach Tony DiCicco expressed mild dissatisfaction with the standard of the refereeing as his side lost to the Washington Freedom, noting of the referee: “He’s over his head. Most of the referees in this league have been over their heads.”  Think he’ll get fined for that?

Europe

• Yet more trouble in Scotland, where Hearts are facing insolvency after HM Revenue and Customs filed in court for unpaid debts. The club again exclaimed its shock, saying they have the money, just as they did last season when they blamed “technical glitches” for their failure to pay players on time. One could write a book about the bizarre ownership of Vladimir Romanov, who appears bent on shredding the nerves of all Hearts supporters.
• Will Arsene Wenger spend some of the loot he’s taken in in recent weeks with the sales of Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Toure?  “The fans want signings,” screeches Rob Kelly in the Telegraph, “and if they do not get them, they deserve answers.”  In the Guardian, David Hytner puts the Frenchman’s parsimony down to both pragmatism and principle, praising his youth development policy and noting Wenger’s feeling of “vulgarity” on the mere idea of spending £20 million on a player. The bigger question, though, is just how much pressure he’s getting to sell in order to shore up the club’s shaky finances and continue his success at developing youth and selling at the right time for a big price.
• AC Milan are expressing a similar aim, with club president Silvio Berlusconi calling on manager Leonardo to only target younger players — a similar proclamation to Alex Ferguson’s last month. This all comes down to money, with younger players obviously far more likely to bring a return on investment down the line, a model Wenger has shown to be very successful. At some point, though, does the market tip to make it worthwhile going for the 29 or 30 year-olds if big clubs aren’t bidding on them?
• And finally, previously unseen Hillsborough documents are to be released to an independent panel.

For the club, of course, they make money and — increasingly — are used to “raise brand awareness” around the world. Well, whatever. The bigger issue comes when the cash cows start interfering with competitive play, and Real Madrid’s schedule of friendlies this summer demonstrates that perfectly.

It’s hardly shocking news that the world’s biggest clubs are touring the world chasing every last dollar, to the potential detriment of competitive advantage by draining their players energy and taking games away from local supporters to satisfy the global fan’s desire to consume their team in the flesh. Real Madrid are hopping around the world to squeeze every last return they can on their Ronaldo investment, to nobody’s surprise, and it’s a path well-worn by others.

Celtic manager Tony Mowbray recently complained about his club’s pre-season fixture list, which includes a gruelling trip to Australia followed by the “Wembley Cup” shortly before they begin their Champions League campign this month. “Let’s not disguise it — this is a tough trip,” he said. “For physical preparation, I wouldn’t, personally, have taken it on, but I understand why. Manchester United do it every year, going to Asia or America to sell their brand. The bottom line is that Celtic is a global football club that does have a lot of supporters in parts of the world. I don’t sit here and stamp my feet and get upset about it.”

Global branding is of course the imperative for Celtic, Real Madrid and Manchester United in their pre-season scheduling. When David Gill responded to criticism that Manchester United were putting themselves in danger by ignoring Foreign Office advice to play a lucrative friendly in Jakarta just cancelled after the bombing there today, he was clear about their priorities. “We are very disappointed to have to cancel because Indonesia is an important market for us,” he said.

Friendlies have played an important role in the development of football worldwide. The tours of British teams in organised football’s early decades demonstrated the sport to locals just learning the game around the world, leaving lasting legacies in names, colours and styles of play in many unusual places. But now, even countries with established leagues are rolling over to support the globe-trotting of the likes of Real Madrid, shunting aside actual competitive games to roll out the red carpet — or even an entire new grass pitch.

When Real Madrid signed up to visit Toronto FC on August 7th, the Canadian ownership group MLSE announced it was pulling out all the stops: a temporary grass field will be installed to satisfy the Spaniards wishes to avoid playing on FieldTurf and the team rescheduled an MLS match set for August 9th against Red Bull New York, moving it up to June 13th.

Many Toronto fans were livid about the changes and the blatant cash grab at the expense of the regular season competition (not least because the Madrid friendly would not be one of the bonus games in their season ticket package). As Toronto FC blogger Ben Knight put it, the sudden move “not only scrambled summer weekend plans for 16,000 season ticket holders on cruelly short notice, it also left the club with only one MLS home game in each of July, August and September.”

How are supporters ever supposed to take the Major League Soccer regular season seriously when it’s clear the leadership of teams and the league has other priorities?

One could argue that this is Real Madrid, after all, and the league needs the high-profile games and the income to survive (though MLSE aren’t exactly paupers). But it’s not even the decision itself, it’s the lack of compunction about rescheduling the competitive match to accommodate a friendly that stings.

In Ireland, Real Madrid are playing another high-profile friendly this week against Shamrock Rovers. Preparations for the match have led to the postponement of an Irish league fixture, but Shamrock’s chairman Jonathan Roche does at least have the decency to express regret that the friendly is interfering with competitive play:

“We’re very disappointed in hindsight. If we’d known this was going to happen we wouldn’t have agreed to play Real Madrid,” Roche said. “It was mooted last Friday, and since then the FAI has tried its utmost to sort things out, but the council insisted that the game couldn’t go ahead on safety grounds. It’s an alarm bell to us, and presumably the FAI, that something like this could happen.

“This could have an effect on our friendlies going forward. There is no reason why the Sligo game couldn’t go on, but clearly we can’t allow friendly games to be interfering with out league campaign,” Roche concluded.

It’s frightening for the future of MLS that it’s unthinkable MLSE or Don Garber would say a similar thing; in the long-term, having a league everyone takes seriously as a sacrosanct priority is far more important than the occasional cash grab against Real Madrid. MLS should be careful not to get too friendly too often.

Comments made by former MLS Commissioner Doug Logan to the Oregonian in this regard made waves recently. “Soccer audiences at their best have got to be a little dangerous,” Logan said. “It’s three guys with a beer cursing at the guy on the field. It’s not a family activity. If you want a family activity, go to the circus.”

Logan further criticised the reliance of MLS teams on group ticket sales to youth soccer groups. ”Success at the gate has to have a tribal following and not just a van of soccer-playing kids who come to one game a year,” Logan said. “If your business model depends on youth soccer, it won’t be enough.”

This might seem an obvious statement to fans outside the U.S., but for years, soccer marketers in MLS have mainly been all too on message that the sport is a family-focused activity based on appealing to youth soccer. In recent years, that’s begun to change league-wide, and Logan was recognising that, albeit clumsily.

Yet Logan’s comments were curious in that he himself was MLS Commissioner during the period of its launch years that most of its teams — DC and Chicago excepted — were attempting to sell the sport solely as a family activity, and doing little but alienating the 18-34 adult demographic in their pursuit of the youth soccer crowd: which led to most MLS teams cracking down on anything that might potentially alienate their own stereotyped view of a sensitive soccer mom, who’d be frightened away at the mere hint of a swear word.

We can all get along

While he did not address the league’s past failures, it seems that what Logan really meant to do was point to the fact that MLS teams do now need to market more to adults who like to drink beer and come out to matches with friends to support their team week in-week out, rather than solely to families and youth soccer team groups — especially if the aim is building a strong season ticketholder base. What he failed to acknowledge was that this doesn’t necessarily exclude attracting families and children elsewhere to the rest of the stadium, and that many of them can also be passionate  fans themselves.

In a recent interview on du Nord, the Fire’s former President and current Red Stars President Peter Wilt explained that the two demographics can co-exist, with some effort to grow understanding on both sides.

The two most important audiences in American soccer are suburban families, which are traditionally conservative and sensitive to vulgarities and rowdy behavior, and young, urban, male, passionate fans who like and partake in extreme behavior. It’s two extremes that are oftentimes seated side by side. It’s ironic that they have this dichotomy while their end goal is the same: supporting the team they love to victory.

Throughout my time with the Fire, the key I found was communication. I get most credit for my dealings with Section 8 — with the young, urban, passionate fans — but I spent just as much time dealing with the suburban soccer community. It’s important that both constituencies understand each other and that they’re empathetic to each other.

Interestingly, this was a similar point to one made by Portland Timbers owner Merrit Paulson in an interview also published in the Oregonian this week, in which he deliberately played down the ‘danger’ of American soccer when asked about Logan’s comment that soccer support needed to be “a little bit dangerous.”

I disagree with that, strongly. I strongly disagree with that. That sort of plays to the worst stereotypes. But I understand the point, and I just think he’s trying to make the point in a flamboyant manner.

And the point that I agree with is a model that just targets soccer moms and youth soccer is an inherently flawed model. Those people spend their lives going to soccer games every weekend. Trying to target them for season tickets is the wrong way to go.

Now, the reality is, you’re going to get some of those folks. One hundred percent, you need a family environment. I don’t know if you could see a better family environment than Seattle right now. It’s one big party.

But in my mind, soccer is about the new America. It’s a younger demographic, by and large. The 20- to 30-somethings, more urban, is definitely a sweet spot. But families and sports fans and suburbanites are very much a target. And it’s a really unique sporting experience. I don’t think it needs to be dangerous.

What I’d say to that is, we have a section of our supporters, the Timbers Army, which adds to the ambiance, adds to the atmosphere, and I would not suggest that families sit there, with kids. So you need to have different environments for different people. And that’s part of the show, the Timbers Army.

So I would agree with him to the extent that there’s probably a section that’s not a family-oriented section. You get a lot of the European flair here — especially in Portland, even more so than in Seattle, in terms of the standing and the chanting and the synchronized chanting.

It’s never been clear to me why it’s been so difficult for so many MLS executives at the team and league level to figure out that the two demographics are not mutually exclusive, as Wilt and Paulson explain. One section or even end of ‘rowdy’ fans isn’t going to put-off most families attending in the rest of the stadium; in fact, the unique atmosphere that supporters’ groups engender is only likely to improve the spectacle and differentiate a soccer game from the other sports youth groups and families attend.

Kevin Payne, DC United’s supremo, figured this out back in MLS’ inaugural season, 1996, and ever since, DC has had strong support and solid attendance.  I interviewed Payne last year, and explained how they facilitated the supporters’ groups who created the most passionate support in MLS at the time. “The biggest difference between our approach and the rest of the league was that we set out from the beginning to appeal to people who already cared about soccer, whether they were American fans of the game or came from another country with a love for the game,” Payne said. “We thought there were enough people like that to be successful. Part of our philosophy was not expecting to attract non-believers.”

Unfortunately, the rest of the league largely ignored this approach, aside from expansion team the Chicago Fire under Wilt, who in 1998 launched to strong attendance numbers and worked with the Barn Burners and the Polish Ultras ’98 (later standing in Section 8 together) who helped develop the Fire’s identity as a club with their tailgates, tifo displays and vibrant support.

In neither DC nor Chicago, despite the existence of strong supporters’ groups, were families and youth soccer groups sidelined as a result or scared away en masse. That’s not to say there was never a balancing act or some explaining to do by the front office, but all it takes is good communication and an effort by the club to connect with both sides.

Again, though, much of the league ignored this success, presumably petrified that the perceived ‘danger’ of supporters’ groups would scare off their dwindling youth soccer crowds. Obstruction to supporters culture based on a customer service rep occasionally receiving a few emails complaining about a curse word or because of the myth that youth soccer groups who come a few times a year would inevitably develop into an adult fanbase on their own dampened the atmosphere and slowed season ticket sale growth. Without a large base of season ticketholders, MLS teams were constantly scrambling to group sales, ticket giveaways and promotions to half-fill the stands at the expense of building an identity as a club people would believe in and support through thick and thin.

Payne’s absence from DC’s leadership from 2001-4 and Wilt’s firing from Chicago in 2005 (by an AEG executive who had never attended a Chicago Fire match) hardly helped matters. But Toronto’s arrival in the league in 2007 kickstarted their approach again with a successful launch with a largely adult supporters base who were already into soccer, an echo of Payne’s approach in 1996.

Toronto’s successful season ticket drive created a bandwagon wholeheartedly leaped on by expansion team Seattle this season, who have over 20,000 season ticketholders in part thanks to their Scarf Seattle marketing campaign. Nearby, Paulson in Portland seems to have the right approach, recognising the base of organic culture the Timbers Army that already exists provides, and planning to grow from that when the team joins MLS. 2010 expansion team Philadelphia have done the same thing, working closely with their supporters group, Sons of Ben, who had thousands of members even before the team had a name and an MLS franchise.

Toronto fans celebrate their first ever goal

Meanwhile, MLS has begun to encourage existing teams to follow this approach, including at teams that have long had very weak supporters’ sections. Brian Bilello, COO of the New England Revolution, told footiebusiness.com earlier this year about the change of emphasis in their marketing campaign, with a new “Defend the Fort” theme aimed at supporters:

The primary reasoning behind the Defend the Fort campaign is to grow the number of season tickets in The Fort, our supporters section. While we’ll do as much as we can to grow the supporters section in general, we feel that season ticket growth is the key because those fans are the most passionate, most involved and have the biggest stake in the game, so to speak. So we didn’t want it to be where people are coming two, three or four games and sitting in that section, but rather growing a base of fans who are here every single week. That will drive the energy in the building.

Whilst this is welcome, hardcore soccer support can’t be generated solely out of a new marketing campaign. MLS front offices can do much to facilitate supporters’ groups, but in many places there is a lot of damage teams will have a hard time repairing, if they even try. The years of neglect and obstruction to supporters’ groups at teams like Dallas and Colorado mean it might never be possible for strong supporters groups to develop there.

It’s a shame it’s taken so many at the top of MLS so long to realise all this, exemplified by Doug Logan’s comments ten years after the end of his tenure as MLS Commissioner. What MLS has long lacked is not just snazzy marketing campaigns or “danger”, it’s the mere facilitation of supporters’ culture, despite the examples set in DC and Chicago and more recent expansion franchises. This does not mean the exclusion of everyone who doesn’t want to stand or sing or drink. Family sections and supporters coexist quite comfortably and safely in European stadia in various places: you can have atmosphere without alienating a family who comes to support the team as well.

What MLS needs to appeal to the 18-34 demographic is not danger in itself, but simply smart, far-sighted leadership by MLS executives and supporters’ groups who can work together to grow soccer culture bottom-up.

This was one of the reasons I awaited the inaugural season of Toronto FC back in April 2007 with trepidation. Having watched a few games at the Air Canada Centre, home of the Toronto Maple Leafs ice hockey franchise, I was disappointed that the best the crowd could come up with was a droning ‘go, Leafs, go’ every ten minutes or so. The ‘silent’ phenomenon at Leafs games is well-known in Toronto and most commentators associate it with economic class. There’s some truth in this: during home games the most quiet area in the ACC can be found directly rink-side in the ‘Gold’ section, where single tickets are priced in the hundreds of dollars. Men in suits consult blackberries while women clad for the night clubs gossip with friends. Goals often go completely unnoticed while the ‘real’ fans supposedly whoop it up in the nose-bleeds.

However, the sombre atmosphere at Leafs games can be attributed to more than socio-economic status alone; it’s also emblematic of the sort of low English protestantism on which Toronto was founded. While England in the late 1950s and early 1960s saw a society liberated from her dark, Victorian roots by a post-war generation dancing to new tunes from the North-East and inspired by the optimism of Harold Wilson’s Labour Party, Toronto was still covering pub windows in black curtains and listening to the Gospel-inspired ‘Four Lads’.

As David Goldblatt points out in The Ball is Round, the liberating Liverpudlian rock and roll of the late Fifties and early Sixties inspired the terrace chanting at the Kop, chanting which spread throughout Great Britain and is now an integral part of the English game. Before then, “the sound of the British football crowd remained a collage of collective roars and one-liners” (p. 450), which could also describe the sound of the crowd at Leaf’s games. Despite huge social change brought about by an increase in immigration in the 1960s which included many liberal-minded Americans, Toronto’s sport culture would remain inherently WASPish and conservative, and therefore without song, for some time.

Enter Toronto FC. Any fears that the silence of the ACC would envelop BMO Field were calmed on April 19 2007, although it’s interesting to note that the first audible chant from the supporters’ section was a John Lennon song. Although it is now without question there is a sophisticated, football-following base in Toronto, there is a sense that Toronto FC’s fans are creating a ‘simulacra’ of support, borrowing songs from the European grounds they grew up watching instead of forming their own spontaneous, organic sound. Most of the songs heard from the supporters’ section are Euro-British rehashes, including some Kop favourites (but mercifully not YNWA) and one or two verses in French borrowed from Le Championat to promote our bilingual heritage. The impromptu chants of the type that give flavour to the Premiership are missing and most of the songs heard this season are exactly the same as the last, and are even officially sanctioned by the Toronto FC website.

There could be a number of reasons for this, including a lack of away supporters to sing to, but my guess is that Toronto FC’s fans, many of whom also support the Maple Leafs, are in the tricky process of figuring out how to support a club with no history or founding mythology (Dichio’s 24th minute chant aside) in a hockey town without an indigenous soccer culture. While the atmosphere at BMO Field is unlike any in Major League Soccer, there is a growing backlash among some city-dwellers who question the authenticity of supporters singing ‘Toronto ’til I die!’ for a two-year old franchise owned by Maple Leafs Sports Entertainment.

What is not known to proponents of ‘authentic’ support is that just as clubs sprang up across England at the turn of the twentieth century often backed by speculating tycoons, fervent working-class supporters would arrive in the tens of thousands as soon the grounds were constructed and provided instant loyalty, no questions asked. The difference in Toronto FC’s case is that supporters are not only warming to a new club, but to an entirely new sporting culture. It will be a slow process, but over time we may begin to hear the home-grown, spontaneous singing that characterizes the best grounds from around the world. And Toronto FC might even help move Toronto away from the self-conscious, navel-gazing Puritanical hangover that has haunted the city since the Victorian 1960s, simply by singing our own songs and singing them loudly.

Photo credit: behindthenet, krazykanadian and Martin Groove on Flickr

It was May 2007, and Toronto FC welcomed over 200 Chicago Fire fans who had made the 700+ mile journey north-east.

It was a hot day in the sun, but the atmosphere crackled as the Fire fans burst into song. The huddled ranks of Toronto fans responded, and when the Canadians scored their first goal of any kind, the stadium exploded. Seat cushions handed out as a pre-game freebie went flying through the air.

Toronto won the game, but apart from an awkward few minutes in the parking lot afterwards, the atmosphere between the fans seemed to promise a respectful rivalry in the making. Fans of both teams drank together after the game. All said it had been a hell of a lot of fun, home and away.

Later in the season, the Toronto fans came down to Chicago in similar numbers, and it seemed Toyota Park was just a little louder than usual that day. A buzz filled the stadium not present when Columbus brings a dozen fans or New England twenty. Any fan worldwide knows the benefit of a healthy rivalry in the stadium, and it’s not foreign to sport in America either, as a college football fan will tell you.

This budding rivalry in MLS could have doubled in intensity this season to something special. Section 8 Chicago, the Chicago Fire Independent Supporters’ Association, requested 500 tickets at BMO Field for the sole game in Toronto this season. Given Toronto are taking 2,000 to Columbus for the opener, they’d surely have matched that 500 themselves in Chicago.

But it won’t happen. In fact, Chicago will take only around 100 to Toronto, and Toronto should be restricted to the same number in Chicago. An opportunity to build atmospheric games and rivalries that MLS badly needs will be lost.

Why? Because of the short-sighted nature of one front office and a notable lack of interest in the issue of away support emanating from MLS headquarters. Section 8 Chicago have more-or-less been told they’re lucky to be getting even 100 tickets this season for Toronto, even though the request has been standing for some time.

And despite being pressed tirelessly by the Chairman of S8C, Ben Burton, MLS headquarters seems to see the issue as far less pressing than arranging David Beckham’s next shoe-shine (MLS headquarters did not respond to a request from me on the issue made several weeks ago).

The paradox is MLS will use supporters’ groupings such as Section 8 and Toronto FC’s Red Patch Boys and U-Sector to market the league. They’ll post photos on their websites of the dynamic support, they’ll speak of the passion shown by the hundreds of TFC or Chicago fans heading to Columbus, they’ll pose for photos with the Sons of Ben when they announce Philadelphia’s expansion. They’ll say it’s what marks soccer out from other professional sports here.

And then they’ll do little to promote this by supporting those who wish to travel in numbers, in terms of organisation and security, surely a growing issue.

Ben Burton, S8C Chairman, told Pitch Invasion of his frustration and concerns it could eventually lead to safety problems if away support is not properly organised as the league grows:

I’ve been in discussion with the front offices of different teams and the league about this issue for over a year because my organization has been concerned with the lack of direction coming out of the league offices for quite some time. While there has been some movement on the part of MLS over the past year, we’re really concerned that it will take a serious security issue before MLS really decides to speed up their glacial pace.

With the league growing into more cities and smaller stadiums, the percentage of away support is going to grow. By stifling it, we’ll run into much bigger problems later. MLS is adding Philadelphia, a city close to three or four other MLS cities. How is that going to work if away support is limited to 100, even 200 people? It’s silly. Supporters and fans will find their way into stadiums through other means and end up sitting in places that cause problems, problems I’m working to avoid.

That said, I haven’t even be able to get the interest of supporters’ groups around the league to unite for the cause.

The league needs to listen to supporters and institute some kind of policy about away support. Equally, other supporters’ groups also need to pressure their own front offices and MLS for reciprocal away support accommodation. It’s an issue that cries out for collective supporter action.

What should be done?

Leaving it up to individual teams to decide entirely on their allocations makes little sense. Of course Columbus will offer up their whole south end to whoever wants to take it, but those teams closer to filling their stadiums regularly are much more likely to restrict away support as far as they can get away with, as we’re seeing with Toronto.

In other countries, such as England, a certain proportion of the stadium is guaranteed for away support in all competitions: in the Premier League and Football League, it’s 3,000 or 10% of the stadium, whichever is lower. It’s true that there would be little point reserving large numbers of seats for Kansas City fans in Los Angeles, for example — the distances and culture are different from Europe — but a sensible solution to deal with organised groups should be properly explored.

As it stands, if established supporters’ groups with a track record of away support are not given 1% of the stadium even when they’ve requested five times that and taken over twice that the previous season, something is awry.

The broader concern is that this speaks to MLS continual ambiguous relationship to the culture of supporters’ groups. Broadcasters turn the mics and cameras on them, yet their very presence is being restricted where it could do most for the atmosphere at MLS games.

Update: 48 hours on from this post’s publication, there has been massive interest on the general issue of figuring out a way forward on the away support issue, and I’d particularly like to thank those Toronto fans who have expressed their dismay at their front office’s decision. Building on this kind of collaboration in the coming weeks will be critical, and behind the scenes, supporters’ groups are working on figuring out a proposal for MLS. We will have a post with more details on this soon.

The one difficult issue that has caused conflict so far regards the possibility — and I should stress that as far as I know, nothing has been decided — that Chicago might limit Toronto’s allocation as far as Toronto limits Chicago. But I would say again the situation is fluid and let’s work on finding a solution that would mean it wouldn’t even need to be considered and indeed (with a league-wide mandate) would make it impossible in the future. It should certainly be an absolute last resort.

Thanks to everyone who has offered comments and thoughts on how to proceed, please check back in the next day or two for a further and more detailed discussion on the way forward.