The day Castro died

Day -565. WorldCup2018

Come on Toronto. Let's get excited. A few days to go until the biggest match ever, by far the hugest, the event anticipated like never before in Toronto FC'S history and barely a whimper of interest in today's Toronto Star newspaper. Barely a whimper fit nicely in my sentence but the truth is that is an exaggeration. There was no whimper, no whisper, no mention at all in the pretty substantial Sports Section. The editing team must have put all their effort into putting the pages of "Holiday Entertaining" together.

I sound like a broken record, I know, but I thought the hype in the media this week would be much bigger after the titanic battle in the first leg last Tuesday. Again, just when it seemed like football made in North America (as opposed to that watched on TV) has made it into the realm of major sports in Toronto, this lack of attention shows that it hasn't.

But I'll move on and look forward to Wednesday's second leg, and will enjoy it as will the over 30,000 fans in the sold out stadium and the many thousands watching on TV like me.

Today I should be marking one of those significant world events which I can look back on in. 565 days and know that today was the day. A former dictator who drove his people to extreme poverty in his quest to give the country "back to the people" died today. Fidel Castro was celebrated on the day of his death as a great revolutionary and derided as an oppressive leader who silenced all of his opponents. As I always tie everything back to football, or any sport, the most I ever heard about Cuban football in the news was when a player or two or three defected to whatever country the national U20 or U23 team was playing a tournament in. It happened repeatedly, and not only with footballers, and that says a lot about what kind of country they lived in.