I watched a little bit of Toronto FC beating one of their closest rivals in the league standings, New York City FC, 4-0 today. It's what the media like to call a "statement win" but both the coach, Greg Vanney, and the captain, Michael Bradley, called it a "good day".
It's a different psychology in North American sports to that in Europe, or elsewhere. TFC now have a five point lead at the top of the Eastern Conference and are looking very good. But whereas if this was the latter stages of the English Premier League and a team would be counting the number of points needed to win the league, in Major League Soccer teams are looking to make the playoffs and that's where the real business starts. Ten points clear at the end of the regular season means nothing, or very little, once the playoffs start. First place does give the team a bye in the first round and easier draw, but finishing first does in no way guarantee a league championship. So I completely agree with Bradley and Vanney and their modest and guarded response.
I also agree with the match report that I read that bemoaned the fact that this wonderful win will still be overshadowed in the online and print reports tomorrow by the Toronto Blue Jays' incredible comeback win from 10-4 down in the ninth inning. As the reporter pointed out it is sad that #TFC are Toronto 's best sports team yet more prominence is given to a baseball team that is probably not going to make the playoffs and is having a pretty dismal season. Yet one spectacular win is sexier than an incredibly impressive win by #TFC. I have admitted that I have become a baseball fan and today was pretty exciting but the thought of TFC going one better than last year still trumps everything.
What I also still don't get, though, is the huge amount of empty seats at TFC's game today. The attendance was posted as being over 29,000 but there was absolutely no way that there were that many people sitting in seats. And even though I always joke about all the people walking around inside the stadium, there could not have been thousands of them at one point at the bar or the bathrooms. Methinks that despite, and because of, the success of the team there are many season ticket holders who can not re-sell their tickets because the club is setting the prices too high for returned tickets. Two seasons ago I bought tickets for Kaka and Orlando, in August with the team in reach of the playoffs, for $30. I looked for tickets for last weekend and this week and the same seats were $75 each.
By the way, there still were many people walking around inside the stadium. After the third goal, midway through the second half, I could even see people leaving. I am a big fan of TFC. They are my team here. I just still need to get around some of these idiosyncrasies of being a football watcher here. I wouldn't say a fan because the real fans do stay to the end.
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