We Canadian soccer fans, east and west, have an annoying habit of blowing things up to proportions they don’t rightly deserve.

Tonight, Toronto FC will take on C.F. Motagua in what the Toronto faithful are really hoping won’t be a repeat of last year’s debacle against the USL Division One Puerto Rico Islanders. The U-Sector board is abuzz with hope and excitement but also concern – more concern than one usually sees for, say, FC Dallas. The Voyageurs, never your best bet for sober second thought but always a good dipstick for the country’s emotional oil, are burning with enthusiasm even absent the usual partisan napalm. On Twitter, Stretty Sam out-and-out calls it “a big match for Canadian soccer“.

Listen, when you’re relying on Duane Rollins to downplay the importance of a Toronto FC game, things are out of hand.

Of course, as a Canadian soccer supporter, it’s in my interests that Toronto beat Motagua tonight. It’s also in my interests that Toronto beat Real Salt Lake or the New York Red Bulls or pretty much any side that isn’t another Canadian team (I’d probably take the Reds over the CSL’s Serbian White Eagles, too). I’d quite like to see Julian de Guzman superkick Amado Guevara through the north stands into where the beer garden used to be, but that’s pleasure rather than business. My usual Whitecaps fan schadenfreude at seeing Toronto lose to a team from a country with a GDP smaller than my shoe size would be dulled ever-so-slightly by the whole Honduras factor, but intellectually I should want Toronto to emerge with a credible win in the CONCACAF Champions League regardless of the opposition.

(You may have noticed that soccer partisanship is not the most intellectual of activities. I know, I know. Bear with me.)

Now, as we know Toronto has a bad history with this tournament. They got over 20,000 fans out to their first ever continental match, more than twice the next-best attendance total that round, and lost 1-0 in what I can safely call the worst game of soccer ever played. The loss to the Puerto Rico Islanders, a team in the same North American pyramid as Toronto FC and therefore mathematically certain to be inferior, devastated the Toronto and Canadian sports scenes to such an extent that over 20,000 fans are expected tonight for a game against a team that sounds like a discount tequila label.

I feel a little dirty praising Toronto FC fans for their support, but the joy is that Canadian soccer fandom has moved beyond the point where a single game can break us. Indeed, if we survived the Montreal Impact’s Thích Quảng Đức job against Santos Laguna, and Toronto’s two years missing the playoffs, and Benito Archundia, and Benito Archundia again, and pretty much everything about Canada’s last World Cup qualification campaign, we’ve probably been past that point for some time. Toronto could lose by a converted touchdown and it wouldn’t mar the Canadian soccer landscape that badly. Moreover, if Toronto wins, they’ll be doing their job and who will be impressed? It would take an awfully long run and maybe a few flares in the Skydome for the Champions League to weigh down the bandwagon with new support.

If you’re a Toronto fan, your team may have a very specific stain to scrub off its honour and godspeed to you in that. For the rest of us, don’t try and tell me that cheering on the FC is a matter of national priority. We’re not infants anymore. We can survive a little fall down the stairs.

This is one of those nights where it hardly seems to be worth talking about the game.

The match was utterly dire, a bore of a scoreless draw between two clubs that could not possibly have cared less. The Whitecaps, playing predominantly a first team, came out like they had nothing to play for and knew it. The Toronto regulars were similarly disposed. Less frequent visitors to both lineups, like Philippe Davies for Vancouver and the TFC Academy kids, had a lot more heart and a lot more hustle but less skill. The catastrophic weather, with levels of rain that would make Vancouver blush and a pitch so slippery the Blackhawks and Islanders later skated on it, also inclined the veterans towards conservatism, and so boredom reigned.

I thought Marcus Haber deserved his red card. From where I was sitting at BMO Field, he began the slide after Toronto’s player had got rid of the ball, had his spikes up, and was generally launching an utterly reckless sliding tackle from a player who ought to know better. On a level I was relieved because it meant I wouldn’t have to watch Marcus Haber any more, but on another level it shattered Vancouver’s already slim chances of grabbing a goal. I thought that playing Cornelius Stewart and, later, Randy Edwini-Bonsu alone up front after Haber’s ejection was overly conservative on Teitur Thordarson’s part. But two records remain standing as a result of that conservatism. The Whitecaps complete an undefeated Voyageurs Cup with no wins, no losses, and four draws, and Toronto FC completes an actually triumphant undefeated campaign where they never conceded a goal.

So rather than talk about the game, let’s talk about something else.

As you’d know if you read this site (and if you don’t read this site how did you get this far?), I went to Montreal and Toronto for the away legs. In the course of my travels I hit Bar 99 with the Montreal Ultras after that particular disappointing draw. I hit the Duke of Gloucester with U-Sector to watch Canada take on Venezuela, and after this match I was snared by a Red Patch Boy on my way out of BMO Field and went to Shoeless Joe’s for a thoroughly enjoyable post-game. With apologies to the North End Elite and Tribal Rhythm Nation, I’ve spent more time around away supporters than half the supporters do the last two weeks.

And, you know, it’s the damndest thing. When I was in Montreal I laughed with the Ultras and talked about how, whatever our differences, one thing we had in common was that we all hate Toronto FC. Down at Shoeless Joe’s, I laughed with the Red Patch Boy who brought me in and we agreed that, however many differences we have, we both know that we all hate the Montreal Impact. I can imagine Montreal and Toronto supporters commiserating over a beer and saying that, for all their many disagreements, they know that at least they’re not fucking Southsiders.

It’s easy to forget for those of us who spend more time trolling the discussion boards than actually meeting with our fellow supporter, but ultimately, we’re all coming to matches for the same things. We want to hang out with old friends and make new friends and sing and chant and make a ruckus and cheer our team on to victory, and with all of that common ground the colour of laundry we’re cheering for is really a very minor detail.

I don’t want to get too maudlin here  (although I’m writing this with a fair bit of liquor in me), but I think that we sometimes exaggerate the rivalries forming between us supporters groups. A bit of heat is a good thing. A Whitecaps game, to me, means more when it’s against the Impact or the Timbers than it does against AC St. Louis or the Carolina Railhawks, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But that’s not an excuse to go around picking virtual fights with the Timbers Army or the Montreal Ultras and generally being an asshole. There are few enough Canadian soccer supporters in this country as it is without dividing ourselves further and driving each other away with a constant avalanche of hostility and abuse masquerading as rivalry.

There’s nothing wrong with giving each other the gears, or building those rivalries. When I call Toronto FC supporters “plastics”, it’s a shot but it’s meant in good spirits. When Toronto FC supporters call us Whitecaps fans pot-smoking hippies, I can take it in the same light. Nobody is saying that everybody needs to join hands and sing and dance, or even particularly get along. Just that we can’t let the comforting veil of Internet anonymity divide our too-small community and turn us all into complete cocksuckers.

When I whine like this I’m not so much referring to guys at usector.ca talking shit about their opponent du jour, or the pro-Montreal blogs saying pro-Montreal things, or similar internal affairs. I’m talking about the fact that even the Voyageurs forum has, in some parts, become a cesspool for intra-club rivals sniping at each other. I’m talking about the fact that, more and more, the sort of soccer fan you are in this country depends on which of the big three clubs you support, and if you’re a neutral (or, God help you, a third-division supporter) then you’d better just get out of the way before you wind up crawling under the bed and sobbing at how stupid a bunch of otherwise intelligent people could be.

It bears repeating. When we actually meet up, be it under the national team banner or because some of us are going to support our club on the road, we tend to get along pretty well. Almost every story you hear about particularly infamous club supporters runs something like “yeah, on-line he’s a real asshole but he’s pretty cool in person”. It’s early days for Canadian soccer fandom, and for the most part we don’t actually hate each other quite yet.

There is, after all, quite a large gulf between rivalry and hatred, between wanting Dwayne De Rosario to get hit by the team bus and wanting the supporters to get dragged under the wheels with him. I hope that we never bridge that gulf, because one of the best assets of the Canadian soccer community is that, for all the countless differences between us, we are a community. The Canadian soccer world is united in a way that most countries can never be because, ultimately, we’re all in the same boat. We’re all cheering for a team ranked sixty-third in the world when most of us think that’s too high. We all support clubs that are in leagues of dubious stability and we all have a history of watching teams we loved suspended or killed off. Whether you root for the big bad MLS boys in their soccer-specific stadium or the Canadian Soccer League team whose games are sporadically canceled because the pitch has plywood under it, you’re an underdog.

The success of Montreal, Vancouver, and Toronto is terrific. The future success of Edmonton, Ottawa, and others is something to hope for. But if that success comes at the cost of fracturing the Canadian soccer world and destroying the unity that brought us the Voyageurs Cup in the first place, it’ll be of questionable value. For now, I’ll rejoice in the fact that when we gather, nobody can celebrate the beautiful game like a Canadian regardless of what colour he wears. I’ll cheer for Toronto in the CONCACAF Champions League not because I like them but because they’re Canadian and that’s what counts. I’ll adopt the Red Green philosophy: “remember, I’m pulling for you. We’re all in this together.”

And next time some opposition fan on some message board says something so stupid and inflammatory it can’t help but be destroyed in rhetorical rage, I’ll take a deep breath and I’ll leave it alone. And I hope you will too.

The Voyageurs Cup is over. After the match tonight, Toronto FC will be presented with their justly-earned championship trophy even if they somehow contrive to lose this game by sixty. There’s more of a chance of that than usual, given that Toronto has called up seven TFC Academy kids to at least observe proceedings tonight. But even if it did happen it wouldn’t be in the least relevant.

This being Canada, there’s still controversy over this meaningless game and Toronto’s possible decision to play a bunch of its youngsters in a game that has no relevance to them. Okay, there’s not really any controversy, just a few blindly anti-Toronto people saying their usual blindly anti-Toronto nonsense and a few blindly pro-Toronto people blowing it up into something more than it really is. But it still merits comment, on account of all the actual controversy last year when Montreal played its scrubs in a game irrelevant to them but still very relevant to the country.

Of course, this game is nothing like Montreal – Toronto last year. The tournament is decided this time around and Toronto has every right to play whichever useless pieces of Academy detritus it desires. But I hope they do run out a strong lineup, because this game is on Sportsnet (East and West) and as such is something of a showcase for soccer in this country. It’s true that Sportsnet has always given soccer short shrift, and restricting it to East and West when the two competing teams are in the Pacific and Ontario regions indicates once again that they don’t really care about the game. But people from Edmonton or Halifax channel-flipping and ending up on a tepid BMO Field half-heartedly cheering an avalanche of guys only the hardcores have ever heard of as two teams fight not to get embarrassed by the other… that’s not a very good sales pitch for soccer in this country.

Besides, I’m selfish. This is the last time Vancouver will ever face an MLS team in a competitive match before they move up to MLS themselves. There’s a certain joy in giant-killing that’s lost when you simply beat a rival that’s an equal to yourself. But that giant-killing only counts if the giant hasn’t tied both hands behind his back. I’m sure that the TFC Academy players would be fired up to play the Whitecaps, and I’m also sure that they’re highly competent. They can probably stand up to a Vancouver second eleven better than most non-observers like me would give them credit for. But I’m also sure that if the Whitecaps beat them that’s not an accomplishment, and that if they beat the Whitecaps… hoo boy.

We don’t actually know how many of those seven Academy kids will play, yet, or if any of them will start, or how many of them will even be on the bench. We don’t know if Dwayne De Rosario will get a half, or the start, or a night off. Preki plays his cards irritatingly close to the vest. We don’t know how good the support will be. It is a Wednesday night and for a meaningless game, will some of the supporters stay home? Certainly some of the casuals are (and who can blame them?). Will the cheering be as raucous for second- or third-tier players in a meaningless game? Heck, from what they say Toronto fans don’t even hate the Whitecaps that much, which would take away that little zest that can fire up a crowd in an otherwise dull game (but also means that I may not get beaten up unless I get drunk and start shouting about how plastic all the supporters are, and from what I understand of BMO Field beer that’s an expensive proposition).

I want the Whitecaps to win, because they’re my team and I always want them to win. But it doesn’t matter if they lose. It’s sort of nice, having all the pressure off.  I mean, boy, it would be embarrassing if TFC Academy whooped us but it wouldn’t actually affect anything. I can walk and talk and watch and smile and generally have a good time, and if Vancouver somehow pulls the rabbit of a victory out of their hat then I can sing and cheer and have a gay old time. Either way the game’s at beautiful BMO Field, which I’ve never been to before but seems like a lovely facility, on what will either be a lovely night or a thunder-and-lightning hellstorm fully suitable for football drama, depending on which weather report you believe.

Even though I probably shouldn’t, I’m looking forward to it. The Whitecaps might lose, but their supporters can’t, and that’s a rare thing in sports. Best to embrace the moment.

I am emotionally drained and physically exhausted. I slump in an unfamiliar chair in North Vancouver, a nervous wreck devoid of intelligence or energy. It is eleven PM. I bought dinner from PetroCanada, because it’s the sort of night when you want to buy dinner from a gas station at 11 PM, but it sits next to my laptop untouched. I am too beaten-down, too exhausted, too completely played out to move.

We needed a win and the stars aligned in so many ways. Preki did not play a second-choice lineup but he started just enough of his bench that the Whitecaps had a skill advantage in a few precious positions. Vancouver, as it too seldom has in games this season, came out guns blazing, hungry for a result. The Southside was as packed as I’ve seen it and as raucous as it’s ever been. I arrived late and as such heard the chanting from outside the stadium – my walk towards Swangard heralded by “here we go, here we go, here we goooo” as if they were serenading me in my absence.

How could we not win? That question keeps insisting itself upon me. How in heaven and earth did we not win that game? The refereeing was not partial but it was bad, as bad as it’s ever been in a match I’ve attended. That’s one reason. Toronto was just plain lucky, getting more than their share of fortunate deflections of shots off of legs and bodies and heads. That was another. Ultimately, it came down to that for once the world’s worst football prognosticator, myself, was right when he said what the Whitecaps’ glaring weakness was, when he started the “sign Ali Gerba” bandwagon and rode it as its lonely single passenger, when he cried and wailed and gnashed his teeth that this team refused to acquire a pure finishing striker when they were ankle-deep on the ground for the taking.

So we outplayed Toronto, and kept the more glamourous names pinned back in their own end for long stretches, and got a rogue’s gallery of chances, and drew. We’re on two points and Toronto is on seven. Two wins in our last two games and we’re through. The Voyageurs Cup is not over, except for the fact that it totally is.

On the SkyTrain, there were a group of soccer moms near me discussing the Voyageurs Cup (by the way, lesson to Toronto plastics: the Vancouver soccer moms can understand and care about the Voyageurs Cup). They were pinning their hopes on a repeat of 2009, when Montreal with nothing to play for fielded a reserve team in the deciding match against Toronto. But after the evisceration the Impact took for their shameful capitulation I would be astonished to see a repeat performance that would “even the score” as it were. Besides, I wouldn’t want to win like that if we could. Country before club and the last thing this amazing tournament needs is a bunch of Toronto plastics questioning its legitimacy now that it’s their team that might get screwed.

And even if we do win that game – which we won’t – we’d be heading into BMO Field, a more hostile domain than any in USSF Division Two, needing three points against higher-level opposition. Higher-level opposition that will have every reason to play its best. Forget it. Not going to happen. We’ll be more likely to see Dwayne De Rosario grow a mullet.

We got the moral victories. I could count the number of times when Justin Moose has impressed me on my fingers after a bandsaw accident but tonight he was the man of the match in my books; omnipresent, devouring allegedly more-skilled players, hustling with aplomb and actually showing the intelligence to make something out of that hustle. The FC leave Swangard Stadium for the last time having never won on that hallowed Burnaby grass, the sort of record that is superficially exciting and completely meaningless. We comprehensively outplayed an MLS team, an MLS team that time-wasted in a nil-nil draw against less famous opposition for fifty minutes and hugged in relief and delight after that draw was over. The neutrals must have been delighted by a free-flowing game, and at Swangard (excepting a particularly obtuse, confrontational Mountie with a baton up his ass) a good time was had by all.

But it was that close. My god, we could have made a competition out of this thing, and instead it’s a coronation.

Everybody loves a preview article. It tells you nothing you didn’t already know, takes up valuable minutes of your life you could spend learning a new language or spending time with your family, and at the end of it you’ll disagree with whatever I wrote anyway. I don’t know why writers, aside from the singularly lazy, bother with them.

Luckily, I am singularly lazy.

So I’m going to break down each position and important non-positional factor, team by team. Then I’m going to tell you who’s best. Then you’re going to comment and tell me what an idiot I am. I think it’s a great system for everybody, and with each team having played its last game before Montreal and Toronto kick off on Wednesday, the time is right.

Without further ado: the Maple Leaf Forever 2010 Voyageurs Cup Preview Article, broken down position by position for your reading and arguing convenience.

Goalkeepers: best Vancouver, second-best Toronto, third-best Montreal.

This is a competitive category, as all three teams run out quite skilled goaltenders. Placing Montreal third should be no slight on Matt Jordan, who was the main reason the Impact won the 2008 Voyageurs Cup and would be a big factor if they hypothetically won the 2010 edition. But Stefan Frei beats out Jordan on sheer athleticism, even if he lacks Jordan’s poise, experience, and ability to control his area. Certainly, on any given Wednesday, these rankings could be flipped right around.

Perhaps it’s just my bias from watching the Whitecaps too much, but he Jay Nolly is the best of the lot. An elite second division goalkeeper, would look quite good in MLS, and has stymied both Toronto and Montreal in the past. He does not suffer from Frei’s occasional brain cramps, but his superior physical ability compared to Jordan makes him the best in the tournament.

Defenders: best Vancouver, second-best Montreal, third-best Toronto

Mouloud Alkoul, who was the pundits’ choice to be Vancouver’s best defender this season if he could ever get on the pitch, is out with injury after playing less than half an hour of Whitecaps football. The other highly-touted acquisition, former FC Dallas starter Blake Wagner, has not been heard from so far this season. But the defense has still been good enough to get Jay Nolly three pretty easy clean sheets to start the season, with Nelson Akwari, Chris Williams, Greg Janicki, Zourab Tsiskaridze, and Wes Knight putting in stalwart and largely error-free service early in the season. As the relatively new roster plays more and the Cup progresses, the defense could be on even better form when Vancouver plays its two key road matches to close out the Cup.

Montreal’s back line is less spectacular but it is also absolutely legitimate. It is a more veteran group than the Vancouver gang, headlined by Adam Braz, Stefano Pesoli, and captain Nevio Pizzolitto. With other highly effective players such as Cedric Jonquivel, Hicham Aâboubou, and Simon Gatti, the Impact can run a sterling defensive line that may get into foul trouble now and again but will also terrorize unprepared Vancouver or Toronto strikers.

Toronto FC also has defenders on its roster. Some of them are oft-injured eastern Europeans with mysterious, worrisome chronic knee problems. Some of them are just useless. Some of them are Nick Garcia. I like Nana Attakora as much as anybody but he’s one man and won’t make up the difference.

Midfielders: best Toronto, second-best Montreal, third-best Vancouver

When I say “best Toronto”, imagine a nice, long pause before I say “second-best Montreal”. Go make a cup of tea, that’s how long a pause we’re talking about here.

Oh, Montreal’s midfield is fine. I’m as big a Tyler Hemming fan as is left on the planet and it would take a braver man than I to condemn David Testo, Rocco Placentino, and Stephen deRoux to the dustbin of history. They’re good players. They’ll do some damage. But Toronto’s strength at this position is unrivaled. Dwayne De Rosario, Julian De Guzman, Sam Cronin, and that’s enough. Their depth does not impress (I’m not exactly feeling a chill down my spine at the thought of Nick LaBrocca bearing down on Jay Nolly), but their top end is plenty strong.

Vancouver has some bright spots on their midfield but so far this season it has been, on balance, a position of weakness. Martin Nash is old and slow, even if his service and ball control is as remarkable as ever. Ansu Toure and Nisar Khalfan are fair enough players, and Luca Bellisomo has been surprisingly strong so far as a central midfielder. But there’s not much talent there.

Forwards: best Montreal, second-best Vancouver, third-best Toronto

This is a much tighter race, possibly the closest of all. None of these three teams have overwhelming strike forces. I give Montreal the benefit of the doubt because, even if their best players are getting older, we know they can score. Roberto Brown is my pick for the tournament’s Golden Boot. Eduardo Sebrango isn’t what he used to be but he will poach one here and there off the bench. Peter Byers is more of a question mark but at least he has promise.

I agonized over the order of Vancouver and Toronto. Vancouver’s best striker, Marlon James, is too often injured to rely upon. Toronto’s best striker is a midfielder, Dwayne De Rosario, and from there it is a chorus of futility headlined by the infamous Chad Barrett. But they are futile against superior MLS defenses and history has shown that the jump from second division to first in North America is greatest for strikers. Neither one has enough depth to impress. Randy Edwini-Bonsu and Dever Orgill have potential but they can’t score yet. O’Brian White, for Toronto, is closer to rounding into the goal-poaching so-and-so they hope he will become but Fuad Ibrahim is still some way off.

I finally give Vancouver the advantage based on returning loanee Marcus Haber: I’m not that high on the kid but if James stays healthy he can take some of the pressure off the St. Vincentian, and if James gets hurt he still provides us with some scoring depth Toronto hasn’t got.

Bench: best Vancouver, second-best Montreal, third-best Toronto

Vancouver has at least one and usually two legitimate tactical or injury substitutions available at every position. If Jay Nolly (he of the playing every single minute in 2009) gets hurt, Simon Thomas isn’t a star but he’s perfectly adequate and Dan Pelc is considered a hot prospect by CSL fans. There are enough midfielders with sufficiently varied skill sets that Teitur Thordarson can throw any sort of lineup he wants together even if a player or two goes down. Dever Orgill, Randy Edwini-Bonsu, and Alex Semenets are borderline interchangeable up front with Ricardo Sanchez providing a veteran, no-nonsense tactical curveball.

The Montreal Impact, too, benefit from a surfeit of interchangeable players. With six defenders and eight midfielders who could start for most USSF D2 teams, they can field a lineup as strong in the ninetieth minute as it was in the first. They fall behind Vancouver in the individual calibre of each of their substitutes as well as the tactical variation they can throw out with their substitutions, but they are still top-notch from the bench.

Toronto FC only recently acquired enough players to have a bench, and most of them you won’t have heard of or won’t care about if you have. Their depth has been a point of contention for their supporters throughout the season so far, and with Preki viewing the Voyageurs Cup as a second-rate tournament it may become a critical obstacle.

The verdict: I have Vancouver winning the 2010 Voyageurs Cup, although Montreal could easily give them a run for their money and Toronto, of course, is hardly out of it. Just because the Whitecaps are the favourites doesn’t mean they’re sure things. It ought to be a close competition, or at least closer than last year: if you’re a neutral, isn’t that what matters?

Me, I’m just waiting for Vancouver.

So, farewell then, Jimmy Brennan, riding gloriously off into the sunset after fourteen years of professional soccer, forty-nine senior international caps, and three seasons as captain of his hometown MLS team. Brennan is set to announce his retirement tomorrow afternoon, supposedly to become assistant general manager in Mo Johnston’s erratic front office.

It’s a surprise in more ways than one. Brennan mentioned on It’s Called Football last week that he was probably going to retire at the end of this season but nobody expected it to be this soon. He looked good, if not great, in Toronto’s season opener against Columbus. He’s only thirty-two and it’s not like he’s injured or physically incapable. The question, and one that can probably never be answered, is whether Brennan is falling on his sword for the sake of his club or whether he’s just so tired that the captain is willing to leave his players in the lurch.

Brennan has a non-trivial 2010 cap hit of $119,070, which is a fair chunk of change on a team starving for depth. If Brennan’s retirement relieves Toronto of all $119,070, that’s money they could use to sign two decent depth players. But the world isn’t exactly full of players who are unattached, available in April, willing to take $55,000 each and of the quality of even a 32-year-old Jim Brennan. It’s difficult to imagine a way that this could make Toronto better on the pitch, unless you are a far more starry-eyed Gabe Gala optimist than I am. Brennan’s cap hit just about exactly covers three players at the new MLS non-developmental minimum of $40,000, but horrible though Toronto’s depth is are two more  minimum-wage players the answer?

For all the admiration I have for Brennan as a man and as a footballer, he has a chequered history. He’s been captain of Toronto since its inception, and not only has Toronto never made the playoffs but talented players like Jeff Cunningham have left with bitter tastes in their mouths from the dressing room environment. His quarrels with the national team have been legion: his relationship with Holger Osieck was bad enough that Brennan skipped the 2003 Gold Cup that eventually led to Osieck being hauled behind the woodshed and he fared little better with Dale Mitchell, initially greeting Mitchell as “a good selection” and throwing Mitchell under the bus less than a year later. He proved his professionalism by always playing his hardest when he got the opportunity regardless of the boss, but there was always that question mark; that over-willingness to play bootroom politician.

Let there be no doubt that, in his prime, Brennan was one of Canada’s better players. He was the best left back we’ve run out other than Michael Klukowski since the 1980s. Again excepting Klukowski and perhaps Martin Nash (more limited in other ways), no other Canadian player on either flank in the last generation has combined his intelligence on the pitch and sheer crossing ability. He scored six times for his country, which is nothing to sneeze at, and in another world would have had the same improbably long and remarkably fluid career as fellow politicking defender Mark Watson.

Toronto fans shouldn’t be worried about Brennan as an assistant GM: it’s not like the position makes life-or-death decisions, and Brennan is an intelligent, well-spoken man who by all accounts knows his football. There are worse front office apprenticeships. But was this cushy job offered by a team eager to free up Brennan’s salary, or was it a gift from Mo Johnston to a devoted defender who had decided that enough was enough one game into a new season? It’s doubtful we’ll ever really know the answer.

But whether Brennan is leaving for the sake of his club or for himself, Toronto FC will be worse off for it.

It is an axiom that a higher-division team is always the favourite against a lower-division team in a fair tournament. Always. Never mind that the higher-division team is probably the worst team in its league and the two lower-division teams in question are defending finalists. Never mind that the aforementioned higher-division team’s record in competitive matches is 4-3-3, that they lost the first one of these tournaments, and that they won the second only due to a shocking episode of capitulation from the Montreal Impact and their reserve team.

In case you haven’t guessed, I don’t much care for axioms.

Look at Toronto’s roster. You thought the Nick Garcia Experience last year was bad then, boy, you ain’t seen nothing yet. In direct defiance of one of my articles from last year, Julian De Guzman looks talented as hell but useless in the FC’s setup and Toronto could not physically be missing Carl Robinson more than they are. The strike force is almost unbelievably bad. Both the midfield and defense have some talented individuals – Nana Attakora and Dwayne De Rosario are firmly in “call up to the national team until their legs fall off” territory and Sam Cronin is good enough that we need to invent a time machine just so we can give him a Canadian grandparent – but as units the defense is bad and the midfield isn’t good enough to make up for it. Stefan Frei has all the brain cramps of Fabien Barthez without an iota of Barthez’s talent. Depth is a problem. So is the coach, who has bluntly stated that he doesn’t give a toss about our national championship compared to the league. Whether you think that’s right or wrong is beside the point.

Let’s compare that to the two defending USL-1 finalists the FC will be up against, Vancouver and Montreal. Vancouver is slightly weaker in some departments, with the departure of Charles Gbeke, Marcus Haber, and 2009 hero Ansu Touré among others. On the other hand, our old nemesis of defense had been addressed with the addition of MLS journeyman Greg Janicki, former Charleston Battery stalwarts Chris Williams and Nelson Akwari, and of course Zourab “Georgian Guy” Tsiskaridze, who wears #77 but don’t hold that against him.

(Sidenote: apparently Georgian Guy played for Miami FC last year. I saw Miami FC in person twice last year and more often on webcasts. You think I’d have remembered a speedy 6′0″ Georgian skinhead with “TSISKARIDZE” on his back.)

Unless the Residency kids come along or Marlon James stays healthy, the Whitecaps are going to have trouble scoring goals this year, but probably less trouble in their league than Toronto would have in theirs. Man for man, James, Edwini-Bonsu, Orgill and Semenets are awfully close to Barrett, White, and Ibrahim.

Montreal, meanwhile, can score with the best of them. Roberto Brown is arguably the best striker in Canada right now until the Ali Gerba situation resolves itself, and the depth is unremarkable but decent with Peter Byers, elder statesman Eduardo Sebrango, and a bevy of kids from Trois-Rivieres. Matt Jordan can steal games. Braz, Pizzolitto, Joqueviel, and Pesoli can help Jordan do that. While the defense has no stars with the loss of Joey Gjertsen, there are an awful lot of really good journeymen like Di Lorenzo, Hemming, Testo, and Placentino. Provided the Impact duck their crises from last season, they have to be a ranking contender for the Voyageurs Cup title.

Where does this leave Toronto? On the outside looking in, barring either a change of heart from Preki or a balls-to-the-wall performance from the FC’s lesser lights. This isn’t a “USSF Division Two is a better league than MLS!” argument. This is “if two good USSF-2 teams that care about the tournament go up against a bad MLS team that doesn’t, the USSF-2 teams will probably win.”

Which goes against every axiom in the book. But like I said, I don’t much care for axioms.

(If you’d like to put somebody else’s money where your mouth is, the esteemed Out of Touch Guy is running a Voyageurs Cup pool. You should enter. I will enjoy crushing you with my blatant Whitecaps homer predictions.)

I like MLS. No, I love MLS. I love MLS more than I could ever love some English so-called Premier League, or some Spanish La Liga, or, yes, even the Italian Serie A.

Part of it is simple patriotism. There is half a Canadian in the Premier League right now, none in either La Liga or the Serie A, and six in Major League Soccer not counting Toronto. Partially, it’s the quality of play: are the players as good as the stars of Manchester United? Of course not! But they’re still pretty damned good, and the parity in the league means that there are hardly any Chelsea – Aston Villa 90-minute torture sessions for the neutral.

Also, I can actually watch them at a sane hour of day. I love soccer, but I don’t usually love it enough to get up at 4:30 AM PST on a Saturday to watch Blackburn take on Tottenham or whoever’s up this week.

So this extended weekend was a pretty good one for me. MLS First Kick, Philadelphia at Seattle was… well, it was a dreary game and the Union proved why they’re everybody’s favourite for the basement. But the uniforms were sharp and, in defiance of critical opinion, the turf at Qwest Field looked perfectly playable to me. This didn’t stop the usual suspects from letting fly with invective directed at the plastic – football is meant to be played on grass, and so forth. I’ve seen bad turf. All those Toronto fans have seen bad turf. That was not bad turf. Hell, the grass at Commonwealth Stadium was worse than that turf.

The other highlight of the weekend was, of course, Toronto’s visit to Columbus. It had everything we’ve grown to love and expect from MLS, all pleasantly rolled into one ninety-minute package. There were moments of sublime skill and beauty. There was a half-empty stadium. There was 29-year-old Julian De Guzman playing like he was a thousand, and there was 1,000-year-old Guillermo Barros Schelotto playing like he was twenty-nine. Both sides complained like hell about how much the refereeing helped the other team, as per usual. Plus, Toronto got pummeled, which isn’t news either.

(There’s another post in this, but oh my god does Toronto look like they’ll be bad this year. I’m genuinely not sure that Toronto is as good as Montreal man-for-man, even on paper. Are they even the favourites for the Voyageurs Cup?)

There were other games on the weekend, but who cares? None of them were exactly thrill-a-minute action rides. Irritatingly, one of the best matches of the weekend was the Madrid derby in La Liga – I say irritatingly because eww, La Liga. For a 3-2 game the result was only in doubt for the first half before Real asserted their dominance, but it was still a well-played exhibition of soccer, damn them. Atlético just needed one more goal against Real, so look for them to offer a million dollars for Gabe Gala.

The best viewing of the weekend, however, came on Sunday afternoon. I had a web stream of GOL TV on taking up space, and what should come on but some Brazilian action between Corinthians and Sao Paolo. It was a preposterously back-and-forth affair: Corinthians dominated heavily early, taking leads of 2-0 and 3-1 before Sao Paolo stormed back to level affairs at 3-3. With time dying, Corinthians finally snatched the winner, and unusually in a seven-goal match every last strike was of sublime, highlight-of-the-night calibre. Even fat Ronaldo looked into it, setting up the first Corinthians goal and occasionally deigning to run full-out before being substituted.

So I guess that’s the last reason I love MLS, actually. Great football can come from anywhere.

This is Charles Gbeke, filling out his jersey like usual. Charles was a big fellow in every sense of the word: 6′2″ and built like an offensive tackle from the 1980s. Husky. Slow. Watching him jog (he never got above “jog”) up the pitch, you got an idea about how tectonic plates worked. Seldom were he and Randy Edwini-Bonsu on the same pitch, but when they were, Edwini-Bonsu could outrun Gbeke going backwards. They were not an effective partnership just because they never really had the same game plan. So, naturally, the young, athletic Edwini-Bonsu has stayed, where the older, chunkier Gbeke is currently toiling with something called Guangzhou F.C. in the Chinese second division.

But here’s the thing about Gbeke. He pipped fifteen goals in forty-two career appearances for the Whitecaps and led the USL Division One in scoring last season. The guy may have been essentially inert but he could strike with a vengeance and he always seemed to know exactly where he had to be. He was, essentially, a homeless man’s Ali Gerba, but with the Whitecaps talented ball distributors and wing speed, he was deadly.

With Gbeke gone and Marcus Haber off to greener pastures in lovely, er, Exeter, the burden of scoring on Vancouver will fall to Edwini-Bonsu, 33-year-old oft-injured St. Vincent and the Grenadines-ian Marlon James, and a rogue’s galary of decent-ish youngsters that include Dever Orgill, Canadian U-20 Alex Semenets, and a former Puerto Rico Islander benchwarmer with the tremendous footballing name of Jonny Steele. There’s some potential there, but it’s not exactly a murderer’s row. When James is hurt (i.e. “all the fucking time”), there’s not a classic goal poacher in the bunch.

Unfortunately, there aren’t exactly a lot of talented poachers out there. Particularly not talented poachers in the primes of their career. Preferably ones familiar with the North American second division but who are still young enough to be key contributors to an MLS roster. It would be best if he were Canadian, to help us out with potentially problematic domestic player rules in the future. Besides, anybody available at this time of year would probably have missed professional training camps and be hopelessly out of shape. It’s not like there’s such a player who is actively trying to seek his release from one of our mortal rivals or anything, right? That would be impossible.

Oh, wait, what’s that, John Molinaro? Preki has sent Canada’s best goalscorer by strike rate home because of “performance” even though he’s in the best shape of his career and that goalscorer, who could be fairly described as “Charles Gbeke if Gbeke suddenly got really good and could fire a shot from twenty feet hard enough to decapitate a USSF-2 goalkeeper someday”, is trying to engineer his release from the club even though he’s on a guaranteed contract that will pay him nearly $200,000 this season?

Now, maybe Gerba has really been that awful on a Toronto FC team that’s looked uninspiring so far this preseason. Maybe his fat gave him super powers, like Samson’s hair, and now that he’s showed up lean and trim he makes Chad Barrett look like Wayne Rooney. Or maybe the notorious hard-ass coach is trying to light a fire under his team by sending home an expensive but expendable domestic player with a high profile just to show who’s boss. Maybe Gerba is getting Jeff Cunningham’d. It’s not like Toronto FC is blowing the barn doors off with or without Fat Fit Ali. Since a seemingly slightly panicked Mo Johnston was quick to emphasize that Gerba isn’t being released, this reeks of a motivational stunt.

Let’s suppose that Gbeke gets his release from Toronto FC. I doubt Toronto would be sad to get rid of Gerba’s cap hit, and if they could pay him off for a portion of his remaining deal by mutual consent, one suspects everyone would be happy with that. Gerba would be in need of a team, obviously, and the European clubs with which he once plied his trade are mid-season. They probably wouldn’t be looking to add an international who’d require a work permit. It would be North America or bust for him. MLS is probably going on strike, so there’s a very good chance he’ll be looking at USSF Division Two. And very few clubs have both the resources to pay Gerba and the roster spot where he could fit in.

The Whitecaps have both.

So make it happen, Mullet Bob. Sign him to a one-year deal and see what happens. It’s not like you have a salary cap to worry about. If he performs, fantastic, you have a striker who’ll be 28 at the beginning of your first MLS season and who we know can score goals. If he doesn’t, no harm done, staple his ass to the bench in favour of Orgill or Semenets and let Gerba wander down the dusty trail in search of a club once again.

At the very least, Vancouver restaurants would appreciate the business.

Of course the widespread rumours of the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts wanting to play at BMO Field are unwelcome. Of course. These are the same Toronto Argonauts who put the future of the Youth World Cup in jeopardy by backing out of a stadium at York University at the last minute (costing the taxpayers of Ontario $15 million in lost finance from the school), who previously dithered over a soccer-football stadium at Varsity Stadium until it was killed, and who contributed zero cents to the construction of BMO Field. Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment put their money where their mouth was and financed much of the stadium’s construction. They also paid for the grass pitch being installed. In short, they did their job. As a result, the Argonauts will get to destroy that lovely grass pitch being installed at such expense.

Bluntly, the Argonauts can go fuck themselves, and I don’t even like Toronto FC.

Now, a few folks such as Onward’s Ben Knight are taking the logical approach: the Argonauts will never play at BMO Field and here’s why. Most of the reasons centre around the fact that BMO Field would be a truly awful CFL venue and the league would need to bend over backwards to approve the Argonauts playing there. Unfortunately, this argument misses one key fact: we’re not talking about the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, we’re talking about the Toronto Argonauts. The CFL’s Marquee Franchise, in spite of the fact that they’re miserable off the field and worse on it and probably have the smallest following of any CFL franchise. The Argonauts are a classic example of the Toronto-centrism that we in the rest of Canada rail against so ineffectively, in that the CFL has always been willing to grab its ankles and spread ‘em when the Argos come calling.

Besides, the sanctity of CFL field dimensions has always been up for discussion. As an Edmonton Eskimos fan, I can tell you in vivid detail about the truncated corners at Commonwealth Stadium and the touchdowns that haven’t counted when a receiver ran a route onto the running track; the corners at Percival Molson Stadium in Montreal share this defect. The ill-fated CFL USA experiment (I believe it is constitutionally mandated that it be referred to as “the ill-fated CFL USA experiment”)  saw absolutely everybody except the San Antonio Texans playing on non-regulation field sizes. Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, home of the Memphis Mad Dogs, had nine-yard end zones.

Would the Argonauts be going as far as petitioning the government if they didn’t have some assurance from the CFL they’d be able to play there? Government lobbying is neither cheap nor effortless. Either somebody at CFL HQ has told the Argonauts that they’ll make BMO Field work or they’re using BMO Field as leverage. But leverage for what? The Argonauts are up for sale, of course, but they have a buyer in BC Lions owner David Braley. Their rent deal at SkyDome is as favourable as physically possible, and SkyDome’s significantly higher capacity means less of a cap on Argonaut revenues (their average attendance is higher than BMO Field’s capacity). Ben Knight suggests that the Argonauts are trying to bait Rogers, owners of SkyDome and the Toronto Blue Jays, into buying the team. But given the lack of funding and enthusiasm Rogers has shown to their existing sports empire since Ted Rogers’s death, there is a certain quixotic air over such a quest.

Being a cynic, I think that the Argonauts’ desire to move into BMO Field is sincere. They want to play on grass (only Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton has a natural grass surface among current CFL venues). They’re hoping for a Molson Stadium effect, where the Montreal Alouettes moved from cavernous Olympic Stadium to a small university stadium and increased both atmosphere and profit. Although they pay no rent at SkyDome, they’d prefer to avoid the inevitable overhead costs of playing there because they’re losing a million billion dollars every year.

As a general rule, I hate publicly funded stadia, but BMO Field was done as properly as possible. Private enterprise (Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment) kicked in much of the construction and maintenance costs. The field was set aside for community use, and when grass was required and community use was no longer possible the government forced MLSE to construct an adequate replacement.  The government retains ownership of BMO Field rather than just making it a gift to the mighty teachers’ pension plan. Plus, it was of course built in part for our Canadian national teams, a public enterprise if ever there was one. Now, though, we see the inevitable downside: Toronto FC is not master of its own domain. It operates at the sufferance of bodies that have little stake in its success. The euphoric joy at being allowed to pay for a decent playing surface can quickly be overwhelmed by the horror of political masters helping out one of their other interests. Until Toronto FC plays in a stadium paid for and owned by the club (current estimate: never), its mere operation will always be lingeringly uncertain, and its success will always come with the lingering chance of betrayal.

If life was fair, the only way the Toronto Argonauts would get into BMO Field would be with tickets. But life, and more particularly government, is not fair, and the joy of “grass at BMO!” will be replaced by the deadening pain of all that money spent and a surface that is still completely unsuitable for world-class football, while a less successful franchise frolics through the stadium they tried to destroy.

Other perspectives: Ben Knight’s article linked above, Duane Rollins, squizz the Some Canadian Guy, and Duane Rollins again.