Of all of Toronto's Sport figures Giovinco has to be the best athelete on Toronto, but at the same time the most underated.
Of all of Toronto's Sport figures Giovinco has to be the best athelete on Toronto, but at the same time the most underated.
And that's ok. I mean do we all want hit pieces in the press about his love of gelato or some such?
Yup!Originally Posted by GuelphStorm2007
TORONTO FC, 2017 MLS CHAMPIONS!!! (Still the greatest in league history!)
As others have mentioned, if we make a deep playoff run, we'll get more respect. We win a Supporters Shield or better yet an MLS Cup, they it will be like Jays 2.0 up in this bizzatch..
We'll finally get bandwagon cases lol
I don't think we can reach a blue jays level of excitement, but we could reach a Raptors level. There are a lot of soccer fans in this city. We just need to give them a reason to cheer.
I just don't think soccer in general is very popular. Kids play it in summer to keep fit and busy and its cheap to play. World Cups and Euros is all about nationalism. North American's look at it as a sissy sport. All that rolling around and diving doesn't help that cause. I don't really care though. I grew up on it and always loved the game.
TFC is always going to be a tough sell for the early season. We are competing with hockey and basketball and we simply can't. Torontonians don't link local football play to spring.
What would be better is if TFC starts anchoring itself to the excitement of the Premier League or Champions League and getting marketing set around that. Too often we don't build the momentum until the summer and that's when Canadians typically think more of soccer -- think World Cup, Olympics.
We're getting there, but with 9+ years of futility we need to build the trust of fans. Look at the Raptors: they took a while to really capture the imagination of the city and sustain it and that was done largely by 1) winning (as said before) and 2) leveraging its star power (also mentioned). We can do both. We've done the second pretty well and now we need to do the first.
I have played hockey, and soccer at a vey high level and high school basketball and football. By far soccer is the most physically demanding. Not even close. The sissy sports are the ones that need armour for protection.
Jurassic Park at BMO? Nope. The North American sports brain remains conditioned by multi-game playoffs. Outside the NFL, one or two elimination games at the end of the season generate nowhere near the drama/ excitement as a 7 game series. In a proper football league, everyone plays each other once away and home, while the team with the most points wins.
They also don't fly all the way to Portland for a game, with Portland flying farther for a game 4 days before that one. The geography in this league makes a home and away approach impossible.
I try to think of MLS as being similar to the format of the UEFA Champions league. Group stages to start off with (MLS conferences), and then the knockout stages (MLS playoffs).
Sorry but I find these types of comments to be tremendously wrong. There's no one way to have a league.
I can't disagree with a balanced schedule being the best, but a league vs a league + playoff is simply just an opinion or preference, not a matter of being proper and unproper.
Is Champs League unproper because it's a table then knockout? Surely not.
As for the conditioning of the NA sports fan, it'll take time. You can't rush the adaptation and attachment to the team, league and the overall sport.
Weird post. I understand both points but the opinion overall doesn't really lead to one or the other.
Multi-game playoffs - Agreed. They are known because playoff fans are told about it. The reasoning behind playoffs is getting those entry level/part time supporters into the fun without committing to a season of ups and downs. But as for the number 7 I gotta say, I thought Bball was still best of 5 in the first round. Just pointing out the number of games isn't that all important since those getting interested aka playoff fever just need to be told what they're watching to get into it.
But I don't get you're proper football stance. Are you of the mind they should give up on playoffs altogether? Because everything else in your post says they should make playoffs LONGER.
FORMER FULL TIME KOOL-AID DRINKER
I know lots of people who call it a "sissy" sport. The best is when these people are baseball fans. HELLO!?
As it should be. Artificial entertainment is annoying. I want the best team to win, not the "hottest" at the time.
It'll be another couple decades to grow this attitude if ever. Having a league with pussplops and a domestic cup would be redundant elsewhere but here it's accommodation for all fans/support. At least the league rewards for winning Supporters Shield. Baby steps...
FORMER FULL TIME KOOL-AID DRINKER
7 game series are incredibly boring. It sucks when teams step off the gas just because they can. In soccer you must always play like it is a game 7. Besides the only reason they do those series is for the $$$.
The trend does seem to be more towards the "event" game, the World Cup Final, the Champions Legue final, whatever. More likely the future we be a few big-money teams in a global champions league not bothering with games against small markets. Why should sports be different from any other business with the same owners?
I'll tell you the level of excitement for TFC, after the game TSN who just did the game went straight to Sports Center, they finally showed the TFC highlights after almost 45 minutes into the show lol, quickly going through the highlights lol, there is your level of excitement lol, no one cares apart for the few souls of us on these boards.
TSN is local Toronto TV station?
I personally except to see local TV media covering home opener and talking to fans on Saturday at BMO field.
That being said, MLSE isn't building any hype (through advertisement on TV) at all. So you can't blame your average Joe who isn't too excited about TFC right now. Also, this long road trip isn't helping either.
Wow look at the crowd at Jurassic park waiting to welcome home the Reds. In the meantime they are watching a raptors game.
If we won theyd show us. Thats just the way it goes, deep playoff run needed to gather viewership and media eyeballs. Just look at the Raptors and Jays.
Its comparable excitement level to that of the excitement level surrounding the Argos since 1991.
Last edited by BelfastBoy; 05-01-2016 at 10:26 PM.
they made such a big deal about a bus load of Raptor fans driving to an away game...filmed it, advertised, made it look like it was the craziest thing, yet TFC have been doing it on our own for years, with multiple bus loads, with 200-500-1,500 even 3,000+ to away games, and nothing is mentioned (and in many ways im happy we aren't advertised for it). We support are team, we don't need everybody to know about it. Ya we know we travel better then all you other Toronto sport fans, but I don't care if you know it or not!
Last edited by james; 05-01-2016 at 11:36 PM.
#Viewsfrom2006
vespa needs to sponsor him though
ouch!
don't need to be so mean
The one thing that is going to be tough for TFC for a few years at least in terms of building a bandwagon effect is the one game nature of the playoffs. The Raptors - who have been around for 20 years or so have the advantage of a 7 game series. I'm sure we will see TV ratings sometime tomorrow but - after averaging around 500,000 TV viewers for the first 4 games of their series I suspect Friday's Game 6 was good on TSN and last night's Game 7 on Sportsnet was probably excellent for them.
CFL football has been around for over 100 years - so the build up to their one game playoffs are part of something sports fans in these parts grew up with.
When (how's that for confidence) TFC make the playoffs again this year - how many playoff games will they have to win in the playoffs before a bandwagon effect kicks in?
Last edited by TravelPat; 05-02-2016 at 11:40 AM.
My best guess would be if we hosted the 2nd leg of the conference finals, would take a series and a win at home in the previous round to start to build up the hype.
At the end of the day it's the consistent build up of excitement over a number of years that will build the bandwagon not just 1 year.
Actually, MLSE FO jump on bandwagon this year after how Raptor fans invaded Detroit last year and made it "West Air Canada Centre". Raptors fans have been travelling to Detroit in large numbers for past few years where fans organized it themselves.they made such a big deal about a bus load of Raptor fans driving to an away game...filmed it, advertised, made it look like it was the craziest thing, yet TFC have been doing it on our own for years, with multiple bus loads, with 200-500-1,500 even 3,000+ to away games, and nothing is mentioned (and in many ways im happy we aren't advertised for it). We support are team, we don't need everybody to know about it. Ya we know we travel better then all you other Toronto sport fans, but I don't care if you know it or not!
I suspect some of these Raptor fans happen to be TFC fans (like myself) who have travel to TFC away games in the past. So yes, TFC/soccer culture is having some influence on Raptor fans which is a good thing, right?
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