This game is just enormous to me. I will admit, I am sat in my lounge watching the game on the telly and I cannot be there. I wish I could.
Besides being a TFC fan, I'm a Stoke fan. I'v never seen my team - my homeland team - win a major trophy. In fact I've never seen any team I love win anything really of note, other than the Autoglass trophy (Google it) at Wembley in 1991. I came to Toronto six years ago and despite my typically snobbish British attitude towards North American sports and particularly a similar attitude to MLS, it was a revelation to experience the alternative sporting environment and possibilities and I put aside my silly predilections and went to see the Jays, the Raptors and at great expense, the Leafs.
I came to love baseball and particularly basketball and I watch the Jays and the Raps on a regular basis - on the telly and inside the arena - on a regular basis. I can't afford the Leafs. For the record, 'football' just doesn't do it for me and I have no interest, negative or otherwise towards any CFL or NFL franchise.
But football without the inverted commas, or soccer as I have begun to accept as a name for the game is my first love and TFC was the team, the club, the franchise - whatever you choose to call it - has become something I absolutely fucking love. I wasn't born into this club like I was Stoke. I was taken to Stoke when I was three. I was photographed in the Stoke City FC onesie and wearing scarves before I could talk. There was no other team I would've been allowed to love. I was born a Stoke fan. Maybe even brainwashed into being so.
But I became a TFC fan through my own free will, and that matters.
I have a four year old daughter who is born of a baptized Catholic father and a mother of Jewish descent. This gave me, us, the quandary of which faith our daughter would be raised to follow. Like many, we opted to give her the option herself and she remains damned until she chooses (I use the word 'damned' firmly tongue in cheek if anyone takes offence).
I can very easily equate this to my love of TFC and how it has become to be. I had no choice but to take Stoke to my heart, and she will be forever there. I did though, choose TFC because she appealed to me. Not my father, or my tradition. Me alone and love her for it.
In a nutshell, Stoke is my mother. She formed my love for the beautiful game that is football. TFC, however is the one I chose to be my wife, or she chose me. Two loves. One love. Different loves. Just love.
That's what it means to me. Your turn.
A