some canadian guys writing about soccer

Heretical as this may sound to some of you, I am also a baseball fan. So the World Baseball Classic matchup between Canada and the USA, which took place at Toronto’s SkyDome this past Saturday, had been circled on my calendar for a long time. Despite the negative outcome of the game (a close 6-5 loss), one aspect of the afternoon sticks out in my mind as a positive: the crowd. Unlike most sporting crowds I’d ever been privy to, the 42,000 fans watching this game were loud, proud and unabashedly pro-Canadian. In fact, as I later realized, this was by far the largest pro-Canadian crowd for a sporting event that I’d ever seen.

And it got me to thinking: could Canadian soccer ever do the same thing?

Of course Canadian club soccer could. The 55,571 folks jammed into Olympic Stadium two weeks ago prove that. And if Toronto FC manages to make a go of it in this year’s CONCACAF Champions League, I’m pretty sure the folks of Hogtown would be able and willing to replicate that feat (same goes for the folks in Vancouver if the Whitecaps were to make a similar run). But no, I’m wading into the intractable, murky waters of club vs. country here… I’m talking about the senior men’s national team. Could they sell out one of this country’s big stadia, while attracting a strong pro-Canadian crowd?

Before you answer, consider another baseball example… while soccer fans generally need only consider the “club vs. country” dilemma in an abstract, hypothetical way*, baseball fans needed to put their money where their mouths were last week, when the Toronto Blue Jays played against Team Canada in a warmup match. As an added twist, Canada’s starting pitcher from that game actually plays for the Blue Jays. Watching this game on television was, suffice to say, a bizarre sort of experience for me. And while I was inclined to cheer for the Canucks anyway, the fact that the Jays rolled out a bunch of nobodies (which didn’t really help Canada tune up for the WBC very much at all) sealed the deal.

*The one opportunity that Canadians — Torontonians in particular — had to consider “club vs. country” in a meaningful way came on September 6, 2008… and, mind-bogglingly enough, the fortunes of a not-yet-two-year-old, non-playoff-bound club superseded those of the national team, for thousands of them. Go figure.

The Blue Jays, keep in mind, have been in existence since before I was born. I’ve followed them my whole life. I’ve been with the team through the highs of World Series victories and the lows of… well, the last 15 years. And yet, I was willing to put that aside momentarily, because a patchwork mish-mash of guys wearing the maple leaf were out on the field that day. I know soccer is “different”… but is it really? If 42,000 folks can come out of the woodwork and go bonkers over an ad hoc Canadian squad assembled simply for a meaningless tournament with no history or prestige, why can’t they get equally excited about Canada attempting to qualify for the world’s biggest and most-watched single-sport event?

The oft-discussed attitude towards soccer in the country (propagated by soon-to-be-put-to-pasture clowns like Bob McCown and Don Cherry) doesn’t help. And yet, there are 16,000 Toronto FC season ticket holders, thousands more on the waiting list, and at least 20,000 red-clad yellers at every home fixture at BMO Field. Even the mayor jaunts around in TFC gear in what, let’s assume for the sake of argument, is a legitimate show of affection for the game. So it’s not as if attending a soccer game makes you a pariah in this city.

Could it really come down to promotion? We all know the CSA did absolutely zero to promote the World Cup qualifiers last summer in Toronto and Montreal; the Voyageurs and other supporters needed to pick up the slack on that front. I’d rather not recall the disaster at Stade Saputo, but the Jamaica match at BMO Field saw — let’s say, at minimum — 15,000 Canadian supporters. Would many of them have attended, or even known about it, without the efforts by us in the supporter community to buy up large blocks of tickets and desperately spread word-of-mouth advertising? Maybe, maybe not… but ultimately, they were there.

For what it’s worth, I don’t recall ever seeing any advertising for the World Baseball Classic. In fact, fellow some canadian guys writer “Avram” Grant — who was roped into attending the Canada/USA baseball game — admitted that, had I not told him about it, he never would have known the WBC was going on. The media coverage of the WBC, prior to its beginning, was a hell of a lot more extensive than anything relating to the Canadian men’s national soccer team… I won’t flog the deceased equine, though. Coverage of soccer ain’t great in Canada. No big surprise.

Ultimately, I don’t know if it could be done, in the short term at least. But maybe there are factors I’m not considering. Maybe there’s something I’m missing. What do you think? Could it happen? Could we fill the SkyDome (Olympic Stadium, BC Place…) for a men’s national team game? To make it a more exact hypothetical question, let’s say it’s a hexagonal qualifier game for the 2014 World Cup against the United States. Could that game draw a crowd of 50,000+, with a strong and visible majority of them cheering for Canada? If not, why not? What would need to change?

I’d be interested to read your comments below.