some canadian guys writing about soccer

[Probably a good idea to get up to speed on the first five parts of the experiment before reading the thrilling conclusion.]

When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. When life hands your club an embarrassing, wretched, one-sided demolition at the hands of the league’s worst side, in a must-win season finale… you make a soccer fan where there wasn’t one before.

Sounds counter-intuitive? Keep reading.

If you’ve been following this experiment, you’ll know that in an attempt to make our friend Emma understand the stranglehold that the beautiful game can have on our lives, we’ve had her read Fever Pitch (hence the name), pick a Premiership side to support, dragged her down to Scallywags, even brought her out to BMO Field to watch the women’s national team get thrashed by the U.S. And while she played along, it was clear that she still found our footie obsessions to be kind of weird, mostly inexplicable and probably a tad silly.

But this past Saturday may have been enough to finally make her understand, appreciate… believe. Who knew that some good could actually come of Toronto’s 5-0 trouncing at the hands of New York?

This chapter of the experiment was not as meticulously planned as the other ones. Heading into the final weekend of the MLS season, I was too busy fretting over the seemingly infinite number of tiebreaking possibilities and Toronto’s place in the entire mess to worry about much else. For any neophytes reading: if Toronto won its final game of the regular season, they had a very good chance of making the playoffs — and said final game was against New York, statistically the worst team in the league by far.

Hence, Emma’s innocuous question — “what are you guys up to tonight?” — didn’t seem destined to lead to much. We’re watching the TFC game at a bar. Big game. Playoffs on the line. Lot of worried nerds hanging around. “Really?” says she. “Maybe I’ll come by.” Yeah, right. Of course you will. The same way we dropped by at Toronto Fashion Week. [Note: We didn't.]

Scheduled kickoff time arrives. The mood at the bar is excited, tense, but still upbeat — we’ve just got to beat New York, after all. The pints are flowing, the back-slapping is in full effect… the room is ready for a celebration, 90 minutes hence. It’s a de facto supporters’ bar, and although many regulars have made the trek down to the soggy Meadowlands to take in the action live, the modestly-sized bar is still packed, the air thick with the unmistakable scent combo of french fries, beer belches, sweat, nervous tension and, let’s be honest, some B.O.

Huh. Rain delay. Odd, didn’t know Toronto FC played baseball now. But hey, we figure, another half hour to soak in the revelry, enjoy the company of other red-clad lunatics for a little longer and, of course, expedite the destruction of our livers. And then… Emma… walks in? Really?

Without our badgering. Without our pestering. Without repeated phone calls and emails convincing her to check this website, go here, do this-or-that, just so we’d have material for this ridiculous experiment. She just showed up of her own volition. At a soccer pub. Full of soccer supporters. During a soccer game.

Her initial thoughts? “God, there’s a lot of red in this room. Everyone matches the red wallpaper with their red scarves, red shirts and red hats… this room is a style shipwreck. And why hasn’t Jamie said hi to me yet? Has Squizz blinked yet? Does it smell like curry in here? Wow, I need a pint…”

Of course, Jamie and I were in no mood to be overly cordial, but that’s to be expected, given the circumstances. With the actual kickoff rapidly approaching, any pre-game excitement or optimism quickly disintegrated, replaced by the requisite dread that usually lays dormant (but can be summoned at any moment) in the souls of any footie fan.

Kickoff. Excitement. Minute and a half. New York goal. WTF.

“Oh dear, well, that’s not good.”

Thanks, Emma.

And that’s when any pretense about this being a triumphant testament to the spirit-lifting power of the beautiful game evaporated, and the whole thing descended into 90 interminable minutes of hand-wringing, head-shaking, profanity-yelling and next-round-buying. This makes sense to us, of course. We’ve all been there before. But what did it mean to Emma? What did she think of seeing a room full of ostensibly grown men — including two of her good friends, whom she (hopefully) views as intelligent, well-adjusted gentlemen — slowly lose their minds and will to live over a game?

“You do realize they can’t hear you when you yell ‘Kick the fucking ball, you idiot!’, right?” Yes, we do. “OK, just making sure.”

Quickly enough, her shutterbug instincts kicked in, and she turned the whole “sociological experiment” conceit on its head, snapping clandestine photos of folks unknowingly expressing sheet and utter horror:

Pictured: Squizz, Ben Rycroft. Not pictured: Hope, optimism.

And while the game slogged along, Emma seemed content to take photographs and chat idly with one of the few other non-fans in the room. But as the game slipped further and further out of Toronto FC’s grasp, her disposition seemed to change ever so slightly. As the palpable despondence hung in the air and the room of perfectly earnest fans sat transfixed to the screen, watching a multi-car pile-up in slow motion, Emma may have had an epiphany… like the moment on the snow-capped mountain when the Grinch’s heart suddenly grows three sizes, something in Emma fundamentally changed her perspective on the world around her.

“Chris, you want another Guinness? I’m going to the bar.”

Alright, so perhaps I exaggerate a bit.

But by halftime, she was willing to offer not just consolation, but some rudimentary game analysis.

“The New York players are just better… and hotter.”

Take the “hotter” comment for what it’s worth, knowing as we do that Emma is partial to footballers of such dubious visual appeal as the “tree frog” Clint Dempsey. But she was unswayed by my assurances that New York was, in fact, an awful team, the worst in the league.

“Well, they’re definitely playing better than Toronto is today.”

And that was surely the moment of epiphany. Anyone can sit in a room with people quite unlike themselves and volunteer to observe, in a detached, dispassionate sort of way. But it’s a different thing to observe that environment closely enough to form a legitimate opinion… and it’s even more to defend that opinion when it’s challenged.

Sure, she wasn’t telling us that defensive miscommunication meant the team’s backline was unable to cope with Mac Kandji’s speed, or that even the horrific field conditions couldn’t explain why Sam Cronin appeared to be the team’s only player with any particular sense of urgency or forward movement. But really, who gives a shit? Toronto was losing. Badly. They were being outplayed. She recognized this. And really, no matter how much sophisticated analysis one wants to add, or how much terminology one wants to employ to buttress their argument, isn’t that ultimately what it comes down to in most cases? Team A outplayed Team B.

Or Team A’s players are “hotter” than Team B’s, if you will.

The second half played out as you all know it did… things continued to get worse for Toronto FC in every way imaginable, to the point where many of the collected supporters were genuinely pleased to see Adrian Serioux concede a last-minute penalty, just to see the squad further punished for the hour and a half of embarrassment they’d forced us to endure. But through the final 45, with the game out of reach, I was able to sporadically check in on Emma’s reactions to not just the game, but the room.

Sure, she wasn’t exactly crying in her beer when the third and fourth New York goals went in. But there was no smarmy grin on her face. No eye-rolling at the sight of the fans taking the result as hard as they did. No cheeky jokes or ironic cheering for New York. Did she… feel sorry for us? Empathize with us? Maybe, perhaps… seeing a room of similarly defeated fellows huddled around one another, watching their team self-destruct… did she get how otherwise-reasonable guys like Jamie and I could feel the way we do about the game?

“Sitting in a room full of men who are feeling such strong emotions — in this case, despair and disappointment — it’s impossible not to feel that along with them. There was definitely a sense of commiseration and mutual understanding amongst the tables — albeit through the unison yelling of ‘Nooooooo, you fucker!’ really loudly after every NY goal — but I saw the connection they had to each other through the actions of their team. I’d like to be in that room when Toronto FC actually wins a game, though, to know what that feels like, too.”

And she’ll get her chance. Granted, it’ll be another six months. But this is a significant breakthrough.

Naturally, the rest of the night devolved into a sloppy, alcoholic blur for myself and, presumably, the majority of patrons at the bar that night. I’m guessing Emma didn’t feel the crater of disappointment in her stomach as we did, or the general malaise for the following few days.

But that’s not the point of the Fever Pitch experiment, and it never was. To use a rather apt analogy, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Our goal was never to “make” her into a hardcore supporter of the sport or one team in general; simply to get her to the point where she earnestly understood how we could become so emotionally invested in what we all realize is just a bunch of strangers kicking a ball around.

So, did it work? I emailed Emma for her closing thoughts on the experiment.

“Today I spent the afternoon with four other fashion editors in Montreal trying on exquisite Michael Kors clothes from collections that have not yet hit stores. I saw the exclusive racks of clothes and my heart started to race, my palms began to sweat and euphoria raced through my body. I had absolutely no control over these reactions — and neither did the other women in the room with me.

“My point is, I don’t think soccer guys — or the majority of men — have a choice when it comes to their strange inexplicable obsessive interest in the actions of a bunch of strangers passing a ball around a field, just like I don’t have a choice when I can’t stop thinking about that coat with fur trim I saw two weeks ago.

“Emotions are tricky things, and what they decide to attach to is sometimes totally out of our control. What I’ve learned is that what these guys feel while watching, talking and thinking about soccer is very real and therefore deserves my empathy, understanding and respect.

“You know, the same I’d hope they’d show me when I go shoe shopping for eight hours straight, end up hypoglycemic, cranky and broke, only to go home and continue the clothes coma by watching London Fashion Week for the rest of the evening.”

And so with that, I’m willing to declare the Fever Pitch experiment to be a success. Have we won a new convert to the beautiful game? Could be. But either way, hopefully we’ve given supporters a chanceto think about their own obsession with the game and maybe, just maybe, helped open the eyes of some of the non-converts, just a little bit. Not everyone needs to be a scarf-wearing, sing-songing dingbat… but then, some of us do. Everyone needs to be something, right?

So that’s it. Thanks to all of you for reading, and many thanks to Emma for her patience and willingness to participate in this ridiculous endeavour.