With FC Dallas knocking out LA Galaxy, Landon Donovan, David Beckham et al last night, the job of generating excitement to sell all the non season-ticket seats, and get bums into those pre sold seats to make BMO field look acceptably close to, if not actually full, got a lot harder. Judging by the lack of adverts to be seen so far around Toronto or in the media, for the game or any of the events surrounding it, the Toronto FC marketing and sales types must have been working overtime on the TFC season ticket renewals, and hoping that Beckham or Thierry Henry would have been showing up to boost interest for the MLS Cup.
With the sizzle reduced to Marvell Wynne (hey TFC fans, you liked Marvell right? You don't remember all those handballs do you? You'll come out on a cold November night to cheer him right? Right? Guys?), it's time to focus on the steak of what should hopefully be a decent game. Despite the lack of marquee talent, there's still good players on show, Conor Casey and Omar Cummings have been one of the best forward pairings in the league over the last few years. For Dallas, David Ferreira has had a great year, legitimately contending for the MLS MVP award, and they have had a very successful year, including going 19 games unbeaten spanning almost 5 months. The two games between the teams this year both ended in ties, so it should be an even game, with a good possibility of extra time and penalties.
It's not like there's no good storylines at all here, both teams are original founding members of MLS back in 1996, and neither of them have won the cup before, so we're guaranteed a new winner, and a feel-good story of long suffering team and fan base finally gets the title. Both teams are underdogs, with Dallas having to beat the reigning champs, and then the favourites to get here, and Colorado coming from behind then holding their nerve in penalties against the Crew, and despite having two of the worst corporately-named stadiums in the league, neither team has a shirt sponsorship, which for me at least is a very refreshing thing to see.
There should be enough to be able to sell the game, especially given the oft-repeated assertion that "TFC fans are the best in the league". This should be a good test to see if Toronto really is the great soccer market people try and tell us it is, or merely a great TFC market, either way I'm looking forward to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment