TFC’s title shot par for a strange ’16
Toronto’s assent as league champions would top off an incredible year of unlikely success stories
The year 2016 in sports: Are we certain this isn’t the end times? Oh sure, it began innocently enough, with the Denver Broncos winning a Super Bowl. No shocker.
But then the previously unthinkable starting happening at a rather alarming clip.
Leicester City won the English Premier League, a result so unexpected for a team that had barely avoided relegation a season earlier in a league that has only ever been won by a handful of rich clubs, that the odds against it happening were — not to get too technical here — a zillion to one.
Then the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA title, which in a sense was normal enough since that was the whole idea when LeBron James decided to return to his hometown.
But the Cavs were down three games to one against a Golden State team that had just set an NBA record with 73 regular-season wins, and LeBron doesn’t exactly have an impeccable playoff resume.
Then the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. I don’t know if you heard this at the time, but it was their first since 1908. True story.
And now, continuing the theme, Toronto FC will play next week for the Major League Soccer title. Honestly, get your affairs in order, people.
Toronto FC does not have the historical significance of the Cubs’ curse-ending run and the city doesn’t have the sad-sack reputation of Cleveland, even though its sports teams were all quite abysmal as recently as five years ago. And the soccer team could never approach the upset scale of Leicester City, not in an MLS that is designed for parity and doesn’t have the top-heavy system of English football.
But just two seasons ago, there was an argument to be made that TFC was the worst franchise in professional sport, with an almost impossible mix of passionate, loyal fan support off the field and eight years of failure on it. Toronto FC playing for a league championship in 2016 is not unlike the Cleveland Browns playing in the Super Bowl in 2018.
The team was expectedly bad when it started play 10 years ago, but after a few seasons it became apparent that with all of the success it had shown at BMO Field, becoming a very hot ticket in a crowded market, they really needed to follow through with some actual wins.
Instead, by 2009 Toronto FC set a new standard for failure: Needing a point in the final game for a first playoff appearance, the club lost 5-0 to the last-place New York Red Bulls.
That collapse set the tone for the next few seasons, in which the club hired and fired would-be saviours as though someone in the executive offices was paid a bonus based on total dismissals.
The fabulously-named Preki was hired for 2010, but the coach (and his boss) were canned before the season was out. The club brought in Jurgen Klinsmann, the famous German international, to overhaul the management team and roster, and his vision lasted all of 18 months, with his hand-picked coach fired and the club sagging (again) to a last-place finish.
By 2012, TFC had found a new visionary in Kevin Payne, who had a track record of success in MLS with D.C. United. Surely they had settled on the right formula, yes?
No. Payne didn’t last a year and the club missed the playoffs again. The Montreal Impact, in just their second year in the MLS, made the post-season.
Even after Toronto FC signed Tim Bezbatchenko as general manager in 2014 in what would become the first run of stability in the franchise’s history, they weren’t done with the clown show.
TFC signed English striker Jermaine Defoe away from Tottenham Hotspur and made him the highest-paid player in MLS, and for a brief moment it looked like a brilliant deal. Then Defoe basically disappeared because of a combination of injury and indifference and, surprise, the team missed the playoffs an eight straight season.
By the end of 2014, TFC was on its ninth coach in those eight years,
Last year, TFC finally made the post-season, but in a very TFC way: They struggled down the stretch and blew a chance at a first-round bye, then a chance at hosting the playoff game, losing in Montreal.
But now this. Wednesday night’s win at BMO Field in the second leg of the Eastern Conference championship was suitably ridiculous, as though it was underscoring the improbability of TFC advancing to a title game.
TFC fell behind early, roared back to take the lead before halftime, barfed up the lead early in the second half, took the lead again, and then, with a win feeling inevitable, the team’s best player, Sebastian Giovinco, hurt himself kicking a ball.
It seemed a perfectly TFC moment: One minute the club was poised for victory, the next their star was limping off, all because he had managed to injure himself performing an act he had done countless times. Surely this was a sign that TFC was due one more heartbreak.
Then they scored twice in extra time and won 5-2 (and the conference final 7-5 on aggregate).
It has been that kind of year.