As far as I know, Toronto FC has driven only one person past the point of emotional collapse.

He’s a footnote in club history now, but John Carver was the team’s second head coach, a decorated veteran of much bigger English clubs.

He came in peacocking. By the end, he was reduced to human rubble.

He gave what I still remember as the most bizarre post-game press conference in local history, after another in a steady string of profound failures.

During his prepared comments, Carver began waving around a sheaf of printouts, accusing the beaten-down media in attendance of intentionally trying to unseat him.

“I know what you’ve been writing!” Carver shrieked, while everyone stared back at him with mounting concern.

One by one, he picked out his enemies — it amounted to everyone in the room. He wouldn’t let anyone look at the offending documents, or give any indication what they contained.

It all devolved into incoherent shouting. At one point, the Sun’s Dean McNulty lifted his voice above Carver’s. Now, he was pointing the finger back.

“You can’t talk to us that way,” Dean shouted while Carver squirmed in his seat.

Dean was a voice of reason staffing the lockdown wing of the Toronto sports scene. Carver lost steam, and wandered off.

Later, in BMO Field’s home dressing room, he slumped in a corner and told people that he was close to giving up. For a few awful moments, it seemed as if he might actually burst into tears.

Whether it has worked (and it never has), Toronto FC has always been the focal point of Major League Soccer’s thin supply of drama. It has never been good. It has always been interesting.

The same has never been true of the rest of MLS. The franchises that should be elite — New York, Chicago, Philadelphia — are desultory affairs incapable of creating moments that resonate off the pitch. They may win more, but no one really cares. They don’t create any profound sense of pleasure or disgust. They simply exist.

Toronto created a little bit of real joy at the outset. During the inaugural home opener, I still remember the horror as 20,000 people began stamping their feet, making the press box sway like a tree house in a hurricane. That was fun, but only because we survived it.

Since then — all angst. But what angst. You may think you’ve suffered through this, but admit to yourself that throughout, this has maintained the heightened sense of disaster that can only be created by historically terrible sports franchises and prison riots.

As the years passed and the losses piled up, MLS commissioner Don Garber stopped citing Toronto as the standard bearer for the what the league wanted to be — an upscale urban sports boutique, driven by a small, committed group of fans.

Suddenly, Portland and Seattle were both sexy and competent.

The team that created the modern template of MLS became a cautionary tale — too much too soon, and not ready to exploit what had been dropped in their laps.

Garber was born to play the straight-from-central-casting stereotype of a villainous sports executive. He runs the most slippery league on the continent. Too many times, he’s stuck his thumb in the Toronto FC batter and decided to take control of the baking himself.

But he has a sense of occasion. He also understands that all his children aren’t equal.

Garber has loved and hated this club — and for good reasons — but he always recognized how much it mattered. When he turned off Toronto FC, there was the sense of a failed love affair. We broke his tin heart.

He’s climbed back on the bandwagon now.

“Our ultimate goal is to become the league of choice,” Garber said.

He’s said that a bunch of times. It’s always been a transparently hopeless goal. Until now.

Garber is slowly allowing football’s free market, a chaotic and potentially destructive force, to seep into his carefully controlled central economy.

After committing $100 million to revamp the roster (and another $100 million-plus to come for stadium improvements), Toronto FC is back on the vanguard.

In town and on the micro scale, we hope that this current squad finally succeeds.

From the macro vantage, this club will determine the direction of Major League Soccer for the next decade. If it all comes apart, the league is back to a barnstorming outsider, a half-decent curiosity.

You saw this happening in the off-season in three critical stages.

First, the signing of Jermain Defoe. That was a good risk. All that took was money. Who knows if he’s ready for what’s to come. In Europe, as long as they stay away from the tabs, players are sheltered from criticism. They don’t talk to the press, except under rigidly stage-managed circumstances. They exist inside an informational bubble, coddled by huge clubs.

Suddenly, Defoe will be expected to come out and talk after every game. He spent his whole life playing inside the Forbidden City. Now he has to explain himself in public. If he scores, he’s golden. If he doesn’t, prepare for an imminent Carver.

The second, even bigger stage was the arrival of Michael Bradley. This is seismic. Never before has America’s top performer played at home when he had real options elsewhere. Garber could have loused that deal up. That he allowed it to proceed is proof that he believes Toronto FC and its new management team can finally deliver on the club’s early promise.

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More than any player ever — and that includes David Beckham — Garber requires Bradley to showcase MLS.

Beckham was a marketing success, but a mitigated failure on the field. Too old, too often injured, and he didn’t personally provide a single highlight moment. Beckham came for transparent PR reasons. It’s true that he put MLS on the map, but he didn’t get anywhere close to putting it over the top.

Bradley has come here to play, full stop. In terms of ability and aspiration, he’s unique. One also suspects he will soon become the most complete player in the league’s history.

If it’s ever to become “the league of choice,” Bradley must excel here. And in order for him to excel, Toronto FC must immediately become a contender.

He also points to another of MLS’s long-held dreams, often falsely presented as an accomplished goal.

The three biggest stars on the U.S. national squad — Bradley, Seattle’s Clint Dempsey and L.A.’s Landon Donovan — have been repatriated. America’s league is finally home to the most crucial parts of America’s team.

This is the truest indication of the success of any soccer league. It would not have been possible without Bradley’s decision, and he chose Toronto.

That choice rolled seamlessly over into the third watershed: the loan signing of goalkeeper Julio Cesar.

Six months ago, what are the odds of Brazil’s first-choice keeper coming to MLS during a World Cup year, never mind to Toronto? Zero. Less than zero. Imaginary numbers.

He could’ve gone to any big club in China or a former Soviet republic on brand-name value alone, and probably made more money.

That he chose this place is proof that the promised wave has finally begun to hit shore. This isn’t a backwater anymore.

When they post the starting team sheets at the World Cup opener in three months time, Cesar apparently isn’t embarrassed by the idea that Toronto FC will appear on a couple of billion TV screens, alongside Barcelona, Real Madrid and Chelsea.

That may the greatest personal vote of confidence in this league in its 20 years of existence. The cool kids aren’t embarrassed to be seen here anymore.

After temporarily derailing its past, TFC has returned to a place of central importance in MLS’s present and its future.

This Toronto FC season is about a great deal more than an improving side (and it would be foolish to hope that an entirely new group can be anything more than improved from the start).

Every year at this time and in this space, I write, ‘This is the year!’ Partly because it seems like bad manners to say anything else, and partly because this team turns over so much every winter, who the hell knows if they’ll be any good.

The most informed league observer I know — Goal.com’s Ives Galarcep — had Toronto ranked seventh of 19 teams in his pre-season power rankings. That sounds fair. If they can live up to it, that’s a playoff berth, and maybe the chance to surprise some people. If they stay healthy and individually perform at median expectations, who knows what they could develop into this season.

A year from now, they should easily be championship contenders.

At this point, there is only prediction I can make with confidence: Toronto will continue to be MLS’s drama club. That pattern is too woven into the club’s fabric to change now.

If that trend is to bend backward in the direction of success and good humour, I will accept that as payment of a debt owed. Those of us who’ve watched this club from its inception know how close we’ve all been to the emotional territory of late-period John Carver.