In an open letter to Toronto FC on Wednesday, former mayor David Miller publicly gave up on the team.

Miller was more than a supporter. From the way he swanned around town in team colours, you got the impression he held the club scarf over his head while he mowed the lawn.

So this must sting a little.

“I am so frustrated with the latest management missteps that I am returning the remainder of my season tickets to you,” Miller writes in part. “There once was a magic at BMO Field. The latest reshuffle has the possibility of that magic returning almost certainly disappear.”

As post-mayoral j’accuses go, this is even more plaintive than the time Mel Lastman begged the Spice Girls to stay together.

“I guarantee that come early January, he’ll wish he had (his season tickets) back. So he’s going to look pretty silly, to tell you the truth,” coach Ryan Nelsen said later. “There’ll be a time, pretty soon, whoever decides to do that … well, I hope they’ll have to pay double to get them back.”

Let’s hope that given all the heads rolling recently, Nelsen hasn’t inherited the team marketing portfolio.

This is how bad it’s gotten. President and GM Kevin Payne was fired a week ago. Five days after that, the player he’d fixated on for the entirety of his tenure was jettisoned as well.

Maximiliano Urruti played a total of 37 minutes for Toronto FC. While he was here, coach Ryan Nelsen said a lot of nice, non-committal things about him. For sound political reasons, he continues to do so.

Behind the scenes, Nelsen could not believe such a dud had been dropped in his lap. Urruti wasn’t out of shape, which was the party line all along. By Nelsen’s reckoning, the 22-year-old Argentine just wasn’t any good.

“He was never going to start for this team. Never,” was how one club insider put it.

As Urruti was being shoved out the door before his new team, Portland, could get a proper look at him, Nelsen waxed confusing about Urruti being a “league” designated player.

Why, here was an entirely new species of MLS fauna, trapped in the wild by the New York head office and then gently handed over to just one team. What luck.

While Nelsen was putting that bit in the ear of Neil Davidson of The Canadian Press, the league was rushing to get around the other side of him and drown Nelsen out with their nervous shouting.

There is no such thing as a league DP, they clarified. Nobody got any special favours here. We’d love to explain further, but we’ve got a … a meeting. Yes, a meeting with … well, goodbye!

You could not make this stuff up. Based on TFC’s TV ratings, nobody would watch it even if you could.

For once, the frustration was visible in the stands. Or rather, invisible. An announced crowd of 15,000 watched Wednesday’s game against Chicago. It looked like far less — about as sparse as it’s ever been. If that was meant as a message, it appeared to be felt on the field. TFC played to a sprightly 1-1 draw. (Baby steps, people. Baby steps.) But up top? Who knows?

Whatever managerial rot there is in this edifice, it runs from the basement to the attic. Everyone deserves some of the blame. The owners for trusting a dispiriting succession of hucksters and arrivistes. The people they trusted for taking advantage. The league for repeatedly sticking its fingers in a half-baked pie (see under De Rosario, Dwayne and Mellberg, Olof).

Like most genuine disasters, this was a group effort. And like most follies, it was done with best possible intentions. It’s also a long way from over.

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When MLSE boss Tim Leiweke endorsed Nelsen for next season, he did not fully explain the coach’s purpose going forward. Nelsen is no longer a football manager. He is a talent booker.

He has one job between now and January — to use his contacts to ensure delivery of the club’s major target in the Premiership. If that pursuit fails, Nelsen will be the next one “resigning” his position and staying on for a bit to help in the “transition.”

Where this leaves the David Millers in the fan base is up to them.

There is no point dropping to the floor to have a hissy fit about turnover and inconsistency and poor results.

The people you’re yelling at know the team is terrible. They take no more pleasure in failing than you do. If they can change this with money, they will. They’ve tried. Payne couldn’t figure out a way to do it. That’s why he was fired. Those who remain would do pretty damned close to anything to get you off their necks.

If this is about ticket prices, take your complaints elsewhere. The market charges what it can bear. If you want to stop being burned, quit putting your hand on the stove at renewal time.

If the fans do that — give up en masse — this team will wither, but never die.

Toronto FC is a zombie franchise. As long as there is a nickel to be wrung out of BMO Field (and there always will be), the club will stagger forward.

If the current impasse escalates, David Miller seems to be suggesting that the support take hold of the team in a death grip, ensuring that neither is able to stay above water.

There would be a perverse symmetry to it — sprung from nothing; a brief flowering of interest; then quietly melting back into the desert of this city’s sporting landscape. Very “Ozymandias.”

The more likely route is more of the same. More roiling. More turnover. More frustration. More complaint. As presently constructed, this is not a soccer team. It’s an emotional sinkhole.

If you read this to the end, admit it, you’re never leaving. You’re trapped here with the rest of us.