Like most places, this is a city that loves the little guy.

Any best-of-Toronto sports list would include Doug Flutie scrambling and dealing, Pinball Clemons running back kicks, Damon Stoudamire driving to the hoop and TFC diehards have fond memories of tiny Joao Plata. Even when these figures, so adept at punching above their weight class, aren’t so little we will fudge it a bit, as with five-foot-11 “Dougie” Gilmour, thus putting the diminutive ahead of the man.

On Sunday, Toronto will get a load of Sebastian Giovinco. All five-foot-four, tattoo’d to the nines and metrosexual-coiffed of him. Circus clowns and certainly Toronto FC’s previous saviours have run bigger — at five-foot-six Jermain Defoe towers over him, for heaven’s sake. And the club’s eight years of MLS history has unfolded predictably and not without a grim sort of clenched-teeth humour, as if 11 bumblers arrived each spring spilling out of a VW bug to stumble around BMO Field before exiting in the fall with nothing to show for it save embarrassment.

This time around, with their home field under reconstruction, TFC has responded in kind, splashing the cash then spending the first two months of their season effectively out of sight and out of mind to most of the citizenry. Giovinco, meantime, has been out of this world, in two months quickly announcing himself as a cinch pick in anyone’s Major League Soccer best XI.

In a city just getting over the sudden collapse of the Raptors and already alarmed by the Blue Jays, and amid an MLSE empire whose crown jewel Maple Leafs are best epitomized by those sodden $200 sweaters falling from the premium-priced seats, Giovinco likely by now has at least a vague inkling of what lies ahead this summer and fall. If he can help TFC finally deliver the modest goal of a playoff spot, he may well own Little Italy, Woodbridge and all parts in between.

He’s certainly been everything as advertised since Toronto GM Tim Bezbatchenko brought him back from Turin, where his lifelong career at Juventus had reached an apparent dead end.

The numbers tell only part of the story. Four goals over seven away games is one thing that puts the lie to the usual bedding in, along with leading the league in shots per game. Three assists tells you he can put it on a plate for teammates still getting used to his old-world trickery that in Philadelphia on Sunday was in evidence at its best with that free-kick golazo, and its worst, as in a dive in the box that should’ve got him booked. But that too is a part of the arsenal, Giovinco’s close control and low centre of gravity making him a very tough cover for opponents — “I get lost under them,” former Raptor Muggsy Bogues, at five-foot-three, once summed up of such a life underneath the NBA’s tall trees — and indeed, he won that free kick himself.

By now, he has even learned how to pack for the long MLS road. In Vancouver where this all began, Giovinco brought only team clothes. So there he was, at the first dinner with his mates ahead of their season opener, fine dining in TFC sweats. New teammates Benoit Cheyrou and Damien Perquis bought him some dressy clothes the next day — in youth sizes, of course, which fit well and made for a good laugh round the locker room.

Already there is influence beyond the playing field. When the club’s defence faltered badly over a four-loss stretch, rumours immediately circulated that Greg Vanney, in his first full year as head coach, would soon be replaced. The name floated by ESPN came out of the same Serie A from which Giovinco escaped, and it’s no accident either that Bezbatchenko was reported to be back scouting in Italy last week.

The inference is obvious. Among TFC’s high-priced DP’s with Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore, Giovinco may well be the littlest of Reds, but charged with the huge task of saving this comedic franchise once and for all, he casts a long, long shadow.