

Posted by

Lars Lowther ,

August 29, 2012 Email Lars Lowther

Twitter @LowtherLars Read this on your iPhone/iPad or Android device



We can talk endlessly about how crappy Toronto FC is on the field. We could talk about how ticket prices are too high. We could talk about the endless carousel of coaches and players at BMO Field.



We could talk about the switch from “Kick and Chase” to “PrekiBall” to “Total Failball” to now.



None of which really sum up the root problem I (or other supporters) am (are) feeling.



Armen wrote this piece about how agonizing it was to watch Toronto FC and how disillusioned the team made him feel as a fan.



I feel a similar way but a bit further along.



I will no longer watch Toronto FC matches. Not just this season or next, but until they start winning consistently.



You can say I’m not a supporter, but in some circles, you could say that this is the ultimate form of support. This club is run by an organization that cares only for the bottom line. If you want to hit them where it hurts, you hit them in the bottom line.



Now some will argue that because they spend a lot of money on personnel, they are obviously trying to do their best to run the club. But there are so many incidents, with players and coaching staff, that indicate otherwise. Spending money is great. Treating your employees like shit is not.



Some can, and obviously will, point to the example of running last year’s MVP, Dwayne De Rosario, out of the club as a great example. But because De Ro is such a controversial figure, we can go deeper into the history of TFC.



There was the ever popular Carl Robinson who did his best to take shots at MLSE without actually saying anything too inflammatory (and, in his retirement, he ended up with TFC’s rival – Vancouver).



There was Toronto FC’s best coach (statistically speaking), Chris Cummins, who came out after his stint at Toronto FC and described how Nick Dasovic had been in line to get the interim coaching position but at the last minute Cummins ended up with the job. And then following that, Cummins described a situation where he was essentially jerked around on whether he would get the head coaching position in the next season or if someone else would. And then there was a description of how as the season neared its end, Mo Johnston actively took a role in meddling with squad selection and tactics. The most interesting part in that whole affair was that MLSE/TFC/Mo Johnston threatened a lawsuit over his statements but never followed through on it.



Then there was Julian De Guzman’s comments in an interview with RedNation Online. We can let Julian speak for himself.







I had a dream when I followed Toronto FC. It was a dream of a revolutionized soccer landscape in this country. A landscape that had Canada’s largest city and media heartland as the vanguard of the growth of the sport in this country.



That dream is dead.



Toronto FC has squandered and pissed away any hope I had for a better Canadian soccer landscape. They made an immediate impact on the scene in 2007 and this lasted really to 2010. Every single positive thing that has happened in Canadian soccer since then has happened in spite of Toronto FC’s performance.



The only strength we see in the game now are happening in the satellite cities of Canadian media (as much as I would love to deny this, Toronto is the Centre of the Canadian Media’s Universe). That strength will keep the game going regionally, but for the type of growth this country really needs at the professional level, we need it to happen in Toronto.



So where do I, and other supporters of Toronto FC, go from here?



We support the club by not giving them money, by not showing up, by demanding significant changes in the way the club operates culturally.



Toronto FC has been treated as a marketing exercise from Day One instead of a sports club. You have TFC’s marketing department running around doing interviews with cast members of the Expendables 2, and putting the Captain out to do some social experiment and essentially embarrassing him. They had some form of dancers (just a shout away from the world’s lowest form of “sport” – cheerleading) at a Toronto FC game earlier this year.



So now, we give Toronto FC the support it needs and the type, after all their “efforts,” it deserves.



The Nuclear Option.



Kill the owner’s dreams like they killed ours.