It was a close run thing but Major League Soccer writers across the United States and Canada narrowly avoided any kind of criticism of Toronto F.C. (or MLS as a whole) as they fell on penalty kicks to Chivas in the CONCACAF Champions League final.

“It’s been a wild ride” said a spokesperson. “Back in February, we were writing a lot of think pieces about how this competition was stupid and nobody actually cares about it because F.C. Dallas were embarrassed by Tauro. Then it looked like a team from MLS might actually win, so we had to back off from that position pretty quickly in order to avoid anything short 100% praise for MLS and its teams.”

Sources say that many writers were optimistic ahead of TFC’s eventual downfall. Many of them pointed out in articles and tweets that TFC are “the greatest team in the history of MLS and would probably play any top flight team from Europe off the park” and that “Chivas only narrowly beat New York Red Bulls and are second from the bottom in Liga MX (which is, like, probably not even as good as MLS any more).” However, after Toronto F.C. lost to Chivas on penalty kicks, it looked as though MLS writers would be forced to come to terms with the idea that perhaps T.F.C. are not uniquely good at soccer. But in a brilliant move of hackery, they managed to avoid saying anything negative or even remotely critical about T.F.C. or the league.

“look” one writer told Eighty Six Forever “Before the final we all said T.F.C. had it in the bag. When it turned out they didn’t, we had to desperately spin it so that T.F.C. were always the underdogs and actually it was kind of a moral victory that they even got to penalties in the first place!”

Michael Bradley, who missed the all important penalty, has also been spared any and all criticism.

“Michael Bradley is a saint, a pure man, an honourable man, a lamb of god!” The breathless spokesperson told us. When asked if this was a bit hyperbolic, they responded simply “it’s not enough for us that the achievements of T.F.C. and its players be ‘good’ or ‘better than expected.’ We must elevate everything they do to a Christ-like level of brilliance that nobody has ever achieved before or will ever come close to again.” after a brief pause they added “Sebastian Giovinco is the greatest free-kick taker in the world.” We could not verify the veracity of this statement nor could we determine its relevance to the topic at hand, but they were insistent that it be included in our report.

That’s all for now but we’ll continue to update you as this story progresses.