By Ben Knight

 

Here’s a good one!

Q: How do you get Toronto FC fans to NOT look forward to opening day?

A: Schedule it in Columbus, Ohio.

MLS released a couple of weeks of early 2010 schedule today, and yay yippee fun, TFC travels to land of Angst and Archer for a season-opening kickabout on Saturday, March 27.  The 4 PM kickoff is perfectly designed to allow Canadian fans to travel south, and still have plenty of daylight throughout the match.

It’s a pairing of somewhat-near geographic rivals, whose clashes have certainly generated heat and headlines in the past.  Toronto won’t open at home until late April at the earliest if grass goes in at BMO Field, so the league has decided a gala lid-lifter in the Ohio capital is the next best thing.

That, dear folks, is a baloney sandwich without the bread, mustard and pickle wedge.

If you check the TFC fan boards today, the feeling is overwhelming:

Not Columbus.  Not again.

Brief heart-felt and fair sidetrack: The Columbus Crew are one of the very best teams in MLS,  Crew Stadium is a fine place to watch a game.  Columbus fan culture is on the rise.  The Nordecke is generating real passion now.  If the rest of the dull, nervous city would just wake up and start buying tickets, a day at Crew Stadium can yet become a consistent high point in American soccer.

But very few Toronto fans want to go down that road again.  Yes, there was bad behaviour by TFC fans in Columbus last spring.  But 20 police cars roaring into an open field filled with post-game TFC pedestrians was … well, the subsequent arrest number – one – speaks most eloquently for itself.

MLS has skedded the Reds to play New England in Foxboro on April 10.  That’s the game the fans want to spend their cash on.  Boston’s a great sports town, a world-famous beer town, and TFC fans are treated much, much better there than they are in Columbus.

They seem to behave better there, too.  Couldn’t be any kind of a connection, could there?

TFC travelling fans get treated particularly badly in two places: Columbus and Montreal.  But they can’t wait to get back to Montreal.  That’s a rivalry, folks, and no one had to create a bogus “Trillium Cup” to make it seem like it means something.

Security and policing in Columbus are naive, more than anything.  In Montreal, they are genuinely nasty.  Don’t look for any kind of help from security in Stade Saputo if you happen to be wearing red – TFC or Canada.

But Montreal is also effortless to get to, packed with culture and attractions … as up- or down-market as you’d ever care to go.  The French thing adds real flavour.  And Toronto fans like European flavour.  (Notice those extra letter “U”s in that last sentence.)

Nothing can ever happen to make Toronto FC fans boycott Montreal.

And I don’t much think they’re going to boycott opening day in Columbus, either.  But lots and lots of folks won’t go, and most of the rest won’t exactly be thrilled.  It’s always tough, when you’re on foreign soil and don’t know what the cops are going to do next.  Volunteering to spend money and pose for it?  No deal.

I look forward to TFC-Crew ripening into a real rivalry – when history and tradition overcome fear and media hype, and grudging respect slowly congeals on both sides.  That takes time, not dome lights and empty cups nobody cares about.  Oh, and check the Columbus fan boards while you’re at it.  They’re not happy about this match-up either.

Columbus is a perfectly fine town, and a vital cog in MLS.  I just don’t want to be there next spring.

Dear MLS: Please schedule Toronto at Columbus for some nothing midweek night in June.  Give fans on both sides time to work through – and get past – the anger.

We’ll tell you when this becomes a real rivalry.  Have no doubt about it.

Onward!