With everything gone a little quiet in the western front, with the western front being the TFC training camp, I thought I’d take a minute to go off on a little rant about everything I am beginning to dislike about football at the other side of the pond — the football I grew up watching, supporting, following and loving. Maybe more than ever the way it is being covered — scandal, gossip and rumour upon scandal, gossip and rumour — has left me longing for the return of the MLS and in particular, TFC, to get my football fix and to watch games without the circus and sideshow that has become part and partial of following the Premier League. Maybe for a while the in depth, hyper-analysis, gossip loaded coverage was interesting, amusing and entertaining, but the way it is going and the depths to which it is sinking, has been losing patience altogether.

Read more»

I was a bit surprised to open up my e-mail last week and receive one from the club offering me a season ticket. There was me thinking I was in a line of some 16,000 plus fans waiting to get a pass to get me into the ground for each and every home game. Sadly for me the opportunity has come at the wrong time for me and if things go as planned on the pitch this season, I might be waiting a while again in the future.

Read more»

This week the players of Toronto FC reported for the opening of Training camp with the first game of the season — and potentially one of the biggest games of the season — just six weeks away. It’ll be an important camp for the players and management as they look to get ready for such an big game straight away. The management will hope to weed out those not yet ready while getting the rest fit and prepared to hit the ground running against Los Angeles on April 7th. One good thing going for us is that for the first time in possibly the history of the club there is some continuity coming into a new season.

Read more»

The club website announced this past weekend that ticket sales for the CCL game against the Los Angeles Galaxy have surpassed the 25,000 mark meaning that this game will set an attendance high for the club for a home game in what is our first home game away from BMO Field. Attendance records are set on tickets sold and not by how many people actually show up. With a capacity of 54,000 (going off the capacity for NFL games at the stadium), it’s still someway short of a sellout but with seven weeks (yes just 7 weeks!) to go there will be optimism that they can get at least close to capacity.

Read more»

You may have noticed things going a little quiet around here as they are apt to do around this time of the festive season. Contrary to popular belief, there is not a 400 strong team of men and woman running this not-so-slick operation — though work is underway to hire 25 trained monkey’s for next year to do the heavy lifting — and due to the responsibility of having to buy Christmas presents, recieve Christmas presents, and consume alcohol, turkey and other assorted Christmas goodies, things have slowed down and will reach dormant status for the remainder of the festive season and into the New Year.

Read more»

Since things are relatively quite on the home front, I thought I’d use this weeks Editorial to rant about modern day football and the loss of the physical tackling game.

Liverpool lost to Fulham last night one-nil. A disappointing result, but if you believe everything you read about the game you get the feeling Liverpool were hard done by with the referee and probably should have won it. Of course, Liverpool also missed a host of chances to win it regardless of the referee’s performance, and an inability to take their chances has been the story of Liverpool’s season so far and could well be costing them a Champions League position, but I never seen the game if truth be told so I cannot say too much. One decision I did see however was the tackle by Jay Spearing that seen the Liverpool midfielder sent off. A terrible decision, but one that further highlights just where the modern day game has gone.

Read more»

MLS suits get down to work and hack out a new schedule and playoff format

As is the case on the MLS Cup Final weekend, the league took advantage of the media attention to outline some changes for the following season. On the agenda this year was the fixture list for 2012 what with the Montreal Impact arriving to make it a 19 team league next season. With the odd number of teams, the league’s Board of Governors used it as a chance to change up the schedule and put more emphasis back into the presence of conferences, skewing how often you will see a particular team or another.

Read more»

Where to begin? I guess with the games that actually mattered – so that would be England becoming unofficial World Champions after their 1-0 win over the actual World Champions, right? Well not quite, but that’s only because I’m not English. That game was a friendly if you didn’t already know by now – and you probably didn’t if you only read English media. There was actual competitive games going on for the final couple of places at next years European Championships.

Read more»