BringBackTheBlizzard

...but even when you only slightly loosen the defintion of what is covered by the Ruhr you have multiple huge clubs like Borussia Moenchengladbach, Cologne, Fortuna Dusseldorf and Bayer Leverkusen entering the fray along with some not so large but at times significant ones like Wuppertal and Uerdingen, so the underlying point still holds. TFC cover a vast catchment that would have multiple large clubs in a country where soccer is king. Don't think many would argue that the Argonauts provide a valid indication of what gridiron football could draw in the GTA if an NFL team ever arrived, so when you have a league like MLS that is also still a clear step down from the real big time in quality terms I think it's reasonable to assume that soccer isn't firing on all cylinders yet in terms of its latent potential in the GTA. Doubt the theory will ever be tested in practice any time soon, unfortunately, because the quality of the domestic player pool has always been the Achilles heel on this.

...but even when you only slightly loosen the defintion of what is covered by the Ruhr you have multiple huge clubs like Borussia Moenchengladbach, Cologne, Fortuna Dusseldorf and Bayer Leverkusen entering the fray along with some not so large but at times significant ones like Wuppertal and Uerdingen, so the underlying point still holds. TFC cover a vast catchment that would have multiple large clubs in a country where soccer is king. Don't think many would argue that the Argonauts provide a valid indication of what gridiron football could draw in the GTA if an NFL team ever arrived, so when you have a league like MLS that is also still a clear step down from the real big time in quality terms I think it's reasonable to assume that soccer isn't firing on all cylinders yet in terms of its latent potential in the GTA. Doubt the theory will ever be tested in practice any time soon, unfortunately, because the quality of the domestic player pool has always been the Achilles heel on this.