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.

The GTA and its immediate surroundings has a population comparable to the Ruhr valley in Germany, so what would happen if the sport were stronger both on and off the field of play would be that there would be multiple clubs. Right now it's like people in Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Duisburg, Essen, Oberhausen and Bochum all following one club.

The way I see it is that soccer's core demographic in Canada has tended to be the recent immigrant more than the mainstream North American sports fan that follow the bowl games over the holiday season and March madness. TFC attract 25,000 from a wider catchment of 8,000,000 or so that has huge recent immigrant populations from soccer loving countries that still go crazy about the sport every four years when the World Cup is on. 25,000 is a big step forward but I strongly suspect 100,000+ would be doable if English Premiership level soccer were being played and players like Messi saw Toronto rather than Barcelona as the place to be. The eurosnob thing that anything that happens in soccer in North America is second rate and to be treated as a joke and ignored hasn't completely gone away.

28 minutes ago, Unnamed Trialist said:

Which is why Torontonians did not take TFC seriously after seeing what a big step there is between MLS and the top European leagues?

Enough did to fill BMO Field, because they were a major upgrade from the Lynx, but many still don't. TFC are still only scratching at the surface of what soccer could be in the GTA, if one of the best teams globally played in the city as is the case with the Blue Jays and Maple Leafs.

1 hour ago, shermanator said:

Based on this article, it sounds like Haber won't be back at Crewe, but other clubs in League Two are showing interest. If he's going to play in League Two I don't see why he wouldn't just stay at Crewe, presuming that they want him back of course (maybe they don't)

Crewe are a fairly small club, so it will probably be about who offers the most money and they are just assuming he will want to leave because he will get offered a better contract elsewhere.