From Bad to Worse: Pro Soccer in Toronto in the '90s

What a difference a decade makes. In July 1997, the A-League's (now the USL) newly-formed Toronto Lynx joined their fellow Canadian clubs in the top seven spots in the table, yet could only attract 1500 fans a game to watch them in Varsity's cavernous stadium. Ten years later, 14 000 season tickets would be sold at BMO Field before Toronto FC even kicked off their inaugural season.

Toronto Lynx's Paul Stalteri in action, 1997. He played
alongside Dwayne De Rosario in their first season.

There are a number of theories as to the change, but one of the most obvious is that Canadians in the nineties thought better of themselves than to go support a team playing in lower-tier North American league. The wikipedia entry for 'A-League' sums it up nicely: "It was a FIFA sanctioned Division 2 league of soccer in the United States and Division 1 league of soccer in Canada." Some would argue that the USL fared well Canada, and there have been pockets of success. Much has been written, for example, on the Montreal Impact's success in luring crowds to USL games, but certainly finishing top of the league for four years straight in the early 2000s didn't hurt.

The Toronto Lynx were not so fortunate. While the club survived until TFC's inaugural season when it relegated itself to the USL's amateur development league, it was never a force and certainly didn't have much of a following outside of a band of faithful supporters, including current TFC ultras the U-Sector, named for the area in Varsity Stadium where the group congregated.

The epicentre of this soccer malaise in Toronto has to be 1994. This was the year Canada failed to qualify for the World Cup by a single game, the year after the Canadian Soccer League folded only to see the Toronto Rockets sputter after one season under the refuge of the APSL (the A-League's former incarnation), the year the MLS laughed off Canadian soccer fans interested in a spot in the newly christened league.

The leaps and bounds we've seen in the past year reflect the efforts of a footballing faithful that struggled through one of the hardest, most barren periods in Toronto's soccer history; for that they should be proud. But, perhaps more than any previous soccer-loving generation, they know the cost of failure, and should be on guard lest we see year like 1994 again.