Canada vs Costa Rica…half empty stands, full on game
9,325 fans. In a city that sees sellouts for a basement dwelling team like Toronto FC (no disrespect FC fans), the best that it could muster was 9,325 fans for an international friendly against the team we are most likely going to be racing with for a World Cup berth?
Where the heck was everyone?
I know there was the whole “Black Wednesday” thing going on, but the point of that wasn’t to boycott the game. It was to bring attention to the fact that the CSA are a bunch of imbiciles.
And way to go Thomasz Radzinski. He understands the fan frustration with the CSA and he obviously feels it himself saying: “If I am in the stands next time I am going to wear a black shirt as well.”
But all of that aside, why couldn’t we fill our national soccer stadium? Lousy weather? Nope. 18 degrees. Competing Leafs game? Nope, not even hockey pre season. Okay, there was the Jays, but it’s pennant race time and they aren’t in the race. Update: I just read the post by Joe Ross at The Score, where he said the tickets were $100 a crack, which leads me to believe the CSA might be smoking crack. $100. That may explain a lot of why there were no fans there.
So, I might have been disappointed with the lack of fans in the stands, but I certainly wasn’t with the game. We’ve picked up on there we were at the Gold Cup and with Radzinski and Brennan back in the lineup, I think we’ve got a stronger team.
And we have depth as well. Dale Mitchell is in the place where not many Canadian coaches have been before. He has tactical options on the bench when he wants to make subs, especially up front where we have plenty of options. He has players who can turn a game. And in DeRo we have a poacher who can turn a half a chance into a goal.
Our defence is still prone to making mistakes in our own end, but that will improve. For right now, I am a happy Canuck soccer fan and enjoy watching our team play international competitions. Too bad there weren’t many more fans in TO doing the same.
I was at the game on Wednesday and I was surprised that there weren’t more people there too. I think they didn’t do a particularly good job of publicizing it, and the fact that the tickets were so expensive didn’t hurt either. (Some, but not all of the tickets; the ones we had, in the south stand, were only $15, and the next level up, if I remember right, was pretty reasonable too.) Still, it’s disappointing, especially since they missed a good game.