December 2, 2024...Rocket Robin's Soccer in Toronto Summary for 2024 (by Rocket Robin)
Rocket Robin's Soccer in Toronto Summary for 2024 (by Rocket Robin)
December 2, 2024
Rocket Robin Soccer in Toronto 2024 Season Review
It's time for me to summarize my thoughts on the soccer season for 2024. It was 61 games I attended this year
which is a bit less than the previous year but still more than enough to feel exhausted by the time the season ended.
York United FC of the Canadian Premier League (14 regular season games and 1 playoff match)
The team finished fourth of the eight teams with a record of 11 wins, 6 ties, 11 losses for 39 points. They got
to host a playoff game for the first time against the fifth place team then lost after extra time against the
third place team on the road in a Penalty shootout.
They switched head coaches near the beginning of the season and saw an immediate improvement even rising up to first
for a brief time until their opponents saw them with their new coach for the second, third, and fourth time
and they started to fizzle.
The new owners who are three Mexican brothers brought in a Mexican coach and some Mexican players on loan. There
was a boost in attendance as the season went on with some on-the-fly tweeks like moving the starting times
on weeknights back an hour to 8:00pm to get more people from the city up here after rush hour traffic was over.
Also the onfield product became more exciting.
At the end of the season that Mexican coach moved on and the team promoted their assistant coach who now is the first
CPL player to ever be named as a head coach. He's been with York United four years now and that gives them a good
chance of a fast start as he knows the players and style of the team.
The team also announced they have entered a team in League1 Ontario for the start of the 2025 season. The team had
previously had an agreement with L1O team Alliance United but as far as I know only one player was ever sent down
for playing time. The York United FC development team will start in the second tier Championship Division. Their
hope will be to move up to Premier Division to battle Sigma FC (who are the development team of CPL Forge FC).
I continue with my reporting niche of recording the audio of the entire press conference and posting it by the next
day and leaving my write up of reporting of the game until maybe midweek when I have time to do more of a play-by-play
of what I saw supplementing my goal descriptions from the league's highlight package.
I can say increased a rivalry when I asked the Atletico Ottawa head coach Carlos Gonzalez if there was a team
he wanted to avoid in the playoffs (as York had beaten them three straight times since Benjamin Mora was appointed
coach). He said York was the 'weakest team in the playoffs'. Later Mora was asked to respond and he played that
he didn't know who Gonzalez was. Those separate exchanges were used by the OneSoccer broadcaster for a week's
worth of news fodder.
I'm a season ticket holder from Day 1 (six years now) but have never watched from the stands as I've always had
press access.
Toronto FC II of MLS NEXT Pro (I attended 13 of their 14 home games)
The team was quite competitive in their league made up mostly of other MLS Reserve teams and a few independant teams
separated into an Eastern Conference for travel reasons.
Admission was free to MLS Toronto FC SSH and $10 for the general public. Mostly it was family and friends of the
players in the crowd giving it a nice atmosphere of maybe 200-400 fans per game.
The team fizzled at the end of the season and finished with a record of 10 wins, 12 losses, 6 ties, and 1 shoot-out-win
bonus point. That was good for twelfth of the fifteen teams in the Eastern Conference. Any tie is broken after
regulation with an immediate Penalty kick contest carried out with standard FIFA rules. 6 ties but only 1 shoot-out-win
meant they lost five times in PKs. Room for improvement!
I never get disappointed by their record as a development team after a chat I had with now former GM of Toronto FC
Tim Bezbatchenko many years ago. He said the purpose of teams like them were mainly for developing players so results
were not that important.
The team is subject to callups to fill the main roster and a dumping ground to get rehabbing players some playing time
sometimes on one day's notice. I remember last year expecting goalie Luka Gavran was the only player I thought would
move up to the main team and for 2024 he was given a contract and we didn't see him sent back down. Right now I'm not
so sure that anyone will make the jump to the MLS club for 2025.
One rule change I liked is that they let the stadiums clock run past 45 and 90 minutes. We fans now clearly can see
the clock keep going up when the referee says '7 minutes of added time' and the fans back whistling to stop the game
after 30 seconds of actual time that's gone by as if their pleas will stop the game. It makes it easier for my reports
instead of having to convert from my wristwatch time.
Interesting that the one game I missed was because the Allstate Soccer Show was held at the same time in Mississauga.
I was at that show partly to introduce myself again to the owners/staff of AFC Toronto and the NSL league that will
run a team at York Lions Stadium in 2025. More about them later.
League1 Ontario (29 men's games, 1 women's game)
This was the first year the league were operating with a Premier Division of just twelve teams after splitting off the
weaker teams into a second tier Championship Division. That made it easier to keep my project of having an interview
with each of the head coaches as early in the season as I can. I expected I would have an easy time of seeing each
Premier Division team a minimum of three games a season but I found myself on the Labour Day weekend going on a road
trip to Guelph and then Hamilton to meet that goal. It was harder to do as none of these Premier teams played on Friday
nights and the league got rid of playoffs so the season could be wrapped up by Labour Day.
The league revived it's League Cup with all teams from the Premier and Championship Divisions and the third tier teams
that weren't the 'B' (ie reserve teams) of their main teams. After the first round games were played the first weekend
of the season, the remaining rounds until the final were played on weeknights and often at whatever field was available.
The league should do some tweeking with that as some teams were just getting their second round games finished while
some were setting up their semi-final match.
Vaughan Azzurri beat Simcoe County Rovers on Penalty kicks in the Final...the event was prearranged for the Zanchin
Automotive Soccer Centre. A nice showcase the Friday after Labour Day.
FC London beat North Toronto in the Women's L1 Cup Final on July 31st which was the only L1O Women's game I saw this year.
Scrosoppi FC were first in the regular season standings again this year but this year with no playoffs they were awarded
the league trophy and a spot in the Canadian Championship without having to be pipped at the end by a playoff system.
This season the league had an App which listed the team rosters, lineups, standings, refereeing crew etc 30 minutes
before game time which saved me a lot of work. From a first week glitch where the lineups only had the first name
of players listed (“What are we in Brazil?”) to the end of the season where the other League1 Canada teams had joined
so it was easy to look up how teams in other provinces were doing, this program looked great.
Canada's National teams (3 games)
BMO Field is officially Canada's National Soccer Stadium so of course in the lease there must be a few games played here
each year. The Women's team hosted a pre-Olympic tune up game with Mexico. The Men's team hosted Panama in a friendly
in October then the second leg of the CONCACAF Nations League quarterfinal against Surinam.
I felt burnt out after the season even though this year I mostly followed my self-imposed maximum limit of three games per
week. I was able to write a summary of every game within the week I saw them.
A full summary that including lineups, pictures, and a play-by-play has to wait for League1 Ontario and Toronto FC II games
from about the midway part of the season. I have exactly thirty to do at the time of this writing.
I figured out where I fell behind. There were times when the European Championships and the COPA Cup were being held
on the same day and because of the differences in time zones, it was possible to see four games a day. It wasn't long
after that ended that the Olympic Games started and that had the CBC dedicated to 22 hour a day coverage although I preferred
to see one complete sport event at a time on CBC GEM rather than the highlight packages the CBC were broadcasting. I could
only see GEM on my laptop so that cut into the time I had for my own reports.
Next year I will also be updating AFC Toronto in the new Northern Super League, the first Women's professional league in Canada.
It's starting off with only six teams but that still means at least 15 home games...all played at York Lions Stadium. I have
put a season seat holder deposit down for a ticket (just like I do for York United FC) but I hope to have a spot
in the press box. I have put my name in as interested but have so far only received about half the player signing press
releases. I'll have to keep reminding them if I see a story from another source and know nothing about it. I already
know the head coach and star player/first signing from years of following League1 Ontario and even the Toronto Lady Lynx
for first signing Jade Kovacevic.
York Lions Stadium will be my almost my 2025 home with York United FC (and their L1O feeder team), AFC Toronto,
and Toronto FC II all scheduled to play here (as of this writing). I don't know how they'll squeeze all these teams
into a season with each team preferring weekend games and two weekends wiped out for scheduling because of the Canadian Open
tennis tournament they hold here in the summer. My recurring joke is someone may end up playing Tuesday mornings.
On a personal note, I noticed that views of my tweets on the results of soccer games I attend declined as the season wore
on although I've grown to 529 followers. That's discouraging that maybe only one or two people actually bothered to cross
over to my game report or a press conference. At least I still have support on a few message boards.
On Wikipedia I'd been told off by the editors that I couldn't link any of my stories even if the original sources were now
dead links. On the other hand there is a content contributor who has now brought my photos of players and coaches onfield
or at interviews or award nights up to 425. He asked first and I agreed but that is impressive. Some were added within
a week of me taking their picture at a York United FC post game press conference. Thanks 'Soccer-Dude'.
Best wishes to all for 2025!
Rocket Robin
robin.glover.1958@gmail.com
X @RocketRobin01
www.rocketrobinsoccerintoronto.com
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