In With The Ultras- Earnie, Me, and Toronto FC

This week marks the quarter-way point of my Year Abroad in Toronto. I'm halfway to Christmas! Speaking to a lot of students, both international and Canadian, it seems this week in particular has been quite hard, and I'm no different. Exams and assignments have been thick and fast, a few things have caused me to miss home, and this coming Wednesday would have been my Dad's birthday. Thankfully, a pick-me-up arrived, and, as so often is the case with me, it arrived in the form of The Beautiful Game. 

Ever since I found out I was coming to Toronto for my Year Abroad, I've taken an interest in Toronto Football Club. I've kept abreast of their fortunes via Twitter and Internet forums, and it's largely been a depressing picture. Formed in 2006, the club simply hasn't kicked on in the way that a sports-mad city like Toronto should have, and they are yet to make the Major League Soccer end of season play-offs. It's been a familiar story of underachievement, endless personnel reshuffles, and behind-the-scenes mismanagement, which has led to various journalists bemoaning that the club is 'cursed', and should start again from scratch.

Shit team, off-the-field problems, massive city but very little success? Christ, I thought I came to Toronto to get away from the Blues!

In an odd but enjoyable twist, Toronto signed Steven Caldwell from Birmingham in May, who has been a rare shining light in yet another poor season. He joins Robert Earnshaw and Bobby Convey on the list of 'players you might have heard of', under the stewardship of Head Coach Ryan Nelsen.

Having been extremely busy, we'd come to the final day of the regular season (with Toronto well out of the play-off picture) and I realised I still hadn't been to a game. No matter, I thought, I'll just wait til the Spring and go to a cheaper pre-season game. Caldwell will probably have buggered off then and I won't have to have Vietnam-style flashbacks of his performances at the start of last season.

Then, however, a Twitter competition sprang up to win a pair of tickets to the game. I've got a ludicrously good track record when it comes to Twitter competitions- I seem to have some sort of hold over social media accounts whereby I'm automatically picked to win whatever's on show. In the last eight months, I've won tickets to the Cheltenham Gold Cup, VIP Blues tickets, and now, thanks to my shameless declaration that 'I've come from Birmingham, UK, and I need to tell Captain Caldwell that I love him', I can add Toronto FC tickets to that particular roster!

Toronto Ultras- listen out for me at the end.

Taking along my English mate from Warwick (who has been twice the beneficiary of my good fortune), we turned up to the stadium in the downtown area of Toronto, and made our way to the pick-up place. I was asked what my name was to pick up the tickets (naturally, I said @EdBlues, my Twitter moniker), and five minutes later, after a quick flurry of activity, I was presented with two tickets, and a signed Toronto FC shirt! Completely unexpected, but something which is in keeping with a lot of the culture of 'soccer' in North America- the fans are treated with the utmost respect, and not as a cash cow.

Impossible not to get involved in this chant, even if it does originate from Crystal Palace.

We ignored what was on our tickets and sat amongst the Ultras. The die-hard fans. I've been highly cynical of these choreographed 'singing sections' in the past, but this was brilliant. Home-made flags, pyrotechnics, a guy with a megaphone leading all the chants, and, best of all, free beer handed out amongst the die-hard fans by some wealthy benefactor. Considering English football fans aren't even trusted to take a beer into the stands, it was quite a diversion from the over-priced watery piss that they're known to serve at Blues and label as lager. It led me to question whether a choreographed singing section would ever take off at Blues- our current incarnation, Forza Blues, is a figure of fun, and at the last home game I attended, seemed to have about 30 members who didn't make a noise all game. So why did it work today? Alcohol, a very good performance in an entertaining match, and persistence.

Interestingly, there was quite a revolutionary atmosphere ongoing during the game. It must be bloody hard to create an identity for a club that has started from nothing in the mid-noughties, but I was mightily impressed by the support for TFC. A lot of Forza's woes have been put down to apathy and anger towards the owners- here, with a banner saying 'Something is Rotten in Our Club', it appears that Toronto has had enough of under-achievement, and is using that anger to engender something of a fervour. So it appears it can work...

To say a little about the game itself- Toronto was to act as the 'spoiler' in Montreal's play-off party. A Montreal win, and the Quebecers would be guaranteed a play-off place. Lose or draw, and they would be forced to sweat on results elsewhere over the weekend. I had very little hope- whenever you mention that you follow Toronto FC out here, people laugh wearily and look pityingly at you. Again, it's a similar reaction I get to when I say I'm a Blues supporter.


I've often thought of the MLS as the place that once-good players come to die, so to speak. It's one last pay-cheque, and as such, I expected there to be quality on show, but played almost at an exhibition pace. To an extent, I was entirely correct, but I was pleasantly surprised by Toronto's showing. They knocked it about well, worked the channels, but, as was often the case, the pace had evidently gone from some players' legs. 'HMS' Caldwell never really had a great deal to begin with- I think I saw him go backwards at one point. Having said that, I don't want to denigrate him too much, he was brilliant in the Hughton season, and he never gave less than one hundred per cent. It was clear that he and Robert Earnshaw, once of West Bromwich Albion, had played at a higher level, simply by their positioning and reading of the game. With Earnshaw scoring the only goal and Caldwell helping to keep a clean sheet, it was pretty much a perfect game for the British contingent in amongst the Canadians, both on the pitch and in the stands.

'Braveheart', as the Reds fans have Christened him, hit the bar with a header and also had a shot cleared off the line. I think it's probably for the best that he didn't score, or else I might have combusted, and this blog would never have been.

So, once again, football comes to the rescue. Someone said this week, and they were completely right, that 'when the Year Abroad is great, it's absolutely amazing- but when it's hard, it's so, so hard'.

Thankfully, a few days that started off in the doldrums ended on an amazing high.

Thanks to Toronto FC and Purolator for sorting me with the tickets and giving my mate and I a great day. Purolator is Canada's leading integrated freight and parcel solutions provider- celebrating 50 years of delivering Canada!

Meeting the Man Who Made Obama

David Axelrod is a man with a hefty CV. For some, it's the sort of CV that leaves you in silence. For others, it's the sort of CV that leaves you wondering if anyone has had a better view of life in the corridors of powers over the past half a decade. In fact, for some, David 'The Axe' Axelrod might be the most influential man that you've never heard of.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that with a name like that, he was a one-time wrestler or darts player. Yet Axelrod is in fact the former Senior Advisor to President Obama and brains behind both the 2008 'Yes We Can' election campaign and subsequent re-election. Now, ousted by the team he brought to power, Axelrod, along with the Obama re-election campaign, is the subject of a new book by Richard Wolffe.

An integral part of the 2012 campaign and yet already 'former' Senior Advisor? Some turnaround. Wolffe's book has been billed as lifting the lid on Axelrod's 'axing' from the cabinet. With potential revelations over this issue in the offing, and the recent fiasco in Washington that has seen the self-styled 'Greatest Democracy on Earth' left in meltdown, American politics is at a fascinating crossroads. When I discovered 'The Axe' was delivering a keynote speech in my adopted home city, I simply had to go.

Entering a ballot run by the University of Toronto with no reply one way or the other, I'd given up hope of attending one day before the event. My disappointment was premature, as a missive landed in my inbox informing me of my attendance. With apologies submitted over missed classes (a mere five weeks into term?! I'm a changed man!), I made my way on the subway to the Metro Convention Centre in downtown Toronto.

In truth, Axelrod's speech was a touch anodyne. Not dull by any stretch of the imagination- American politics never is- but you willed for him to stray from the straight and narrow. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his long-lasting friendship with the President, Axelrod refused to so much as hint at a criticism of Barack Obama. The tone was very much 'look how hard Barack is trying against those nasty Republicans and those crazy Tea Party folk'. It's not long since the Axe was axed, and as such, he may not be removed enough from the policies to criticise them, but even so, his unwavering defence was a bit of a disappointment.

The title of the lecture being 'America's Future and Leadership Lessons', Axelrod emphasised the importance of being a good leader rather than a popular one, someone who gets things done. Perhaps getting his excuses in early, Axelrod drew comparisons between Obama and Harry Truman, a President who left office with low approval rates, but has since been viewed as a 'go-getter'. Our speaker praised Obama's consistency, stating that he has stayed true to his opinions all through his political career, and would not cater to the opinion polls.

Nor, Axelrod said, would he back down to what he called 'the Rush Limbaugh constituents', the far right of the Republican party. On more than one occasion, he emphasised that Obama was an expert player in the 'long game', and it was the responsibility of federal politicians to do what they felt was right, rather than ceding to what the districts wanted.

In amongst the matey anecdotes and neutral generalisations, Axelrod delivered a few acerbic blows in the direction of the Republicans. On the Washington shut-down, he was withering towards those who delayed the healthcare bill despite Obama's re-election- 'It's called democracy... the clock is ticking'; on the recent Republican factions, he claimed that the GOP was in a 'cul-de-sac' and didn't know the way out; and on the race for the 2016 White House, he suggested, with reference to the increasingly ubiquitous Texan Senator, that the Republicans were preparing a 'Cruz Missile'.

One questioner, delivering a heart-felt plea to tighten up gun control, asked when 'you Americans are going to catch up with us', to much applause and laughter. You could sense Axelrod's frustration- yet another example of Obama's willingness to make things happen, yet being hamstrung by the 'screwy' political structures (Axelrod's words, not mine). Guns, to the Axe-man, are 'a blight on our country'. Yet, interestingly, a perspective that I had not heard before, he drew on the gun tradition of America, particularly with regards to hunters, as a defence of his nation, and then delivered the retort 'we've got our virtues'. I'm not sure the hunting argument particularly passes muster, particularly when it comes to things like the possession of uzis in downtown Chicago- as my Politics of the USA seminar tutor said last year, how many deer have you seen with a bullet-proof vest?

Refreshingly, Axelrod was highly complimentary of my generation. Before you raise eyebrows cynically, this was far from a student-dominated event, independent from the university and instead filled with businessmen and women. So much so that I was probably amongst the 5% of the audience not wearing a suit. He claimed our generation was the most socially-minded since the 1960s, and that he was now dedicating his life to engineering that spirit into politics, and persuading young people to run. The message? Find a campaign that you believe in, and help with it.

But what of his ousting from Obama's inner circle? Again, I'm afraid, an example of the anodyne questioning. I was up in the pleb seats with my jeans and t-shirt, as far away from the questioners' microphone as they could put me, and I'm not even sure I'd have had the balls to ask, but he did, without prompting, refer genuinely to 'my good friend David Plouffe'- one of those, if you believe the stories, at the heart of the Machiavellian axing. A pointed reference, no doubt about it.

These events are often plagued by embellished anecdotes about characters we think we know from the public sphere, but this next story made me smile:

'When we were discussing Obamacare, and just how far we could push it, one of the aides asked President Obama how lucky he was feeling. Barack replied "my name is Barack Hussein Obama, I'm a black guy, and I'm President of the United States. I wake up every day and feel lucky!"'

This event, it turns out, was in support of the Reena Foundation, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. The Reena Foundation helps people with developmental disabilities. Several truly heart-warming speeches were made before and after Axelrod's keynote address, and it is only right, having been the recipient of a free ticket, that I put the link to the charity up here.