{"id":71432,"date":"2026-04-20T08:15:34","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T12:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=71432"},"modified":"2026-04-17T12:17:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:17:18","slug":"new-issue-soccer-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2026\/04\/20\/new-issue-soccer-city\/","title":{"rendered":"NEW ISSUE: Soccer City"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dylan<\/a><\/p>\n

The tens of thousands of soccer fans who will descend on Toronto in June for the six World Cup games our city is hosting may not think of Toronto as a soccer city. Even many Torontonians likely don\u2019t think of their city that way. But although Toronto has only this century sustained a soccer team in a stable major league, the city in fact has a long history of soccer deeply embedded in its communities, and the sport has grown increasingly prominent in recent years.<\/p>\n

Hosting World Cup games is, in a sense, a coming-out party that recognizes how significant the beautiful game has become to our city. That\u2019s why, in advance of the event, we decided to dedicate our spring 2026 issue (#74) to soccer in Toronto, to let the world, and also Torontonians, know that Toronto is a soccer city. Our instinct was confirmed when our call for pitches generated so many compelling proposals that we decided to dedicate the entire issue, not just a cover section, to soccer.<\/p>\n

For those readers who are not themselves soccer fans, know that the issue is as much about the city as about the sport. It will be of as much interest to those who love Toronto but know little about soccer as to those who love soccer but don\u2019t know Toronto. As always with our issues, we hope you will discover a whole layer of the city you didn\u2019t know about before.<\/p>\n

Soccer in Toronto is deeply intertwined with the city\u2019s defining characteristic, its welcoming of communities from around the world. Soccer emerged here on the shore of Lake Ontario not long after the sport first developed in England, and from the earliest days it was a way for newcomers to find and reinforce their community. Immigrants from the British Isles formed teams such as Ulster United FC and Toronto Scottish FC. After the Second World War, waves of continental European immigrants formed their own clubs, followed by clubs representing the rest of the world as those communities began to form.<\/p>\n

By the 1970s, soccer had become one of the most popular sports for kids to play in the city, while touring teams and halting attempts at a North American major league drew large crowds of spectators. But the lack of long-term successful major league teams until the 21st<\/sup> century obscured the pervasiveness of the sport in the city. \u00a0The advent of Toronto FC (the \u201cReds\u201d) in Major League Soccer has perhaps not coincidentally aligned with the emergence of Canada\u2019s men\u2019s team on the international stage.<\/p>\n

Long before that, Canada\u2019s strong grassroots soccer culture had been expressed in the remarkable success of Canada\u2019s women\u2019s soccer team, a perennial World Cup and Olympic contender that still far outranks the men. Their accomplishment was all the more remarkable in that there was never a professional league to support their play until last year, with the foundation of the Northern Super League.<\/p>\n

I myself have been a casual fan of soccer for many years, and have followed the arc of Toronto\u2019s soccer emergence. I recall going to games of the minor league Toronto Lynx in the late 1990s, played in a decaying Varsity Stadium. You could just walk in, tickets were cheap, and you had your choice of seating as a few hundred fans cheered them on.<\/p>\n

I went to national team games back then in that now-demolished stadium, too, where the fans of the Central American and Caribbean nations Canada was competing against outnumbered \u2013 and certainly out-cheered \u2013 the small number of Canada fans (the national team back then was said to dislike playing in Toronto). What a contrast between those years and going to a packed, roaring BMO Field in 2017 for the game when Toronto FC secured first place in the league, on its way to winning the MLS Cup.<\/p>\n

We refer to the game by the North American term \u201csoccer\u201d throughout this issue, since we are in North America. It\u2019s a term that originated in England \u2013 a shortening of \u201cAssociation\u201d as in Association Football, to distinguish it from Rugby Football \u2013 and that now also distinguishes the game from Canadian and American football. The term, like the game itself, came over with British immigrants. Like the term, the game itself has since thrived and expanded in Toronto, becoming a common language that links communities and generations together in a love of the world\u2019s most popular sport. Whether you\u2019re a fan or not, we hope this issue serves as a warm-up for the big show that will overtake Toronto in June.<\/p>\n

This issue is available now at the Spacing Store at 401 Richmond St. W., and soon at fine book and magazine stores, as well as arriving soon in subscribers\u2019 mailboxes.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The tens of thousands of soccer fans who will descend on Toronto in June for the six World Cup games our city is hosting may not think of Toronto as a soccer city. Even many Torontonians likely don\u2019t think of their city that way. 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