This is what a statutory holiday in Sports Hell looks like.
D.C. United is the worst team in Major League Soccer. Saturday at BMO Field, they managed to get worse than that.
On Tuesday, United play the only meaningful game of their season — the final of the
U.S. Open Cup (whatever that is).
With that goal in mind, the visitors decided it was not in their best interest to field a professional soccer team. Instead, they trolled the bus station for ambulatory humans and signed them to two-hour contracts.
“I set these guys up to fail today,” United coach Ben Olsen said afterward of a squad made up almost entirely of reservists and academy pylons.
Facing the B team of the league’s F side,
Toronto FC still managed to make a nervy start of it.
They conceded first. Then, because some of them do this for a living while all of D.C.’s mopes do it for practice, they managed to reel it back in. It ended 4-1 — only the third time in their history TFC has put four by anyone.
It was a franchise highlight, in the same way that an anthill is the highest peak in Saskatchewan.
Though seven years of this torture has paved us with a cynical streak so wide you could land B-52s on it, you felt some small twinge of happiness for the fans on hand.
They were frothing with joy over this limited-time display of respectability. A Toronto FC romp is the celebratory equivalent of summer solstice in Antarctica.