DOHA, Qatar – Long before he became a national icon, Dwayne De Rosario primarily had access to one sport. His family, which had immigrated from Guyana, lived in a Toronto suburb, far below the tony bluffs that loomed above. They didn’t sleep in one of the large houses with stunning cliffside views of Lake Ontario, didn’t hike on nearby trails or eat at fancy restaurants. They stayed in what’s called Metro Housing, on public assistance, a government social services program. He couldn’t try hockey, because he couldn’t afford skates.
But soccer? That sport, he could play. He started at age 3. He dribbled and passed and scored and dominated, until, at age 14, AC Milan called. De Rosario rejected the club’s offer to join its renowned development program, because he couldn’t fathom leaving home. Not yet. Not then. He signed his first contract four years later, joining the Toronto Lynx.
Back then, in a country that last made the men’s World Cup in 1986, professional opportunities for Canadian soccer stars were scarce. This owed to a lack of resources and leagues and spotlight, not to mention shaky youth programs, a national team that rotated coaches like T-shirts and how hockey hogged the nation’s attention.
Soon, though, De Rosario off: to Germany (FSV Zwickau) and the United States (Richmond Kickers). Eventually, he landed in an established, if not yet mainstream, sporting endeavor—Major League Soccer. Created in 1993 as part of the ’96 World Cup bid, MLS was growing. It started staging games in ’96, with 10 teams divided into two conferences, then expanded to 12 franchises (’98), then lost two (2001) that went broke. But even when the league shrunk, executives never downsized their ever-expanding ambitions. And this sentiment applied especially to Don Garber, the MLS commissioner, who started eyeing Canada, a global footprint.
By 2006, De Rosario was one of the league’s best players, a champion and MVP. His San Jose Earthquakes had moved to Houston, becoming the Dynamo, where that season it would triumph once more. Garber had made inroads up north that owed to a barnstorming tour of sorts, where he crisscrossed the country, peddling what came across as an absurd vision. Toronto, he insisted, would become the spot on a world map where anyone could pinpoint the future MLS success that he could so clearly see. The city, which didn’t yet have a franchise, would become the , he said, for future expansion. He even gushed that he understood Canadians, what drove them and how soccer fit within that paradigm.
The locals laughed. , . ButGarber plowed forward, in partnership with soccer officials in Toronto, like Larry Tannenbaum, chairman of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, and Garber’s own deputy commissioner, Mark Abbott.
By November of that year, all were ready to announce their plan. The audacity! Toronto would create a franchise and would commit to funding a new stadium. At the kick-off news conference, greeted by even more laughter, Garber heard all the usual gripes—Toronto wasn’t much of a soccer city; hockey dominated like football in the States; and the beautiful game, while not absent from the sporting landscape, had never succeeded at the highest levels. A reporter asked, “How will you measure success?” The questioner’s voice dripped with sarcasm, and the implication—that expectations needed to fall somewhere near the floor—wasn’t lost on Garber.
Still, he answered honestly. He had not yet so much as considered other franchises, in other cities north of the U.S. border. “The real measure will be if Canada can qualify for the World Cup,” Garber said. “Until that, the work won’t be done.”
The audience laughed again.
