City
Toronto celebrates Spain's World Cup victory
Shortly after Spain defeated the Netherlands 1-0 to take the 2010 World Cup, fans congregated on College Street to celebrate the victory. The centre of the party formed near Bathurst, a little bit east of where Italian fans flocked after their win four years ago. And although yesterday's celebration was not quite as grand as back then -- our Italian community is extensive takes its soccer very seriously -- it was still pretty wild. Traffic came to a standstill in the area and TTC streetcars subbed in for stages, which those desperate to prove their fandom climbed atop for the most visibility.
Here's a selection of some of the best photos of the celebration from the blogTO Flickr pool. In addition to revealing the strong contingent of Spanish fans in Toronto, they confirm that this city loves shutting down streets to vehicular traffic as much as its soccer!
Photo by Matt Lazzarini.
Photo by karon.liu.
Ibid.
Photo by Noah Markus.
Photo by .Allan.
Photo by Vaquero Del Espacio.
Photo by Nikopol_TO.
Photo by David G. Tran.
Lead photo by Noah Markus.
Check out more shots of the celebrations in the slideshow below. If you'd like yours included, simply tag your blogTO pool photo(s) with WC_blogTO.
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The Port's widely celebrated a 1 - 1 tie with North Korea, the worst team by a mile in the tournament.....car horns honking late into the night and all. OB.NOX.IOUS.
derp derping derper-der-derp.
derpa derp derp.
Had the Dutch won, what would they have done to celebrate, I wonder?
It makes me happy to see those guys on the streetcar. Stop whining about the dangerous of it.
I really hope stakeholders and investors see soccer/football as an opportunity and help nurture some talent. We NEED to qualify for the 2014 games, at any cost!
Um, no. We're Torontonians. We prefer to express our elation in the form of unsuccessful attempts at writing graphic novels.
Har. Har.
Canada does not need to worry about the world up of soccer, thats not our game. and the people who care about soccer wouldnt care if canada had a team, they all cheer for the team that their ancestors came from 5, 6, 7, generations ago. or the team that their friend tell them to cheer for.
besides, if you wanna see some good acting, go check out some of toronto's many theaters.
College and Bathurst, Toronto. WorldCup fans jumping on a streetcar and hanging like Tarzan from an electrical wire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMNG1iDWoO8
Still, I don't want to see the sports fanaticism we see in many parts of Europe and South America come to Canada. I prefer my cities not set aflame and smashed to bits in response to wins and losses in sporting events.
Also, dangling from a high voltage electrical wire isn't having a good time. It's fuckin' dumb.
Lastly, as someone who literally lives in an apartment above a College Street shop, you can pack up your vuvuzelas and bleating car horns and get leave my neighbourhood. Thanks!
No arrests, no actual violence, just minor property damage that will be more than paid for by the ridiculous amount of money generated in restaurants and bars across town.
As someone who is out in the streets every world cup, I see ABSOLUTELY NO SIGN of hooliganism in Toronto, in fact - there is no hooliganism in South Africa either, or much of Europe during world cup. Hooliganism has almost exclusively at the club level, say between arch-rivals Celtic and Rangers in Glasgow, Scotland. And even that has been dwindling. But of course, you wouldn't know that, because you don't watch footie - but that doesn't stop you from making predicutions, right?
Lastly, footie is the most popular sport by participation in Canada, and the ratings for this year's World Cup show that it's pretty huge in Canada - more so than baseball or football by far. If the feds actually funded the national team the way every other nation does and took it seriously, we probably would qualify once in a while, and then you'd see all of these people cheering on other teams cheering for Canada.
We only cheer for others because we don't have a choice, if we did, you'd see plenty of Canadian flags on cars, or at least a Canadian flag on one side an another country on the other. And why wouldn't this happen? If you had bothered to check out the composition of our national team and youth team, you'd see that there the players represent almost all of the big footie communities in Canada: Dutch, Arab, Poland, Italy, Portugal, Caribbean, West Africa, Latin America - plus English Canada and Quebec.
You couldn't be more wrong when you say that people wouldn't get behind the Canadian team - why wouldn't people cheer on the sons from their own communities?