Ex-QPR Danny Dichio...Hero of MLS Toronto FC

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The Guardian/John Doyle - Meanwhile in Canada ..
Their fledgling MLS team is still finding its feet, but that hasn't stopped Toronto FC's fans turning up to worship at the altar of ... Danny Dichio.

So David Beckham came to my town recently. He sat on the bench in a nice suit and watched LA Galaxy manage a 0-0 draw with Toronto FC. He chewed gum, walked gingerly along the edge of the artificial turf and waved to the sell-out crowd at BMO Field, home of what they call "The FC", hereabouts. The next day he went shopping and bought a vintage Iron Maiden T-shirt. The papers were full of news about the shopping. "Spend It Like Beckham," roared the inevitable headlines. In search of Beckham-mania, the Toronto Star discovered two fans waiting for an autograph outside the Galaxy team hotel. For this, Beckham had a bodyguard.

Here in Toronto, biggest city in Canada and the most ethnically diverse city in North America, some people were really disappointed that Beckham didn't actually play. Most disappointed were the hardcore Toronto FC fans, the thousands who populate the south end of BMO Field (sponsored by Bank of Montreal, see) and call themselves The Red Patch Boys, even though they're not actually all boys. A whole lot of women congregate there too.

They'd been waiting for months to greet Beckham. It's been known since January that the Galaxy's away game in Toronto would probably mark Beckham's first regular-season MLS game. They wanted Beckham to take a corner at the south end. Then, you see, he'd get what all opposing players get in Toronto when they take a corner there: 5,000 people screaming "Who are ya?" Instead, the tiny, whiny, baldy and snarky Landon Donovan was asked the question.

If Beckham paid attention while here - and nobody is sure he did because in press interviews he only talked about himself - he saw his own redundancy. This is the one MLS city that doesn't need David Beckham to sell soccer. No way.

Toronto FC, in existence for mere months and labouring through its first season at the bottom of the Eastern Conference of the MLS (tied, mind you, with Chicago Fire and with more points than the LA Galaxy), is an instant hit. BMO Field holds 20,000 people and every game is sold out. Yep, even the game against Real Salt Lake. There are 14,000 season ticket holders. After the first home game, every single Toronto FC scarf was sold out; they can't keep the merchandise coming fast enough to the FC store. Long before Beckham had been lured to the MLS, some genius figured that Toronto was soccer heaven in North America. All you had to do was build a stadium, create a team and show up. They were right.

Oh sure, like everyone across Canada and the US, we were impressed that Beckham was coming. But this is The Great White North. We are not America. We're different here. We have our own kind of heroes. Here, we know Beckham's supposed to be a beauty and all, but he's no Danny Dichio. Danny's our kind of guy. I spoof you not. Danny Dichio. The gangly, shaven-headed, former Sunderland and Preston striker who's all elbows and enthusiasm. In Toronto, he's a God.

He scored the first goal in Toronto FC history and about 20 minutes later received the first red card in Toronto FC history. It was a game against Chicago Fire and Toronto FC's fifth game ever. The first three were away games and TFC hadn't managed a goal, much less a point. Their fourth game was the first home game and gave a taste of what was happening here. It was on April 28, against the Kansas City Wizards. The noise from the FC fans was deafening. A showboater named Eddie Johnson scored the only goal in the 81st minute for the Wizards. Then he ran over to the south end to celebrate and was instantly drenched in beer.

The FC had the second-longest opening scoreless streak for a new club in Major League Soccer history when it played Chicago at home on May 12. Amazingly, Toronto won the game 3-1, with Dichio scoring first. That's when things got interesting. The game stopped for ages while the crowd went insane. They'd all been given seat cushions for the game and several thousand cushions rained down on the turf. Then streamers. Then a few guys leapt over the fence with the intention of kissing Dichio. It was bedlam, and it was beautiful. There were also FC goals by Maurice Edu and Kevin Goldthwaite, but Dichio's goal and the red card sealed it. He was the man. The Business. The face of Toronto soccer.

It was Mo Johnston who brought him here. Yeah, Mo Johnston, who played for both Celtic and Rangers, and who ended his career with the Kansas City Wiz (later wisely changed to Wizards) of the MLS. He ended up as manager of the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, which became Red Bull New York. But he got fired. Never mind. He's here. He's ours now.

Likes to trade players, does Mo. Around the MLS he's known as Trader Mo because, in the first few weeks of the season, he traded nine of Toronto FC's permitted roster of 18 players. He's canny though and gives pithy interviews. Someone must have told him that this city, before it became ethnically diverse, had the largest July 12 Orange March outside of Belfast, and it's true. But Mo brought Danny Dichio here. That's fine in Toronto.

Dichio is not the only non-Canadian here, of course. Welsh international Carl Robinson was brought from Norwich and works tidily in midfield. Collin Samuel, the Trinidad and Tobago international, and SPL veteran, arrived a few weeks ago. Ronnie O'Brien, briefly one of the most famous Irish people on the planet, thanks to some Irish students' 1999 campaign to have the then Juventus reserve voted Time magazine's Person of the Century, came here from Dallas and played the first games wearing a knee brace.

After Dichio, he's the fan favourite because, well, he tears round in a knee brace. Canadian Jim Brennan, formerly of Norwich and Southampton, is the captain. But the local homeboy favourite among the Canucks is 19-year-old Andrea Lombardo who played briefly for Italian sides Perugia and Atalanta before coming back to his hometown. Why is he the favourite? Because he famously takes the bus to work, that's why.

In other MLS cities soccer barely registers. Here, there was immediate fanaticism. Nobody had to explain to the offspring of Italian and Portuguese immigrants - or those from England, Scotland, Ireland, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Poland ...keep going until you've got the most ethnically diverse city mix imaginable - what to do at a game and how to enjoy it.

A year before the team played its first game, potential fans gathered online, organised a fanbase and began creating terrace chants. Because this is Canada and officially bilingual, there's even a French chant: "Qu'est-ce que vous chantez?/ Nous chantons les rouges allez!" Nobody is sure how many Quebeckers show up, but they're welcome. And the small group of FC fans who travel to away games in American MLS cities get a real kick out of doing the French chant for the Yanks. Annoys the hell out of them.

Fans who couldn't get tickets for the first FC games had to watch on TV. Now, other MLS teams are lucky if a game is shown on the obscure cable channel ESPN 2. Here, Toronto FC had an immediate TV deal with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), an over-the-air channel, publicly-funded, available to anyone in Canada, free. During those early games, the CBC's camera-work was often shaky, because the entire stadium was vibrating from noise and foot-stamping. After a month, an army of workers had to tighten bolts throughout the stadium.

As I write this, Toronto FC is in a major slump. The team has gone 462 minutes without scoring a goal. Dichio and five other first-choice starters have been injured for weeks. Still, the momentum hasn't stopped. The faithful are truly faithful and fanatical and the atmosphere is electric. This is real. The only thing that's artificial here is the turf. David Beckham, who are ya?

John Doyle is the television critic for The Globe and Mail and the author of A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age (Aurum Press). The Guardian