Results tagged “soccer”

Real Madrid’s whirlwind tour of Toronto culminated with a 5–1 win over Toronto FC in front of a record BMO Field crowd. It might've been just an exhibition match, but the sense of occasion inside the stadium was palpable. The Madrid players were given the star treatment throughout their abbreviated stay; the biggest star of all was, of course, Cristiano Ronaldo, who joined Madrid from Manchester United for $144-million this summer and who scored a lovely goal in a game which also featured the Madrid debuts of Kaka and Xabi Alonso. Yet despite the star-studded Galácticos in white, the game’s highlight might well have been Toronto FC’s lone goal, scored by Gabe Gala, which made the 22,059 fans in attendance (not to mention the TFC players) go absolutely mad. As for the pitch, which was covered in grass for the occasion: the less said, the better.

Nothing’s official yet; so far there’s just a rescheduled game between Toronto FC and the New York Red Bulls. It would appear, however, that the move was made in order to free up Toronto FC and BMO Field for what would be the biggest occasion in the fledgling team’s history: an exhibition match against Real Madrid on August 7.

May is a good month to follow European football soccer, not so good to follow the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Amid all the woe and gnashing of teeth within Toronto's professional sports establishment this winter—the Maple Leafs' continued struggle to reach .500, the Raptors’ inability to play consistently under interim head coach Jay Triano, the less-than-encouraging off-season changes with the Blue Jays’ roster—there was some actual good news last week, although news that didn’t exactly inspire sports editors to include a front-page spread.

SPORTS: The Toronto FC are playing FC Dallas this afternoon. The team's had a week to rest since their loss to Real Salt Lake last Monday, so hopefully a victory is in store. BMO Field (170 Princes' Boulevard), 4 p.m., $21–$85.

David Beckham is finally—finally—making his Toronto debut, and as we suspected it won’t be with the Los Angeles Galaxy. Instead, he’ll be the featured attraction of Major League Soccer’s annual all-star game, which this year pits the very best of MLS against the very mediocre West Ham United of the English Premiership.

The younger members of the "Toronto 18" were clueless dupes, according to the RCMP informant on the case. Best line from the story: "At one point, he said, the leaders hid in the bushes and made wolf and bear noises." Thank God we caught them early or they would have been making animal noises outside of Parliament!

We're as intrigued by "The Hockey Theme" saga as any Canadian sports fan—but with the story becoming increasingly surreal (not to mention trivial), we've decided it's time to focus our attention elsewhere. Like Switzerland and Austria, for instance, where Euro 2008 kicked off last weekend.

Photo by n0wak from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

It’s almost time for the Toronto International Film Festival for Children, Sprockets (it runs this year from April 12th to 18th) and the complete line-up of films has been announced. Once again this year all film journalists will find it impossible to mention the festival without bringing up Mike Myers (after all, it’s was one of the best SNL sketches ever, really) but far more relevantly, this year Sprockets features 68 films from 26 countries in 15 languages, maintaining its position as one of the most amazing opportunities for children from ages as young as three to connect with the visual language of other cultures.

Here's a riddle: What walks throughout Canada, weighs more than a Brit, but less than an American, and can help stop global warming? No, it's not Sasquatch. It's not Kyoto.

Toronto FC sells out of season tickets for 2008. In response, the club promised they will try "really, really hard" to win at least one more game this season. The team's lawyers then pointed out that this was in no way a guarantee and that season ticket holders should feel privileged to be allowed to watch the game.

Celebrating its fifth anniversary, the Toronto Japanese Short Film Festival opens its doors tonight and runs until Sunday at the Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Avenue).

Police are investigating a mysterious purple liquid found seeping around the Don River. When asked for comment, the police stated that they have all their men rolling around in the goo in the hopes that it's radioactive and gives them all superpowers.

Sure, the Toronto FC may have lost Saturday's game 4-1––hell, they may have lost 75% of this season's games––but this clip of the soccer team's fans on the Washington DC Metro (which we discovered thanks to DCist) is kind of sweet in a "loud sports fans yelling French" way. Plus, Toronto fans are totally "the gem of the league"! If only subway enthusiasm could be somehow be harnessed and channeled into on-field talent, then we'd really be set.

A soccer game between Toronto and Los Angeles was played last night in honour of the Becks-Posh royal visit to Toronto. Although an injury prevented Beckham from taking the field, his handsomeness remains unimpaired. And oh yeah, the final score was 0–0.

Civil engineers say that Ontario bridges are at risk. Short, short version: we're not in as bad shape as the Americans on this front, but we need more strenuous testing of existing bridges since most of ours were built in the 1960s and have expected design lives of about fifty years, so we're entering the beginnings of a replacement cycle.

You remember the Moose in the City, don't you? For six glorious months in 2000, more than three hundred fibreglass moose stood watch over Toronto, succesfully saving us from the shame of having hundreds of flying pigs instead. We greatly preferred the moose to any of the subsequent visitors to our fair city including aphids, SARS, and Chilean soccer players.

Torontoist was at last night's Under-20 World Cup semi-final between Argentina and Chile at BMO Field and left wondering: "How did a riot not break out?" Well, as it turns out, a riot of sorts did break out after the game, when members of the Chilean team confronted a group of policemen. Reports of taser guns being used have yet to be confirmed, although eyewitnesses swear it happened.

Photo of David Beckham by rayxhead

The St. Clair West neighbourhood has had some conflict-filled times over the past few years. Who can forget the St. Clair streetcar ROW debacle, during which there were calls to boycott the beleaguered community? We think that it’s time to forgive and forget, and how better to do that than with a sultry summer samba party?

Every weekday, we pick an image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve!

Neighbourhood festivals are a great way to either explore unfamiliar pockets of the city or actually meet the people who cross your path on a daily basis. Signage for this neighbourhood street festival at the corner of Wyndham Street and Brock brought our attention to tomorrow’s day of events and big FUN in The Brockton Triangle area. The wee bit of west end land known as The Brockton Triangle stretches from Dundas to the railroad tracks north of Queen Street between Brock and Lansdowne Avenue. It’s Toronto’s only triangular neighbourhood lost in a sea of boring squares (or closely related quadrilaterals).

This week, the already-awesome Dufferin Grove Park is absolutely ablaze with awesomeness, with tendrils of wicked cool billowing through its leafy canopies and filling the lungs and hearts of theatre aficionados everywhere. The Cooking Fire Theatre Festival, which runs from June 20-24, is a presentation of five short plays, accompanied by a spectacular organic meal and infused with a spirit of collaboration and comraderie from start to finish.

We’ve been looking for a way to talk about King Kong again for a while now. It’s unlikely you’ll remember, but Torontoist’s first Film Friday column was actually published in the week Peter Jackson’s remake hit cinema screens, yet that’s not (specifically) the reason we’ve been in the mood to mention it again.

It's Thursday, which means it's the first day of North By Northeast and the end of our previews. In the final installment of our NXNE recommendations, we'll guide you through the best that Saturday has to offer. And, if we may say so, Saturday has a lot of good stuff to offer. Before heading out, you may want to fuel up at the 2nd Annual Back Lot BBQ put on by Six Shooter Records. It takes place at their retail store, located at 1118 Queen St. E., from 2–6 p.m. and features Six Shooter artists such as Justin Rutledge and NQ Arbuckle (not to mention BBQ and beer).

Similar to how the Oscars end the awards season with a bang, the coming of North By Northeast signals the end of festival/conference season for another year. Running from June 7th to the 10th, with over 450 bands playing NXNE shows between Thursday and Saturday, not to mention the NXNE film festival, we're already starting to sleep in a little longer so we can bring you as much of the festival as we can. To help you wade through the enormous list of bands and prepare for the long weekend ahead, we're you giving our picks for the bands and shows that will, hopefully, highlight this year's edition of NXNE (not to mention some of the extras, like BBQs and soccer matches, happening through the weekend).

Only three days left in the 17th Annual Inside Out Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival! Last night, Eleven Men Out screened at the Bader; an Icelandic comedy with a reasonably original premise: a soccer player named Ottar being interviewed by a reporter in the locker room after a game while the rest of his team is changing decides, for the benefit of appearing on the magazine's cover, to come out of the closet at that exact moment. As a result, he is thrown off the team and becomes the pariah of his family, including an alkie former-Miss Iceland ex-wife, a biggoted soccer-exec father, a video-store managing brother with a penchant for shemale pornography and a moody tweenage son who would rather play Counter-Strike than have a conversation with his father.

The 17th Annual Inside Out Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival Continues! Last night, the festival presented its centrepiece gala screening at the Isabelle Bader Theatre of King and Clown (reviewed by Torontoist at last year's TIFF), a movie about a Korean monarch who falls in love with his cross-dressing jester that also happens to be the top-grossing Korean film of all time (OK, so at least it was until this happened).