Sam Saunders, a Toronto FC fan, has emerged as an ambassador of “Canadian nice" after this past Saturday's MLS Cup final -- in which his home team lost. But he took the loss as an opportunity to display some seriously good sportsmanship, and now that decision has gone viral, thanks to a video released via Twitter by Canadian station TSN.
The video has bestowed Saunders with some internet fame that he definitely wasn’t looking for. In his view, the congratulations and hand-shaking merely made for “the right thing to do” in a difficult moment, he says.
Saunders, age 31, came to Toronto from Essex, England in 2007, the same year that his new home city launched its MLS franchise. An Arsenal supporter, he needed what he describes as his “football fix" and quickly became a Toronto FC fan.
He bought season tickets, endured playoff-less years, and even made a number of away trips to support the team on top of multiple visits to BMO Field. Finally this year — until Saturday’s loss in MLS Cup — he and his fellow TFC fans were enjoying a dream season. But then, of course, the Sounders won it all.
“The stands cleared out so quickly after the game,” Saunders recalls of what happened next. He had watched the match in Section 114, among animated members of the U-Sector and Inebriatti supporters’ groups. Afterwards, he stayed behind for 15 minutes, taking in the trophy presentation scenes, as the stadium around him emptied of his fellow Toronto fans.
When a security guard requested he leave the section — as he was eventually just about the only person in it — he wandered over toward the post-match festivities to get a glimpse. That's where he ran into a line of Sounders fans who were filing down to get a better view.
“I shook a couple of their hands, because I thought it’d be the thing to do, and then the next thing I know, I’m shaking a lot of hands,” he says. “It was a line, and I couldn’t break away because I didn’t want anyone to feel left out.”
While a couple of the fans were puzzled as to what he was doing there, most were appreciative, expressing to him how much they’d enjoyed Toronto and felt welcome there. (This made for a new sensation for Sounders fans used to icier receptions in, say, Portland and Vancouver.)
He even traded scarves with one Seattle fan who requested it. “The scarf I was wearing, I thought it was my lucky scarf, because we’d won every game when I wore it this year,” he says, laughing. “Obviously, I wanted to get rid of it -- 'here, you can take it!'”
He was surprised to go viral, initially alerted by a friend who told him he was on the news. At first, he worried that the cameras had caught him in the stands in a less-than-collegial moment. He notes that some of the Twitter responses were “rude but hilarious,” and was pleased that many people saw him as a good ambassador for Toronto fandom.
“I just thought it was the thing to do,” he says. “I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”
