Real Madrid’s open practice at Toronto FC

By: Steve | August 7th, 2009

Hala Madrid! Hey folks, it’s been AGES since I’ve posted anything, and for that I apologize, but Corey has been aces in keeping the content going, and of course, Cesar has also stepped up. You guys are doing a great job, I simply don’t know how you do it without regular TV access to matches.

Anyway, as you may remember, I’ve unfortunately left the Old Continent and returned home to Toronto. I thought all was lost without Sky Sports. But then word got out that Los Merengues were going on a North American tour, and Toronto was their first stop! OMG! WTF!

Alas, the corporate bigwigs at TFC have deemed this their cash cow for the year and have priced their tickets accordingly. Thus those in attendance at tomorrow’s friendly match will be suits and high rollers and not the type who would most enjoy it, ie. me.

In their infinite wisdom, they saw the relentless demand for all CR9, all the time, and decided to sell tickets to the open practice that Madrid would have the day before the match. This also happens to be the day they arrived from Spain, so the players would probably be tired as hell, sore from the 8 hour flight, and not in any mood to be training. And for this they charged us $15! OMG! WTF!

Well, since I couldn’t afford tickets to the match, naturally I stumped up the cash for the practice, the fool I am. I hated the TFC management for doing things this way but dammit, i ain’t too proud to not see my boys!

So yesterday, me and my buddy Rudy left work promptly and headed to BMO Field. Now, if you don’t follow Major League Soccer, you may not know that Toronto has a professional football, er, soccer team. They’re alright. But the stadium they play in is just terrible. I know things were done on the cheap a bit, despite the obvious support such a team would receive, but we’ve been stuck with a crappy sandbox that barely holds 20,000 people and still uses artificial turf because the stadium is required for community use as well.

But can you imagine the outcry if any players got injured on the turf? So for 10 days, and 10 days only, TFC has imported a grass pitch for this match. Naturally, it looks and probably plays much better, and for good reason – it cost $250,000 to install! In addition to the much-rumoured $1mil appearance fee for Real Madrid, you can sorta see why they’re charging so much.

But I digress… Rudy and I rocked up to the stadium, where the security were banning anyone from carrying a camera lens longer than 75mm. For those of you who aren’t photo junkies, this basically means they didn’t want you to take close-up pictures with a big zoom lens. Bad news for Rudy as he had a lens which was just over the limit, so we had to check that in.

After grabbing some food, we made our way to our seats, and waited patiently. They were playing the press conference on the Jumbotron, and soon afterwards, the moment we had waited for was upon us. Los Merengues were coming out of the tunnel! In Toronto! OMG! WTF!

The announcer read through those who were present: Adan, Dudek, Garay… and so on. There was no Sergio Ramos, no Gago (hmm…), no Marcelo, no van der Vaart (and thus also no Sylvie…), no Ruud, no Mahamahou. But Xabi Alonso somehow got all his stuff finished from his transfer the day before and was here. In Toronto! OMG! WTF!

It was rather amusing to hear which players got cheers. With the massive Portuguese diaspora in Toronto, you would be right if you guessed CR9. Honourable mention goes to Kaka, and the players mentioned after them generally got cheers since the almost-sellout crowd got used to making noise. But the players before CR9? Crickets.

The outfield players warmed up through some light jogging around the field, and by light jogging I actually mean a pace that could have been slower than speedwalking. Interestingly, the keepers were off in their own little world: Casillas, Dudek and Adan, along with the goalkeeper coach. After some stretching and what seemed like a half-hour of piggy-in-the-middle, they started an intra-squad scrimmage on a half-size pitch.

Now, from where I was sitting, it wasn’t easy to make out all the players, but I could distinguish most of them from height, hairstyle, and where they were playing. First impressions then? El Pirata Granero looks very good, and Glassman was doing well too. Drenthe put in a couple good crosses (OMG! WTF!), Pepe gave away a couple passes, and Sneijder was his energetic self.

Kaka looks awesome, though he and BSMH (Be Still My Heart) Benzema did get in each other’s way one time and it looked awkward. Again, the biggest cheers were reserved for CR9, who did not disappoint (though, considering he dove once in the penalty area – in practice! – one has to wonder if this constitutes a disappointment or not).

Sadly, the practice ended after the scrimmage, with some of the players kicking souvenir balls into the stands. Rudy and I also knew where the team was staying, courtesy of our friend and Real @ The Offside reader Apollo. We actually spent half an hour waiting in the hotel lobby, but the team snuck in the back entrance and went straight to the hotel restaurant which was blocked off from us commoners. Alas, we only peeped a glimpse of Pepe’s alien head. OMG! WTF!

Anyway, the practice lasted barely over an hour, and Rudy and I came away not knowing whether we’d been ripped off or not. I suppose if it’s not immediately obvious, then it’s not, but still. For Canadian Madridistas, today’s match will be shown live on GolTV which is on free preview for this month, at least on Rogers. Channel 428, or 501 for the HD feed.

Check out the videos I got below, though I apologize if they’re a little jumpy… it’s hard staying still with those little dinky cameras!