6ix on a Wave: No One Is To Blame/Everything’s My Fault — Let’s play the name game!

Yeah, I know. It’s been a spell.

Allow me to explain.

First off, I went and got myself hitched, and, as the marrieds out there in WTR-land already know, that is no small undertaking. Toss in an unexpected busy spell at the day job and ... crickets from el Jeffe.

And then I burned more than a bit of time — post-nuptials — flip-flopping on what to actually write. I started many unfinished pieces. Here’s the thing — I will happily cut off my own fingertips instead of birthing yet another variation of “What’s wrong with TFC? How do we fix it?”

I’m confident it will be fixed. I think the pendulum is already swinging back — I’ll take that Decision Day thrashing of Atlanta United and raise you an “In Bez we trust” as proof positive.

And I’m not ashamed to say that — even though it’s sans-TFC — I’ve been really enjoying the MLS playoffs this year. As a quasi-neutral, you get to appreciate the utter zaniness of the whole enterprise. It’s two rounds of kamikaze, all-in, aggregate death match football, until you get a play a side you’re lucky if you’ve seen twice the whole season in a one-and-done nail-biter for all the marbles.

Bunker and pray, indeed

Here at WTR, we’ve been keeping the fire lit this off-season. Pamanci11 has gifted us his thoughtful, and utterly fascinating Who We Were series on former TFC luminaries. We’ve been keeping you well and truly updated as silly season ramps up, covered the Champions Cup in depth, and brought the op-eds in terms of potential roster shake-ups, thoughts on individual players, and the lessons learned off the back of this terrible, terrible 2018 campaign.

We’re even lacing up our cleats (well, some of us) and participating in the 11th Annual Kristian Jack’s ‘Football for Good’ charity tournament on December 2nd at the BMO Training Ground. It’s going to be a corker, We’re still collecting donations for that, by the way :)

And we’ve got some plans for what’s next.

But first; let’s have some fun.

I just know we’ve all got some cute and/or clever nicknames for “Our boys on the field” (the chorus of that obnoxious ear-worm they play incessantly at BMO. Sounds a bit like Great Big Sea or the house band you’re trying to talk over at the local Irish-style pub chain on Saturday night).

Pet names are one of the greatest things about sports fandom. This is a fact.

So I thought, why not reach some kind of WTR consensus? (or at least have some laughs sharing our collective genius).

I’ll get us started — looking forward to your examples/rebuttals in the comments!

Ayo Akinola - “Aye-Yo,” “A-Okay”

Jozy Altidore - “Jozy,” “The Beast”

Auro Jr. - “Jr, because we called the dog Indiana,” “N’Sync” (really, that hair is getting outta control)

Jon Bakero - “JoBa,” “The Baker”

Alex Bono - “ ‘Bo’ Knows” (finding it impossible to fight Vic Rauter on this one)

Michael Bradley - “MB4,” “The General,” “Bradders”

Jay Chapman - “Chaps,” “Chappers,” “The Ice Cream Man,” “Baked-Cake 001”

Aidan Daniels - “A-Da”

Marky Delgado - “Marco,” “The Middle Flipper” (a pinball reference that credits his one-touch hotfoot style)

Julian Dunn - “Dunn like Dinner”

Liam Fraser - ”Frase,” “Frasier Crane”

Sebastian Giovinco - “Seba,” “Gio,” “Seba-Debba-Doo,” “Seba Things”

Nick Hagglund - “Haggs”

Lucas Janson - “JHYanson”

Chris Mavinga - “Christmas Finger” (memorable things can happen when both text to speech and auto-correct go rogue), “Mavs,” “Double-Dragon” (on account of the vicious kung-fu tackle he delivered whilst playing in Europe), “Gazelle”

Drew Moor - “Moor, please,” “Moorish”

Ashtone Morgan - “Ash,” “Morgs”

Justin Morrow - “J-Mo,” “Morrow’s Cornrows”

Jonathan Osorio - “Oso,” “Dribbles”

Caleb Patterson-Sewell - “Hipster Keeper” (on account of that awesome Portlandia beard)

Ryan Telfer - “Tefler” (We ALWAYS get it wrong), “Teflon”

Gregory van der Wiel - “VDdubs,” “VDW,” “Ostrich-legs” (He’s a tall drink of water)

Victor Vazquez - “VV,” “What’s your vector, Victor?”

Eric Zavaleta - “Zavs”

Raise a glass and take a moment of silence for Tosaint Ricketts and Clint Irwin — I was more than ready to include them, but they are no longer listed on the team roster. Let’s not exclude them in the comments, though, or any former TFC player/staffer, for that matter. Witty and clever trumps official 2018-19 roster status. If you want to take a crack at Ager, please, go ahead — it’s possibly more effort than he gave the team.

Let’s hit the comments, I’m looking forward to a chuckle or twelve.

THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST

... represents more than a few weeks of thought, hence the bookend song title-article title double score.

Let’s put a bow on TFC 2018 with a playlist featuring an equal amount of blame-taking and finger pointing.

I also slammed in a few of my favourite tracks from the FIFA 18 soundtrack. Despite the lyrical and tonal schizophrenia, It’s a smooth journey across more than a few genres. Nice and breezy.