TORONTO — This is an MLS Cup of firsts, as league commissioner Don Garber pointed out throughout the introduction of his “state of the league” address on Friday afternoon at the InterContinental Hotel in downtown Toronto.
Saturday night’s MLS Cup, between the Sounders and Toronto FC at BMO Field, is the first to be held in Canada – the first to feature a Canadian team, period. This league championship, to be broadcast nationally on FOX, will be the first this decade to air on English-language network television.
And perhaps mostly tellingly of all, the 2016 MLS Cup will be the first to feature two expansion teams, without a single original franchise represented.