Kills Me Dead

Can we talk about the fact that out of nowhere my favourite Germanic viking god has up and left Werder Bremen to come play for Toronto FC?

Ages ago there were rumours that since Frings was bound to leave Werder Bremen at the end of the season he might come to MLS, although speculation abounded that he’d end up with the New York Red Bulls, especially after their recent episode talking about how they were getting a German international and it was some weird publicity stunt for a German race car driver. My sister and I got excited nonetheless because that meant we’d actually have an opportunity to see a former member of die Mannschaft play, my sister being an especially long time Frings fan. The only recent I haven’t yet purchased tickets for the TFC vs Red Bulls game in October is because my sister doesn’t know her fall schedule yet.

So fast forward to yesterday when I went straight from work to the TFC vs Vancouver Whitecaps game without checking any of my news feeds. During the pregame stuff they were especially casual in saying “Joining us at centre field are our new signings, Torsten Frings and Danny Koevermans!” My sister and I looked at each other and were like “Wait, what? WHAT?! FRINGS?!” We proceeded to lose our minds a little bit due to excitement because, hello, we were excited enough when we thought he was signing for another team, but now he’s in Toronto? SPECTACULAR!

We did have a little bit of second-hand embarrassment for Frings, though. (Also, there’s a German word for second-hand embarrassment, isn’t there?) Toronto crowds annoy the ever living hell out of me because they show up late and leave early to beat traffic, which meant that when Frings and Koevermans were announced on pitch, the stands looked depressingly empty. They filled in later, of course, but you can imagine Frings thinking “I left intense success in the Bundesliga and on die Mannschaft to end my career on a last-place team with no fans?” I assume he stayed to watch the game (he isn’t eligible to play until mid-July) and would have seen that it was mostly full, but I cringed a bit anyway on his behalf.

I would also like to thank Jurgen Klinsmann for obviously playing a huge part in bringing him to TFC because there’s pretty much no other reason why this would have happened. We’d actually been watching Deutschland. Ein Sommermärchen the night before, so it was kind of fun that the Frings/Klinsmann (Frinsmann?) relationship is still working well five years later.

When the Frings-to-MLS rumours first surfaced, my sister’s first thought was “Too bad he won’t be coming to TFC because TFC and Harvey’s could do a spectacular Frings promo together.” (They don’t have Harvey’s in the United States.) HOW WRONG WE WERE!! I will be genuinely disappointed if they don’t do this.