No finer place to watch the World Cup than Toronto

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And so it begins: This World Cup, this month of madness and distraction. These weeks of revelry in the mornings and exhaustion in the evenings. These days of crazed young men and women driving through the streets, hollering and waving flags. These afternoon of solemn older men emerging from cafés or living rooms at precise times, mid-morning and mid-afternoon, blinking in the sunlight, to smoke a contemplative cigarette, sip coffee or wine.

In vast areas of downtown Toronto, you can always tell when it's half-time at World Cup game. There they stand, on my street and yours, the older men who built this city. The Italians, the Portuguese, the Greeks, the Hondurans, the Nigerians. The list goes on and on. Men who carry the appreciation of soccer in their DNA and who passed it on to their sons and daughters. They have an acquaintance with the Leafs, a knowledge of the Blue Jays, maybe, but it's this they savour.

For this month, soccer is emphatically on the surface of Toronto. Yet it's always here, year after year. It's a vital sinew of the city, part of its muscle and body tissue.

Every September, it starts. That's when the qualifying games begin or are renewed for the next World Cup, the next Euro championship. An Italy or France international game might be on cable TV, but most of us, from all backgrounds, flock to the places that buy the games from the big international TV companies. We pay ten or twenty bucks and don't complain. The games matter. We're all on the long and winding road to the next big tournament. There's camaraderie and a cross-cultural delectation. As I set out early for McVeigh's to see Ireland play, two guys from down the street are on a brisk walk to the Portuguese club at College and Ossington. When the streetcar stops at Yonge Street I see the people in their England shorts heading to one of the ex-pat bars. Most of the city is asleep but thousands upon thousands of us are up and moving, groggy but giddy with anticipation.

Often the first big international soccer Saturday coincides with the opening weekend of TIFF. This can be an illuminating experience, an illustration of the layer upon layer of alternate life that exists here. Here in Toronto, most ethnic neighbourhoods and the downtown areas where the soccer bars, clubs and cafes are located, tend to be eerily quiet when the international games are airing. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, with George Clooney tagging along, could walk the streets unnoticed. Now, if Luis Figo or Francesco Totti were to turn up, there would be bedlam. The fame they have makes movie stars look like pipsqueaks.

The thing is, of course, it's never just about the game or those superstar players. It's about the conviviality, the sweet knowledge that we are all connected to the games, all over the world. Across all the divides in the world and across the multiple ethnic neighbourhoods of Toronto, soccer is the lingua franca, the link that fastens us together.

Even when the game is dire, there's the fun of the banter and the drollery. One morning, during the journey and multiple stops on the road to this World Cup, I arrived at the Duke of Gloucester on Yonge, a classic, slightly seedy English ex-pat pub, just a little late to see the start of the game. It cost ten bucks to enter, but the chap manning the door had the right idea - he reduced it to five bucks after England scored and, really, the tension was over. Then he offered a running commentary more colourful and accurate than what was emanating from the TV. I sat in McVeigh's when Roy Keane, the legendary hard man of Manchester United and Ireland, returned at last to play for his country, against Switzerland. Keane announced his return early with a terrifying tackle on a Swiss player. There was silence in the bar as we all feared he'd be given a red card and dismissed. Keane glared at the player on the ground and the referee. You could hear a pin drop in the bar. Then a voice at the back said, "Walk away, Roy. Just walk away." And, as if he'd heard the directive, Keane immediately walked way. The laughter and relief was ecstatic.

And then there are the gentle reminders of how soccer is like a secret language of Toronto. Once a few years ago I had the difficult task of having new windows built and installed my house. At a premises on Dundas Street West, I was a bit awed by the price and the difficulties involved. Then I spotted some soccer paraphernalia on the wall. So I asked, "Are you Benfica or Sporting people?" Support for either of the two teams divides all Portuguese everywhere. The question changed everything. A deal was made quickly and with good cheer. Then we talked the heck out of Toronto FC and its failings.

More recently, last December, I walked up and down Harbord Street with David Goldblatt, the author of The Ball Is Round: A Global History of Soccer, generally considered the definitive history of the game. He was full of questions about the intricate patchwork of ethnic neighbourhoods in the city and its suburbs. But he was seeking only one answer: A week later he e-mailed me to say he was trying to convince BBC Radio to let him cover this World Cup from Toronto. It never worked out, but it should have. It is a truth universally accepted here that if you can't be in the host country, this is the best place to experience a World Cup.

Even when I've been far, far from Toronto I've been reminded of the soccer heaven that is anchored here. Last year I was in Bari, in Italy, to see Italy play a World Cup qualifying game against Ireland. On Twitter I sent out occasional notes about the pre-game press conference, the atmosphere and the fans. I thought that a handful of friends would be interested in my observations. Later I was surprised to find that Mayor David Miller was re-tweeting what I'd written and thousands of people were paying close attention.

From the mayor to the guy bumming a cigarette outside a dilapidated bar on a downtown street at half-time, this is a soccer city. Always. And so it begins, this wonderful month of madness. Yes!