For 93 minutes on Saturday, Toronto FC were losing at home to their hated rivals, then in two minutes of utter chaos, everything flipped inside of BMO Field.

CF Montréal held the lead since the 52nd minute, and the Canadian Classique looked like it was heading for another forgettable night for a Toronto side that had dropped its last three in MLS. Then in stoppage time when seemingly all hope was lost, Lewis Morgan, who only arrived from San Diego last month, half-volleyed Niklas Dorsch’s lifted ball in at the far post for first goal for the club and his first in the regular season since October 2024, leveling the score and seemingly rescuing a point for the hosts.

Two minutes later Djordje Mihailovic met Richie Laryea’s low cross first-time and put it in the net to secure all three points at the death, and BMO Field lost its mind. The scenes inside the stadium were so electric that footage of the celebrations went viral across social media, not just in MLS circles. The chaos that engulfed the stadium as the Toronto players jumped into the crowd to celebrate in the Supporters Section invoked a feeling that often goes amiss in MLS stadiums, though it is a regular occurrence in Europe and South America.

On paper, the game didn’t matter much. The win put Toronto on 32 points, still four short of the last Eastern Conference playoff spot, with six games to go. Neither club is setting the pace in the league, and neither is the kind of team neutrals tune in to watch. The league’s trendier clubs have the new stadiums, the stars and the results, and it’s easy to assume those things are what make a team or a match worth following. But none of them guarantee a building full of people who, on the day, simply just want to get one over their rivals.

Toronto and Montréal have supporter cultures that hit the ground running upon joining MLS, and they formed through the bad seasons as much as the good ones (mostly bad for these two clubs). The rivalry has its own folklore: playoff nights people still bring up old grudges, genuine issues between fans off the pitch, and players who crossed over from one side of the divide to the other. So when a late goal goes in against your oldest rival, it lands on top of all of that. The fans aren’t just celebrating one specific result, they’re celebrating everything that came before it.

MLS as a commercial body has been desperately lacking ‘stories’ outside of the very basic concept of who wins what trophies and which player wins MVP each season for years now. But it has to be mentioned that a shift in focus towards some of the intangible things that mean more to the average fan can absolutely help bring some of those stories to light. A genuine question must be asked, how many casual MLS fans really knew that such visceral scenes were taking place between the Eastern Conference’s 11th and 15th placed teams? The answer is not enough.

Newer clubs in the league should take notes, and the main lesson is patience. Winning helps, but it isn’t how passionate loyalty gets made. It comes from rivalries that get the time to grow, from traditions that belong to the fans instead of being handed to them by a club’s marketing department, and from people turning up even when things look grim on the pitch. And Toronto’s match-winner, Mihailovic, said something similar after the match.

“We know how much the fans give us when we play here. You can see all season long that we’re never quitting until the final whistle,” he said. “They give us so much energy and we need them in the final stretch. We’re slowly trying to creep up into that last playoff spot. Two more games at home, we need them.”

We can’t just write off clubs like these because they aren’t relevant on the pitch right this second. Standings move around, and so do rosters, coaches and fortunes. A culture that can turn a 93rd-minute goal in a game between two teams stuck in mediocre obscurity into viral pandemonium is much harder to build than a good team on the pitch, and much easier to take for granted. Toronto and Montréal still have it regardless of what the table reads. Every club in the league lacking that very thing should be asking how to get there.