Now TFC can bank on experience in playoff clash with Red Bulls
On the cusp of its first home playoff game last fall, Toronto FC was in need of a convincing win.
The Reds were victorious in just one of the eight games leading up to their second playoff appearance, a 3-2 win over then Eastern Conference bottom-dweller Chicago Fire on the final day of the regular season that left coach Greg Vanney ruing the pair of goals his team conceded. And there was the 2015 post-season on Toronto’s minds, an embarrassing loss to the rival Montreal Impact that sent the Reds packing after just one game.
On paper, No. 3 Toronto was the favourite heading into the knockout round match against No. 6 Philadelphia, both vying for a place in the conference semifinals against New York City FC. A win would come down to managing the do-or-die moment, dealing with increased intensity and making sure the team was up for it on the night.
Toronto proved all that and more, acing its first test with a 3-1 win over the Union. The dominant performance inspired more than just fans — it added to the belief within the dressing room.
“After getting past them, you could kind of feel that there was something special that was going on here,” midfielder Jonathan Osorio, who scored the game-winning goal that night, recollected this week. “We gained a lot of confidence and just felt like we could do a really good thing, we felt like something special was going to happen.”
A year on, Toronto has upped the ante by finishing first in its conference, saving itself from a knockoutround game with a bye through to the two-leg East semifinal against the New York Red Bulls — who upset the Fire 4-0 in Wednesday night’s playoff opener — starting early next week.
The positives are clear: home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, avoiding the stress of a one-off game that could go in any direction and a couple of extra days to prepare for the post-season. But the Reds are also keenly aware of the danger that a knockout-round winner poses.
“By winning the first playoff game and feeling what it’s like to be in the playoffs, it was an important win for us,” Vanney said. “I think that’s what we’re going to be facing; whoever we play first is going to have come off already one playoff win, which is an important mental aspect of winning that opening (semifinal) game.”
Osorio — who has recently returned to Toronto’s starting 11, earning four of his nine starts this year in the Reds’ last six games — said the team’s most recent match in front of a 70,000-plus crowd in Atlanta offered at least a taste of what’s to come.
“It was just good to get that feeling back right before (the playoffs),” he said.
And Toronto is no longer the inexperienced team it was entering last year’s post-season. Osorio expects the knowledge gained over the Reds’ 2016 MLS Cup run will serve himself and his teammates well this year.
“Last year, we didn’t really know what to expect. We did make the playoffs the year before, but we got knocked out right away. To go deep we had to fight a lot of adversity, a lot of things along the way, whereas this year we kind of know what to expect,” he said.
“We know the atmospheres that we’re going to go into, we know the intense situations that we’re going to be in. I think the biggest thing is we know we can go down and catch up.”