THE ULTIMATE GOAL
Toronto FC hosts the Seattle Sounders in today’s MLS Cup final rematch. We preview TFC’s chances, the competition and what’s at stake.
In the wake of Toronto FC’s penalty shootout loss to the Seattle Sounders in last year’s MLS Cup final, Tim Bezbatchenko felt a mix of numbness and pride, emotions to be expected after the club’s most successful season in history ended in heartbreaking fashion.
But there was something else brewing inside the Reds’ general manager, a feeling maybe less expected: excitement. For this team, he thought, success was repeatable.
“This was a group that can lead (Major League Soccer) which is, in turn, when we go into this year where the goals were: we want to win Supporters’ Shield, we want to win the treble,” Bezbatchenko told the Star last month.
“Very few teams can really say that. I would say you should shy away from setting those lofty goals because if they’re not realistic, then they’re not real, true goals. With this group, I felt like in setting those goals, they knew what they wanted to achieve and it all really stems from the disappointment from the Cup last year.”
Toronto (20-5-9) has already proven it can build on last year’s success.
The team won its second straight Canadian championship in June before claiming the Supporters’ Shield in historic fashion — the 69 points the Reds amassed marked a single-second MLS record, and a six-win improvement over last season bumped Toronto FC up from third place in the Eastern Conference to first overall.
Seattle, which finished second in the Western Conference this season, posted a 14-9-11 record for 53 points, the exact same tally the Reds managed a year earlier. The only difference, on paper, between the Reds of 2016 and the Sounders of 2017 was Seattle’s plus-13 goal differential, one goal better than Toronto.
But getting back to the MLS Cup was always the ultimate goal for the Reds, one Toronto has talked about publicly since returning in late January. And despite a dip in form in these playoffs compared to its regular-season dominance, Toronto FC enters Saturday’s match at BMO Field as favourites once again even if they’re playing the defending champions.
“We set it as our primary goal at the start of the year and we want to bring a championship here to this club, for ourselves, the fans and this city,” said defender Drew Moor. “It’s been an amazing season so far; to cap it off with MLS Cup would mean the world to us.”
There is no indication Toronto won’t be able to contend once again next season.
The core of this team, as well as the staff around it, is expected to stay together for a fourth straight year and the Reds have added quality youngsters in the likes of Nico Hasler, Chris Mavinga and Raheem Edwards.
But Toronto also knows how diffi- cult returning to the championship match can be. D.C. United appeared in four straight finals from 1996 to 1999 and the New England Revolution made trips to the MLS Cup from 2005 to 2007, but the league has grown substantially in the last decade, both in the number of teams and the quality of players on each squad.
That there is no guarantee the Reds can push their season into December for a third year in a row makes Saturday’s match a must-win.
“You’ve accomplished so much throughout the season,” said midfielder Marky Delgado.
“You’ve rewritten history, you’ve won Supporters’ Shield, but that missing piece would definitely . . . you would walk off the field feeling incomplete.”
That rarity of playing in a final is something the team has talked about all week, said captain Michael Bradley.
“Over the course of your career, to find teams and groups of guys where things are different and special, that’s so unique and we feel like we have that here,” Bradley said. “We feel so, so proud of what this year has been for us in terms of, from day one, everything we have put into things. We get our reward, or one of our rewards, (on Saturday), which is the opportunity to step on the field in our stadium, in our city and play in a final, play for the chance to hold up a trophy.”
For Bradley, revenge against Seattle isn’t really part of the equation. It was the Reds’ own squad — its fearlessness, aggression and hunger to win — that gave the team the confidence to make a return to the MLS Cup an open goal more than 10 months ago.
It’s that same inward focus that the captain believes will give Toronto the best chance at a win this time around.
“This is about our group of guys, our club, this city, the road that we have all taken to get here: what it meant after the disappointment and the heartbreak of last year to have to live each and every day this year knowing in the back of our minds this was all we wanted, to give ourselves another crack,” Bradley said.
For Moor, the key to Saturday afternoon’s match is about embracing the weather and the ebbs and flows to the game, nothing more.
“Don’t think about winning a championship; think about going and winning one game,” he said.
It will be special if they do, Moor said.
As the only member of Toronto’s roster who has previously won an MLS Cup, with the Colorado Rapids in 2010, he should know.
“The Supporters’ Shield is great; it’s not what teams ultimately want to win,” he said. “The Canadian championship is great, the U.S. Open Cup is great, but we play in this league to win the MLS Cup and having been a part of a championship before, I know what it means. It’s amazing. It does so much for you personally, as a team, as an organization.”