New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Home for Rent
Toronto FC plays first of six games at Rentschler Field today
In a perfect world, BMO Field in Toronto would be buzzing with activity and excitement as Toronto FC welcomed Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference leader Columbus for a key Sunday night showdown.
In a most imperfect world, things will look and feel a little different when the MLS rivals square off at 7:30 p.m.
Red signs, usually visible throughout BMO Field, will be present in East Hartford as Toronto FC plays the first of six regular-season games in Connecticut.
Travel restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic forced the three MLS Canadian teams to find stadiums to hold home games for the rest of the 2020 season. Toronto will call Rentschler Field home beginning with Sunday night’s showdown with Eastern Conference League Columbus.
“We can make it our home game,” Toronto defender Chris Mavinga. “I think the grass and the stadium, the dimension of the grass is the same as BMO so it’s good to be here. I think it’s good for us to play here in the stadium.”
No fans will be allowed at Sunday’s game, or the Oct. 3 contest against Philadelphia and former UConn goalkeeper Andre Blake.
Toronto FC President Bill Manning, who played at the University of Bridgeport, said there is a chance a limited number of fans could be allowed at the Oct. 18 game against Atlanta United and the regular-season home finale against Inter Miami on Nov. 1.
“The schedule came out and we’re looking at two games,” Manning said. “One feeling I had was I don’t want to necessarily open up the stadium when we’re playing teams that are close by and it in essence becomes an away game for us. A couple of games we’re playing Atlanta and Miami, we’re going to look at those games. The stadium wasn’t ready for fans yet, we’re going to be looking if it makes sense. We have to look at the economics of it, we have to make sure we’re meeting with all the regulations which of course we have done, get a decent amount even if it’s a few thousand. We’re going through the economics and if it makes sense, we’ll open it up.”
Not having fans in the stands makes turning Rentschler Field into Toronto’s temporary home base a bit easier.
“We’re not running it with fans and spectators so what we’re doing is essentially accommodating the Toronto club’s needs at this point,” said Michael Freimuth, executive director of the Capital Region Development
Authority, which oversees the running of Rentschler Field. “They have some needs like locker rooms, needs for certain services like food, but it’s very specialized.”
Toronto, one of three Eastern Conference teams with 7-4-2 records, would rather be playing games at its normal home but COVID-19 travel restrictions forced Toronto’s home base to be moved to Connecticut.
“The challenges from a training perspective — we have such a good setup at BMO training ground in Toronto, with everything that we need from our gym setup, our whirlpool and rehab; it really is one of the best setups in the league,” Toronto FC coach Greg Vanney said. “It’s familiar for the guys, you have everything you need. The second part, just life at home, seeing family and kids, having your daily routine and all that is different when you’re on the road so those things are challenges.
“We have encountered some things here where you might want to get a guy an MRI, you look and it’s not the same because we’re not dealing with our doctors and our system. Some of those things we’ll have to manage and find a solution for and we’ll do that, we’ve had to do that before.”
Vanney wanted to make it clear that their brief time in Connecticut has been a positive experience. Rentschler Field has been used as a training ground when
Record:
On the air: Head coach: Leading scorer:
Top goalkeeper: average)
Top defenders: Omar Gonzalez (started all 13 matches, leads team with 1,144 minutes played); Chris Mavinga (started 11 of 13 games, just made 100th career appearance for club)
Who’s missing: Vanney said midfielder Michael Bradley and defender Auro Jr. are back in Toronto working their way back from injuries. He said the rest of the squad should be available to play, including U.S. national team standout Jozy Altidore.
Ticket information: No fans are allowed at the games, but there’s a chance a limited number of tickets could be available for the matches against Atlanta United (Oct. 18, 7:30 p.m.) and Inter Miami (Nov. 1, 7:30 p.m.)
Toronto returned from a pair of recent road games.
“Everything else, to be fair, has been comfortable,” Vanney said. “The stadium is fantastic and that’s a big thing for the players, the surface that they play on, you probably put that up pretty high on the important things. How the field plays, the stadium, and I think that played a big part in guys having a good sense of how things will roll and being excited. Also, the food here at the hotel has been tremendous. Kudos to the chef, and that’s a big thing when you have a new home, they’ve done a great job of getting us a variety and great flavor, these are all things that seem small but they’re huge for the guys.”
Toronto hasn’t played a game in its home stadium since a 1-0 loss to Montreal on Sept. 1. Players expecting
to be based in Toronto had some adjusting to do.
“I’m really proud of the players, the coaches. We have a number of guys on the team that have families and the biggest concern was, ‘What’s happening to my family when I’m gone?’ ” Manning said. “We tried as a club to make it as easy as possible so that anything we could do to take those question marks out.
“This is a resilient group, this is a veteran team and they’ve been through a lot. Once they felt that the club and Major League Soccer took their best [interests] and their safety as well, which was really important for a lot of guys. It’s not ideal. They’re a resilient group and they’ve really bonded a lot and we will still here over the next two months.”
The team will remain in an area hotel that will serve as its own bubble.
“We follow all the MLS protocols,” Manning said. “We get tested every other day and that’s everybody in our travel party. We’re observing what the state has with social distancing and we even have our own protocol with MLS, which is more stringent in terms of we are almost in a minibubble, so to say that everything we’re doing is in our hotel, we have our own restaurant that’s exclusive to us, our own gym that we set up, it’s basically creating this bubble so our players don’t risk too much going out into the community. It’s trying to keep as safe as possible.”
Those precautions could result in fans making their way to Rentschler for those two games. If that happens, it seems unlikely that attendance will approach the 10,165 reached in New York City FC’s 1-1 tie with Houston played at Rentschler Field on Sept. 23, 2017, and will not have the 28,479 that is the average attendance in seven appearances by the U.S. men’s national team at Rentschler.
“We have six scheduled games and we’re still trying to make some sense of that,” Freimuth said. “A little bit is getting through this weekend, frankly.
“The public would really like to be at an MLS game so I think there are some interesting and exciting possibilities coming our way.”