An all-time low for Toronto FC
No wins, no home goals, no answers from coach
Say this much for the Leafs — they waited until the end to detonate the depth charges on their season.
Out in the poorer provinces of the MLSE Empire, Toronto FC is doing their demolition work early.
Saturday’s execrable 1-0 loss to Chivas now puts the side on its worst losing streak in team history — five league defeats in a row to start the year. They have yet to score at home. They haven’t held a lead in any of those games.
Unable to catch hold of actual victory, the team has been reduced to celebrating the moral variety.
“We are now in a period . . . of bad luck,” said coach Aron Winter.
Does the team have a guide to these periods hidden somewhere?
Because it would really help the rest of us schedule if we had some idea how long this period lasts. Is it like the New Romantic Period; or is it like the Mesozoic Period? Are we counting in months or decades?
Winter was talking about the final 10 minutes of the game during which Toronto had five clear goal opportunities, and either skimmed the post or slammed the ball into an onrushing Chivas player.
“Mind-boggling,” was how Ryan Johnson, failed author of two of those chances, described it.
“Sooooo frustrating,” was Danny Koevermans’ judgment. He had the sweetest opportunity of all, receiving a through ball in the clear and pounding it into the extended hand of Chivas keeper Dan Kennedy instead of an acre of open net.
“A miracle,” was how Winter described Heath Pearce’s pretzellegged goal line clearance of a Johnson chance. The Vatican had yet to comment.
“What can you do better?” Winter asked. “They’re doing the job, but the ball is not going in the net.”
Since putting the ball in the net is the job, they are — QED — not doing the job.
They are doing the job in the same way that I can be said to be doing the job if I compose this column in my head, but skip the part about writing it down.
This game was the most frustrating of what has been a short, frustrating year in large part because the opposition was so poor on the day. Chivas are a terrible team. They are a grasping, 90-pound runt of a team, incapable of attack. Their only goal came on a scrappy set play, after which they curled up in their own end like a bad smell.
Getting beat by this team is like getting roughed up by your sister.
There’s been a good deal of unwatchable dreck played in Toronto over the last five years, but this? The first 80 minutes of yesterday’s game deserved to be blacked out on aesthetic grounds. In terms of technique, this game was to soccer as banging two rocks together is to opera.
With fifteen minutes to go in a one-goal game, Toronto and Chivas were standing in a clutch in midfield, trying to dig up all the grass in the place with their feet. Many in the crowd were already hitting the exits.
Julian de Guzman, Toronto’s $1.9 million man, was standing over on the side with the subs. He was not judged important enough to both- er including at any point. The sixth highest-paid player in the league has lost his place to rookie Luis Silva. “Maybe he’s going to play next game,” Winter said of de Guzman, not even trying to elide his emphasis on the word “maybe.” What’s to be done? At this point, an appeal to higher powers might work best — which must be why the team has chosen that route. “The nice thing about this league is that even when you lose games . . . everything can happen,” Winter said. “I think it’s a question of time.” Then he presumably went off somewhere to light a thousand candles. Blaming luck is bad enough. Trusting it to turn your season around sounds careless. Yes, it’s a goofy sort of league and, yes, it’s only five of 34 games. All is far from lost. But for the first time in his tenure, the figurative doomsday clock hung around the neck of every coach has begun to tick for Winter. No one on this team needs that change of luck more than he does.