Flags raised to celebrate TFC’s success
Ten flags will be raised in BMO Field’s north end ahead of Toronto Football Club’s season opener on Saturday afternoon.
The 10 flags represent a each trophy won in their 11-year history.
That’s six Canadian championships, two Eastern Conference titles, one Supporters’ Shield and one MLS Cup — a pretty good haul for a club that was more maligned than successful in its first seven years of existence.
But after Toronto’s historic 2017, the organization wants more than pretty good. The Reds have eyes on a dynastic reign, hoping to become one of the all-time trophy leaders in the not too distant future. They have calculated who is ahead of them when it comes to the major championships - notably a combined nine MLS Cups and Supporters’ Shield for the Los Angeles Galaxy and eight for DC United and believe they have begun the process of cementing a similar legacy.
“It’s more than a thought, it’s the motivation,” Football Club captain Michael Bradley said this week. “At this point, it’s what driving us on from here.”
The team talks a lot about winning again. And again. And again. It’s not to belittle what they did last year, when Toronto won Major League Soccer’s first domestic treble, Bradley said; the way TFC won in 2017 was very special, unique and, in some ways, unparalleled. But anyone can win one year; six teams have won either the Supporters’ Shield or the MLS Cup once.
Toronto wants more.
“Quite honestly, (the goal) has always been to build a team and a club that can stand the test of time,” Bradley said.
To Justin Morrow, whose arrival at the club in 2014 makes him one of the few current players who has seen this project evolve from the beginning, the mindset at TFC has always been about bringing the organization to the forefront of MLS.
“That doesn’t just mean winning one year,” Morrow said. “You have to do it over multiple years and you have to set a bar for yourself. We did well last year, of course, and it’ll never fully sink in until years pass, but if we continue to stay on top then we’ll really set this club apart in the league.”
Toronto has already begun to put itself on a pedestal, believes Matthew Doyle, an analyst with MLSsoccer.com. Always known as a big-spending organization, the Reds were long plagued with the reputation that they didn’t know how to shell out the money wisely. But in the last three year and a half years or so, Toronto has flipped that aura of incompetence on its head.
“Now you get people talking about the lack of parity in the league because teams like TFC go out and buy their stars,” Doyle said. “That’s true, but it’s also like they find guys like (Eriq) Zavaleta and (Marky) Delgado on the scrap heap, that literally no other MLS teams wanted. They’ve developed draft picks. They promote kids through their academy and through TFC II. The aura is just relentless, kick-overevery-rock-for-talent, competence. The aura is, ‘Yeah, we have a lot of money and yeah, we know how to spend it and yeah, we’re going to kick your ass because of it.’”
To Doyle, a dynastic team is one that has won multiple MLS Cups and multiple Supporters’ Shields - squads that are great in the regular season and in the post-season as well.
Toronto’s not there yet, but he believes they could be on their way.
“One of the things that made TFC stand out last year was how every week, no matter who they were playing, no matter what the competition was ... they went out for 90 minutes and cried havoc and let slip the dogs of war,” Doyle said. “They brought that. Now, for a team this talented, it’s just a matter of going out there and doing that again, and again, and again, and again. If they do it, the talent is there for this team to be a dynasty, no question.”
The Reds famously focus on their process and their daily work; there’s no looking further than the next 90 minutes. But it’s not lost on coach Greg Vanney and his team that they’re in the midst of something special.
Vanney, who was a part of some of those Galaxy championships as a player, said day in, day out the squad works to be the best version of itself. That’s because it believes the best version of itself can be the best team ever to play in MLS.
Toronto Star