When it was almost over – when Toronto FC’s shaky passage to the group stages proper of the CONCACAF Champions League was all but assured – Red Patch Boys president Boris Roberto Aguilar locked eyes with me across a bar table and an empty pitcher of beer.
“I don’t think my heart can take six more games of this!” he gasped.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
Boris is a charming soul: a big guy with a broad and easy smile. He spent the evening at Red Patch Central – the Shoeless Joe’s next to Lamport Stadium in Toronto’s brick-and-shadow west-end warehouse row. He was surrounded by friends, and full of chicken wings.
And he had endured a night of agony.
May the record show, Your Honour, that the Torontos did, in fact, seal the deal and win the day. A 2-2 draw away to Motagua of Hated Honduras, more than enough to send them on to face Cruz Azul of Mexico, Aribe Unido of Panama, and defending champions of Major League Soccer, your ever-lovin’ Salt Lake Seagulls.
TFC earned it, in the sense that they were ahead when it was over. But this humid, hammering night in Honduras is a game they could – SHOULD – have lost decisively.
Further to the point, Your Honour, it is submitted that any and everyone who likes, loves or lurches along with Our Reds owes goalie Stefan Frei conspicuous beer this day. Without a steady, composed, athletic display from Switzerland’s 2018 World Cup goaltender, Motagua would have mangled these misfooted maple leaf MLSers into mulch.
The Red Patch experience, for the two jangling hours it took Toronto to not lose, consisted of endless, gnashing, fiercely worded anguish and frustration – punctuated only by two jubilant, leaping, exultant, full-voiced goal celebrations.
Goals = good. Effort = kinda adequate. Actual soccer on the pitch = very bad.
Okay – second game of a road trip, sweltering humidity, five-hour bus trip, no time to train. Welcome to CONCACAF. There’s no point using any of that for excuses, because we all learned ages ago that the only actual crime down there is to be surprised.
Of course TFC defender Dan Gargan got yellow carded on a nothing play. The guy had blatantly been wearing a Toronto jersey from the moment he left the tunnel! What did anyone expect? (Granted, it wasn’t that bad on the night. But there have been other nights, haven’t there?)
After getting ripped for an early goal – former TFCer Amado Guevara on a low, gorgeous bullet header just six minutes in – TFC settled into a wholly one-dimensional game plan. Get-ball, then-run-real-fast-down-the-middle. No width, no looking for open wing men. Just GO!!!
Yes, it produced nifty goals from Dwayne de Rosario and Chad Barrett, but it also conceded far too much of the ball to the Motaguans. A second goal from Guevara – highlight-reel slotbomb volley – offered a late scare, but couldn’t close the gap.
It’s an odd feeling when a hundred people in a bar in Toronto see TFC midman Nick LaBrocca open on the right side, but a ball-hustling DeRo doesn’t. Yes, stuff like that happens in every soccer match. It just doesn’t usually look like the game plan.
Most disappointing of all, I thought, was designated player Julian de Guzman. There are two parts of his game – positioning and ball movement. Positioning is hard to read off a lower-than-low-rez Caribbean TV feed, so I concentrated on ball movement. Every time de Guzman touched the ball, I assessed where it ended up. I didn’t hear myself say “good ball” until Julian lasered a defence-shredding running pass to DeRo – well into the second half.
Certainly, Julian had some defensive touches that weren’t awful, but his touch all-but-completely deserted him going forward.
With no wing play, and only counterbreaks to count on, Toronto FC forced itself to play a non-possession, flat-out reaction game – not exactly perfect in high-altitude, blast-furnace heat, or wise for a side that was actually ahead on aggregate entering the game.
The win counts, though, and three more home games will now be added to the BMO Field dance card.
And it’s perfectly in character with the odd, odd season Preki’s troops are having. This is a team that just had an eleven-game undefeated string (all competitions) in which they scored only eleven goals. And four of those were scored in the streak’s opening match, that ringing 4-1 home win over Chicago back on May 8.
Yes, they’re getting results. But are they any good?
The troubling thought I’m left with is that TFC caught Motagua in training camp, far from their best form. The CCL teams they face now won’t be that rusty. MLS teams, in general, get clobbered in the Champions League from here on in.
But – and this was the deeper point of those delirious Red Patch goal celebrations – this is the first time Toronto has qualified for the competition’s group stages, and that is certainly cause for joy amongst the fandom.
But Boris wasn’t the only one whose heart had a long night. It will be intriguing – and likely re-agonizing – to see how things progress from here.
Onward!