MONTREAL – Down 3-0 in Montreal is a score line that haunted Toronto FC for over a year.
But the Reds exorcised their demons from the 2015 Major League Soccer playoffs on Tuesday night, fighting back from three goals down in a respectable 3-2 loss to the Impact in the first leg of the Eastern Conference finals.
On the surface, it’s hard to imagine how a post-season loss can be considered a seminal moment in franchise history. That’s what Tuesday night was for the Reds, though.
Last October in Montreal, TFC totally choked and let the gravity of the moment get to them, conceding three goals to the rampant Impact in quick succession. All three of Toronto’s designated players—Sebastian Giovinco, Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore—had off nights, and the Reds’ playoff dreams were essentially dashed by the halftime break.
Fast-forward to Tuesday and it looked like Toronto’s macabre nightmare in Montreal from a year ago was being replayed right before our eyes at Olympic Stadium.
TFC had no answer for the Impact’s counter-attack and transition game, and were overcome by Montreal’s dangerous speed down the flank. Goals by Dominic Oduro and Matteo Mancosu gave the home side a 2-0 lead going into the break, and when Ambroise Oyongo added a third in the 53rd minute it looked like it was going to be another long and ugly night for Greg Vanney’s men.
But this is a different Toronto side and a different Vanney from last October. They’ve both done a lot of growing up in the past 12 months, and we saw full evidence of that at the Big O.
After Oyongo’s goal, Vanney was quick to change things up, taking out Jonathan Osorio and Armando Cooper for Tosaint Ricketts and Will Johnson, and switching from a 3-5-2 to a 4-3-3 formation. In adding Johnson, the midfield became far more solidified, and the attack was bolstered by the addition of Ricketts, who added an instant spark.
Suddenly, Vanney’s best players started playing like it, with Bradley and Altidore, who had been largely anonymous up until that point, scoring five minutes apart, and Giovinco adding an assist to revive Toronto’s hopes.
Make no mistake. This was a brilliant effort, a valiant comeback by Toronto, one that simply wouldn’t have been possible a year ago. That team’s psyche was fragile and frail. The slightest bit of adversity did them in.
There is a mental toughness and a hard edge to this side now, built over the course of a 2016 MLS campaign that saw the team consistently prove itself amidst one injury crisis or another.
“I think we’ve grown up a lot,” Vanney said after Tuesday’s match. “There wasn’t a TFC team before that would have been able to dig themselves out of a hole like that, and that’s a tribute to the character of this group, the belief, because there weren’t a lot of things going overly well for us during a lot of the game.”
Even with the team down two goals and having been thoroughly outplayed, veteran defender Drew Moor said the mood in the locker room at halftime was positive, and that they felt there were still in it. He admitted that when Montreal scored again to make it 3-0 that he had doubts, but instead of folding they dug in and, thanks to the tactical and personnel changes made by Vanney, they clawed their way back into this series.
A 3-0 loss would have rendered next week’s second leg at BMO Field a mere formality for Montreal. Bradley and Altidore’s goals mean things are very much up for grabs.
“I think that we played into their hands a little bit,” Moor admitted. “Our response was unbelievable. [It was] obviously not a good start to the game, but we set ourselves up extremely well for the return leg.”
Never shy about laying the truth bare, Bradley gave an honest assessment of his team’s performance after the game.
“Nothing went how we would have liked tonight,” Bradley told reporters. “Nothing went how we planned, nothing went the way we prepared, but that’s football sometimes and you don’t get anywhere if you can’t play on those days."
But like his coach, TFC’s captain recognized the significance of the comeback in the context of last year’s catastrophe in Montreal, and what Tuesday’s comeback, even if it fell a goal short, meant to the franchise.
"You find out a lot about your group when things go up in smoke," Bradley stated. "For me, the big takeaway tonight is how easy it would have been for us to pack it in [at 3-0] and feel sorry for ourselves. We did last year.
"A year later and on an even bigger stage, when we were put to the test even more, we came through in a pretty big way."
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