Confident TFC marching to the beat of their own drum

Kristian Jack

TSN Soccer Analyst

Follow| Archive

Shortly after 10 p.m. on a sodden Mexico City night, a raucous noise of thunder from the sky above drowned out the drums and songs from the stands below.

Rain poured from the heavens at a ferocious pace and a Mexican man behind the goal at the famous tunnel end of Estadio Azteca stopped banging his drum and looked at the sky with his arms open wide and wondered why. 

His questions on this Tuesday night though weren’t about the elements. Dressed in the colours of his beloved Club America, he wasn’t puzzled at the weather. Instead, his mind was focused on what was playing out on the suddenly deteriorating surface where his team trailed Toronto FC 4-1 on aggregate in the second leg of their CONCACAF Champions League semifinal with just 45 minutes left to play. 

The referee blew his whistle, signalling halftime, and immediately CONCACAF officials, standing next to the goal that TFC goalkeeper Alex Bono had magnificently guarded, pulled a large white inflatable tent that provided the passageway for players to head down the old, spiral stairs that led them to the dressing rooms below. Once the players were together in their dressing rooms, the tent would provide shelter for those desperately in need of some cover from the torrential downpour. It was here amongst the locals that visitors would see the shock in their wide-open eyes.

The thunder would soon move on, but the trend on the field wouldn’t change as quickly. Toronto FC emerged one by one into the temporary tunnel ready to begin their second 45 minutes and ready to face any elements that would be thrown their way. One player, however, was missing. Gregory van der Wiel had joined Jozy Altidore on the treatment table and couldn’t continue. The Reds now had five essential starters that were missing as they got set to step back inside one of the most historic soccer stadiums on the planet. 

Sebastian Giovinco, so often a player that has won games by himself, was only too aware that this didn’t fit the profile of one of those matches. The Italian would spend much of the game starved of service and doing what he could to feed off scraps. A couple of minutes before the start of the second half, however, he found himself in a pivotal moment. Giovinco waited for each of his teammates to appear and before they would be seen and jeered again by the hostile home fans he had a message about keeping their concentration and getting through the next 20 minutes. 

Giovinco was right. Club America, a seven-time Champions League winner, had so often blown teams away in the opening 20 minutes of the game, tilting the balance so much in their favour that often their opponents would be knocked out way before the final whistle confirmed it. Past Club America teams had been masters at this and even though this current one didn’t seem to have as much class, they had still scored in each of their five games during this campaign within the opening 21 minutes.

Toronto FC, so used to being bullies in their own backyard, refused to be pushed around and it was the Reds, instead, who scored during this period of the first half, a move that began with Giovinco playing a delicious pass into the onrushing Tosaint Ricketts, who had replaced an injured Altidore.

Next came Canadian soccer history as Ricketts played a ball that eventually found countryman Jonathan Osorio, who stroked the ball home comfortably and so delicately that he may as well have been kicking the ball through a flower bed in his own garden. Instead, the ball hit the back of the net and a Toronto kid had scored for his hometown team inside Estadio Azteca. Let that sink in for a second. 

Osorio had said the day before that his team had come to win. He actually stopped himself briefly and smiled when he said it.

“It’s funny, you know, because I actually believe it now,” Osorio admitted in a humble way that, yes, so often players so what you want to hear. But now this was a confident young man on a supremely confident team fully believing they would get the job done.

With so many top Toronto FC players injured, this was a night the collective balance of the side, organization and team toughness was vital. Inside the inflatable with one quarter left of a pulsating semifinal tie, they looked each other in the eye and knew they couldn’t let each other down. A limping Altidore could only look on, but would find great pleasure in watching some of his mates playing at the stadium for the first time, producing some of their greatest-ever performances in Toronto FC garb.

Bono relishes games like this, seeing it as an opportunity to test himself against the very best the region has to offer. Beaten by a brilliant Eduardo Vargas at his far post in the first leg against Tigres UANL in the quarter-final, and nearly again by Andre-Pierre Gignac, he had taken those moments as a positive. He forced himself to learn and work on what he could do better against better players, believing that the bigger the moment, the bigger your own game can be. A day after reflecting on those moments he would have his own monumental moment.

Bono’s save on Paul Aguilar in the first half was the finest of his young career, and the Mexican international was so impressed that once he removed his hands from his face in frustration he fist-pumped the goalkeeper to show his respect.

Just like the first leg in Toronto last Tuesday, you didn’t have to look far for other standout performances. It’s difficult to remember Drew Moor ever having a truly bad game for this club, but when his time in Toronto comes to a close it will be this game that will be on the minds of many when they’re asked to recall his best game. The 34-year-old would later smile – as he so often does – when he was asked about wanting to play as long as possible because of games like these; after all, the centre-back was absolutely magnificent in defence and instantly justified the new contract he was rewarded with in the winter.

Moor’s defensive partner, Eriq Zavaleta, who just last December had to play the role of a good teammate when he was unable to get on the field in the final minutes as a substitute during the MLS Cup, blossomed in arguably his biggest game. He blocked numerous attempts and was never tricked by the quick feet of the Club America playmakers.

The team began the second half the same way they had finished the first. And once the home team started long-range attempts that were off target, the allure of the superpower that can turn a game in a split second was gone. Fans who have seen many of these games are conditioned for the almost predictable CONCACAF turning point – when the script of a game can be completely torn up, swallowing up MLS teams that suddenly crumble under the intensity that Mexican teams and the region’s referees can often cook up.

Those ingredients were nowhere to be seen this time as TFC was just too tough to allow that to happen. It has been a remarkable year and a half for this team and big playoff series in 2016 and 2017 has conditioned them properly to go toe-to-toe with the giants of Mexico. Games against the Montreal Impact, Seattle Sounders, New York City FC, New York Red Bulls and Columbus Crew were all different but each one a vital learning experience.

Captain Michael Bradley, magnificent again at the Azteca, adores big games and everything that comes with them and said prior to this match his team had earned the right to play at such a level.

Yet, it is one thing to earn the right to be on stage, it is something quite different to take it over. The final whistle secured their berth in the final but, as Giovinco had predicted, that had been a given some 25 minutes earlier and Toronto FC had become the first MLS team to knock out two Mexican sides in the same Champions League campaign.

Results are clearly important, but it is their performances during those results that have shaped this team. Toronto FC now has an identity of a big-game team showing in long periods to insert a high level of technical and emotional control over games. Occasionally, they have lost one but rarely have they lost both. This is a team that relishes pressure because they consistently have shown the ability to get through moments in games unscathed when they are suffering because they have complete conviction in themselves.

The foundation of belief continues to solidify because of reference points like this one achieved in Mexico City and now places them in their first-ever CONCACAF Champions League final (Leg 1, Tuesday, April 17, in Toronto; Leg 2, Wednesday, April 25, in Guadalajara, Mexico) as the favourites against Chivas de Guadalajara not only in their own minds but in the minds of a despondent and drenched drummer.