The similarities are almost too numerous, something Portland Timbers fans will want to ignore, given what happened three days ago. In the wake of a Sunday’s deflating loss to the Seattle Sounders, supporters won’t want to see another talented team that stumbled through the season’s opening months only to awake now, as they approached the Timbers on the calendar. They won’t want to see another club who, spending the summer chasing their preseason hype, has begun to ascend to their expected level.
That’s the path Toronto FC is on. The 2017 MLS champions, Toronto began the season striving for Major League Soccer’s first CONCACAF Champions League title, taking Chivas Guadalajara to penalty kicks in April before falling just short. But as is the pattern with teams who have to divided attentions early in the season, the Reds suffered in the MLS standings through the 2018 season’s first months. Through their season’s first 20 games, the defending champions had only won five times, a negative-seven goal difference guiding them to 10th out of 11 teams in the Eastern Conference. The only teams with fewer points than Greg Vanney’s squad as of July 24 were the San Jose Earthquakes, D.C. United, and the Colorado Rapids.
Even with Champions League on the mind, this isn’t the path the league’s most-expensive team is supposed to walk. In the now-passed, pure Designated Player era, perhaps confederation play could derail a team too dependent on its top-line stars. But Toronto isn’t that. Players like Jozy Altidore, Michael Bradley and Sebastian Giovinco push the payroll to MLS’ apex, but where does a player like Victor Vazquez, who has collected 24 assists in 47 appearances since joining TFC, fit into that narrative? What about Jonathan Osorio, a 26-year-old Canadian international who, from midfield, is enjoying a career year with nine goals and five assists in 23 starts? What of Gregory van der Weil, the former Ajax, Paris Saint-Germain and Fenerbahçe defender who has given Vanney a player capable of playing first-XI minutes at both center and fullback?
It’s an easy argument to make, that an MLS champion is more than the players at the top of their marquee, but this season has had to test the names in the less scoured corners of the locker room. Of the 23 games Toronto has played in MLS, this season, only four players have made at least 18 starts: Bradley and Osorio (having started all 23), Giovinco (20) and van der Wiel (18). Compare that to the Timbers – a team that has undergone a transition thanks to major coaching and squad changes – who had six players reach that bar, including midfielder Diego Chara, who has missed time with most injury and yellow card suspensions. As much trial-and-error that Giovanni Savarese has had to embrace, Vanney has had to deal with more, despite entering the season with a championship squad.
It gives you some insight into Toronto’s state of flux, a state the team will hope to leave behind as it enters the season’s last two months. But that is also why the timing of Wednesday’s game feels so unfortunate for Vanney’s men. Having gone 6-1-3 in their last 10 games, with a Canadian Championship claimed along the way, the Reds have turned their season’s corner, climbing to ninth in the East and within six points of a playoff position. Players like Bradley and Osorio have been mainstays in the team during that time, having starting TFC’s last eight games, but only now, as the congestion of the Canadian Championship fades in the reflection, have we started to see a stable Toronto emerge. Important cogs like Marky Delgado and Justin Morrow are no longer having to be swapped in and out of Vanney’s XIs, while the suspension that snapped Altidore’s streak of seven-straight starts is now over.
Amid that strive for stability, how does Vanney juggle tonight’s challenge, one that sees his team travel cross-continent for a game on turf only four days removed from Saturday’ 3-1 win over the Montreal Impact? Within last month’s congestion may be a clue. Three days after clinching the Canadian Championship at home against the Vancouver Whitecaps on July 15, TFC was in San Jose, a continent away, playing the Earthquakes. Vanney chose to keep six starters in his XI – Ashtone Morgan, Osorio, Jay Chapman, Bradley, Morrow and Delgado – but rested a important part. Giovinco came off the bench, while four other changes were accounted for by other considerations (like Altidore’s suspension).
“That’s a decision I’ll have to take inventory after this game and see what the cost of going to Portland with everybody, trying to get a road result, and taking how many guys …,” Vanney said on Saturday, after a game he describing as physically trying, giving the open nature of Toronto’s derby against Montreal. “I’m playing this one game at a time and see how guys come out of each game.”
What I’ve found from this season, quickly,” he continued, “is that you can’t plan too much ahead, because every game gives us a little different something to work with. I have an idea of what I want to do this week, but I won’t know if we’re going to go with that until I see where guys are at, physically.”
Even a shakeup to five-11ths of a team can have a significant impact. Ask the Timbers, who had to endure heavy rotation at Sporting Kansas City, 11 days ago, and was dealt a 3-0 loss in part. Perhaps Toronto feels it can’t afford to risk points at this point of the season; or, Vanney may feel more points will be at risk, down the road, if he pushes his team too hard. He did, after all, in that same press conference, call each of his team’s coming home games a “must win,” giving Toronto’s place in the standings. TFC hosts Los Angeles FC at BMO Field on Saturday evening.
Portland, of course, has similar considerations, having last played on Sunday night, but as it affects the Timbers’ preparations, Toronto’s balance between rest and risk is practically irrelevant. Come kickoff, Portland will hope the Reds will rotate heavily, but in the runup to Wednesday night’s whistle, the Timbers have to prepare as if the full TFC is going to lineup opposite them at Providence Park.
“We know exactly what we want. We know exactly how to go about this game. We know it is a difficult game,” Savarese said on Tuesday, from the adidas Training Center. “Every game in MLS is tough, but we feel very good about ourselves in regards to how we are going into this match and what we are planning for.”
The potential for a full-strength Toronto, though, is just another way that this match will feel so similar to Sunday’s; at least, it will in the runup. This will be the second time in four days that Portland will be facing one of the most capable teams in Major League Soccer, albeit one that would have been a much different challenge had the schedule offered the meeting two months before. And it will be the second time this week that, against those odds, Portland will need full points to right its course.
