The Toronto FC schedule advantage will test the phrase, “It’s not how you start, but how you finish”. After starting the season off with seven road games before their first home game while BMO Field goes through renovations to expand the stadium, Toronto will have more home games the rest of this season than any other MLS team. The road trip start to the season means that Toronto only has ten road games left this season out of 27 games, giving them a huge advantage over the competition.
Toronto FC Schedule Advantage
No team has played more away games so far this season than Toronto, the closest being the San Jose Earthquakes with six games, but they have also played three home games so far. The ideal situation for teams is to win games at home and earn at least a tie on the road, of course, it never works out that way. Through the first seven road games Toronto has earned nine points (three wins and four losses), so they are currently ahead of the curve, before playing a single home game. To provide some perspective, last year’s Toronto squad earned 17 points on the road out of 17 games (four wins, five draws and eight losses). That point total on the road should have been enough to see them make the playoffs, unfortunately their home form was underwhelming in that they only earned 24 of a possible 51 points at home.
The 17 home games Toronto has on their schedule will not guarantee that they are going to the playoffs based on the home form last year, however, Sporting Kansas City made the playoffs last year while earning the same amount of home points as Toronto did. This means that if they can improve their home or road form by just a few points, they should be in the running for a playoff spot, especially with the expansion of the playoffs moving from five to six teams in the conference. Their current nine points from seven games is a good road start, the additions of Jozy Altidore and Sebastian Giovinco provides the team with more scoring options than they had last year. The team’s current 1.57 goals per game in the road games is currently higher than last year’s season long 1.18 goals per game road average.
The seven game road trip to start the season is certainly not unprecedented; in 2011 Sporting Kansas City (SKC) began the season on a ten game road trip while their new stadium, Sporting Park, was completed. That SKC team took six points from those ten games and managed to finish the season in first place in the Eastern Conference. They finished out their road schedule with three wins, three ties and one loss on their way to the Eastern Conference finals before losing at home to Houston. SKC finished the regular season with 18 points on the road while feasting at home with 33 points.
Toronto will have a stretch of five games in a row at home near the end of the season from September 19 through October 17 where they play Colorado, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York Red Bulls and Columbus Crew that will be an important home stretch at a key moment in the season. The team should be wary of relying on just the home games, they’ve had a good start in their first seven road games, and they need to continue to get results on the road. It certainly won’t be easy as they still have road games against the East’s current top four teams, including two games at New England and two tough Western Conference road games at LA and Seattle. The road to the post season certainly isn’t paved in gold for Toronto, but if they can muster more than 24 points from their home games then it could be a post season road paved in red.
