With Toronto fans protesting ownership’s decision of sharing their stadium with a football team by not cheering, the team and its fans definitely weren’t poised to work in harmony. However, for the first time this season, Toronto’s starting line-up exhibited a synergistic performance that head coach Greg Vanney would have been happy with, at least for the first half. They even got a break when referee Jorge Gonzalez refused to call a clear penalty on goalkeeper Chris Konopka, who took down Maximiliano Urruti in the box late in the second half. For the individuals who deem Toronto as lucky winners with the refereeing decision; factoring in the amount of calls gone against Toronto in recent times, it will only take another 54 breaks to go TFC’s way to reach a fair balance in the MLS universe. Unlike former designated player Jermain “Fragile Groin” Defoe, Sebastian Giovinco is actually creating and finishing plays admirably. Performances like this prompted Vanney to deem Giovinco as the most electrifying player in MLS; as Toronto can’t have nice things, the entire city holds their breath hoping he doesn’t get injured, or worse yet, leave for Italy. Giovinco and Jozy Altidore are dominating the league, Defoe is back to having crumpets and tea, and everybody is happy again.
Toronto FC’s United Performance a New Sight vs Timbers
As if things couldn’t get any better, Toronto even scored the first goal of the game, with the aforementioned Giovinco scoring a screamer from 20 yards out. The kicker? They didn’t sacrifice a goal seconds later. Vanney challenged his team to score a goal first and to seal the defensive side up afterwards, and his team delivered.
Did I forget to mention that defensive midfielder Collen Warner actually successfully pulled off a filthy roulette to fool two defenders in the first half? What a spectacle.
Lead by a newly formed center-back pairing of Eriq Zavaleta and Damien Perquis, Vanney made a notable decision of sitting sophomore defender Nick Hagglund. Hagglund has featured in most of the games so far. However, Vanney decided that Zavaleta would match up better against Portland’s star striker, Fanendo Adi, due to his ‘positional’ play. Vanney sure worked a charm, as Adi didn’t have any sniffs at goal the whole game. Justin Morrow and Ashtone Morgan worked tirelessly on the flanks too, providing good cover for Chris Konopka.
The relatively new trio of holding midfielders, consisting of Jonathan Osorio, Benoit Cheyrou, and Warner worked perfectly as a unit. Toronto exhibited a sort of control over the ball that they have not displayed for a while. They provided exceptional cover for the back four, and also freed up Michael Bradley to be the box-to-box midfielder he can be. Benoit Cheyrou was a key to granting Bradley freedom. The experience and calm of the former Marseille playmaker was evident. Defensively, on Saturday he threw as many tackles as he had over the last 180 minutes combined. Osorio, playing in a deeper role than usual, had a fantastic 89% pass percentage, while Warner had an 87% pass percentage. The trio combined for 13 tackles, seven interceptions, seven clearances, and seven blocks. This stable performance from the three midfielders allowed Michael Bradley to have arguably his best match of the season. Bradley had an 88% pass percentage. That is a massive improvement on the 79% he averaged in the two matches before Portland. The quality of passing was at a high level as Bradley was instrumental in combining with Giovinco to create high quality scoring chances. Bradley looked confident as he also took on players on four different occasions; he looked relieved to not have to worry about being the primary defensive cover for the team. Simply put, Bradley was all over the field.
Luke Moore put on a hard working performance, almost scoring a goal from outside the box through a volley, but just shooting over. Giovinco and Bradley were the combination required to create offense and they did so splendidly.
The post-game talk revolved around Giovinco’s performance, with reporters surrounding the Italian’s stall in the dressing room, but much has to be said about the team’s mentality. Greg Vanney deserves credit for the hunger his players came out with. In the first half when Toronto was consistently threatening, their aggressive pressing was visibly causing the Timbers all kinds of pains. The likes of Warner, Cheyrou and Moore were instrumental in giving the Timbers players no time. The pressing allowed Giovinco to have the space he needed to utilize his talents to manufacture offense. Moore even had a solid goal-scoring opportunity created by his own hard work when pressing the Timbers defense. Asking Justin Morrow at the end of the game about whether the press was a plan, he answered, “We wanted to be attack minded. We did talk about (pressing), we talked about being the aggressors from the beginning. I think in the Houston game we came out a little tentative, that hurt us a lot. So, we were really focused on coming out aggressive and getting a goal in the first few minutes was key to that.” In the second half when Toronto stopped seeing the ball as much and resorted to counter attacking, smart pressing allowed them to break into numerous counter attacks. Lack of finishing as well as Portland keeper Adam Kwarasey’s fine keeping kept the score at 1-0. Toronto had their chances all game.
46% of Toronto’s attack came from the left flank, the flank that Giovinco played on. Greg Vanney talked about Toronto’s game plan, which was to get the ball to the atomic ant on the flank and force center-backs Liam Ridgewell and Nat Borchers to defend on the inside on one-on-one situations. Portland’s right-back, Alvas Powell, would’ve wished the ball didn’t come down his flank that often, as he was turned inside out by the Italian magician all too often on Saturday. The game-plan worked as Giovinco had seven shots and created four chances. While this proved effective against the Portland Timbers, teams will notice this and use this information to their advantage. Toronto Football Club need to ensure they do not turn into a one-trick pony team, as that would be too easy to defend against. The second-half performance will need to improve as well, as lack of finishing could’ve ended up as dropped points on another day.
At the end of the day, what is for sure is that the Osorio-Cheyrou-Warner trio should be here to stay, Giovinco may actually be the prime attacking threat this city has been craving for years, and maybe, maybe just once, Toronto can have nice things.
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