If this was about senses of occasion rather than running a business, Toronto FC would fold the franchise this morning.
On Saturday, they managed what they hadn’t in more than a calendar year — winning a game at their home field.
They didn’t just win. They couldn’t have managed it more stylishly if they’d done it in topcoat and tails.
It started out against
the Columbus Crew with all the usual klaxons howling. Despite managing
play from the off, they surrendered an ugly, early goal. Dominic Oduro
drifted in off the wing. From great distance, he launched a skipping
ball that caught Toronto goalkeeper Joe Bendik miles off his line,
preventing him from closing the gap to the near post.
The goal elicited
little more than an ambivalent groan from the crowd, followed by the
usual mumbling. They don’t even bother getting quiet after going down.
Like the sun rising,
Toronto FC coughing up a terrible goal is a reminder that all is right
in the world, though maybe not in this particular corner of it.
Video
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Vancouver Whitecaps goalkeepers battle for playing time
Throughout the
second half, Toronto FC camped out in the Columbus end, and the crowd
still wasn’t buying it. With 20 minutes or so to go, it began to rain.
Many treated it as a chance to escape the stadium while pretending to
run for cover. For a few long minutes, it was a proper deluge.
By the time it eased off, only a few of the 18,000 announced remained.
Then it got weird.
In the 87th minute, Bobby Convey put Jonathan Osorio through on goal. The Toronto-native shouldered off his marker and speared the ball into the net.
This was an odd
feeling. Toronto FC does score here and there. (More ‘there’ than ‘here’
recently. Osorio’s tally marked the first team goal in more than seven
hours of game time.) What they rarely do is score when it matters.
Seven minutes later, Andrew Wiedeman opened an entirely new, up-until-then unconsidered group of possibilities.
The young American has
been a peripheral figure this year — so peripheral his frustration goes
unnoticed. With seconds remaining, Convey did the providing again,
lofting a hopeful one in toward goal. Sliding as he met it, Wiedeman
tapped the ball gently across the face of the goal and into the far corner.
“It’s always been one
of the few skillsets I can offer — finishing,” Wiedeman shrugged
afterward. You’re unlikely to ever hear a more ruthless self-appraisal
from a pro.
What followed wasn’t
relief. It looked like rapture. Wiedeman & Co. went sprinting into
the corner, where a few fans joined them in a group hug, beer sloshing
around.
They were hopping around on the bench like they’d won a great deal more than a game.
“I don’t know about
‘relief’,” coach Ryan Nelsen said later, when that word was put to him.
Then he realized he was kidding himself. “I suppose so.”
This doesn’t solve
anything. It’s not an indicator of a corner turned. It was one bad team
taking advantage of another bad team. After all these years, the only
thing you can say for Columbus — the franchise MLS once tried so hard to
set up as Toronto’s ‘natural rival’ — is that they’re finally just as
unwatchable as the local side.
Team president Kevin Payne was in the lockerroom afterward supplying buzzwords.
“Kevin just said it was justice,” according to Bendik.
(Move a couple of lockers over.)
Goal-scorer Osorio: “I think justice is finally served for us.”
Someone asked how it felt to finally get three points here.
“It feels great,” Osorio said. “I hope it’s not the last time we get three points.”
That sentence landed
like a brick hitting the guy driving the float. In any other lockerroom,
that’s a poorly constructed sentiment. At BMO Field, it sounds like a
premonition of doom.
It’s looking less likely that there will be any high-end help arriving before the current transfer window closes Aug. 8.
The team had narrowed
its designated player focus to two major foreign targets. According to a
club source, neither of those deals is close.
Two more designated
player prospects have now entered the mix, according to the same source,
but neither may be available in this window.
Once again, the beginnings of any real roster planting may have to wait for the off-season.
Plus ca change and all that.
Whenever this team
ends up looking for a new coach, they might want to see if Bill Murray’s
interested. He remains the only guy who figured his way out of Groundhog Day.
They won’t win this year. Since the team is so far from finished, we can’t guess if they’ll win next year.
But they won Saturday.
Given the other choices, we’ll choose to celebrate that.
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