Tauro! Tauro!
Toronto FC will be throwing their red shirts in front of a bull tonight, when they open group play in the CONCACAF Champions League away to Panamanian "powerhouse" Tauro FC.
They say that time begins on opening day, and if ever a team needed a fresh start and a clean slate, it is this Toronto side, right now.
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Two ways to view the current state of professional football at BMO Field:
View the one-st:
By missing the playoffs four consecutive years, and winning only four of their first 26 league matches in year five, Toronto FC is now – hands-down, far and away – the least-successful franchise in the entire, somewhat short history of Major League Soccer. Not only that, they are now clearly more pointless than any of the dozens of odd squads that once populated the legendary old North American Soccer League. Even the Memphis Rogues were never this bad for this long. Nor Team Hawaii. Nor the San Diego Jaws.
View the two-st:
A drastic, mid-season rebuild, coupled with the judicious gathering and development of young talent, has suddenly produced the deepest and most promising TFC roster yet. None of the aforementioned NASL no-hopers ever had the luxury of playing a famous holding midfielder with World Cup final experience out of position in the centre of defence!
Essentially (and once again) this is an all-new Toronto team. So what better time to get out of the league – and off the continent – and start all over in an all-new league? Set all the standings dials to zero, and see what kind of magic this new lineup can concoct?
Well, not all the dials are zeroed. FC Dallas sent some coffee through some nostrils last night, downing Pumas to become the first MLS team to ever win in Mexico. That’s an unexpected result, and those always ring loud in a short, six-game tournament. Instead of getting a jump on their MLS brethren, TFC is now needing – with some slight urgency – just to hold serve.
And, of course, there will be the standard old CONCACAF bugaboos: hostile fans, difficult travel and gawdawful refereeing. It will be interesting to see how this new roster keeps its cool tonight, faced with a wonky, shifting rulebook that rewrites itself completely based on who’s got the ball, the score on the scoreboard, and myriad other unknown factors known only to whoever’s jogging around the middle of the field with the whistle.
If ever there was a team that is hugely more talented than its record suggests, it is this Toronto FC side – right now. Last weekend’s thrilling win over Seagull City SC suggests enough time may now have passed for all the newcomers to be settling in, and starting to play creative soccer as a unit. Okay, that might be too much to hope for, but at least there are some in-team units starting to produce. Joao Plata and whoever’s playing beside him, for example.
The trick – always – is to maintain composure, and strive to score so many goals down there that the officiating doesn’t even matter. That’s how TFC got by Real Esteli in the qualifiers. Tauro will be tougher -- and they don't have to deal with a suspended Torsten Frings.
The CCL is Toronto’s last, best chance to do something right, and begin to make some happy noise for a change. A loss tonight will not be fatal. A win would be … luverly!
Onward!
Oh, and the Canadian coaching series continues next Wednesday with the thoughts of Ontario Soccer Association chief technical officer Alex Chiet.
Oh, and a happy should-have-been-85th to my late father, David Knight.