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| Like that, only with a couple consolation goals... |
MLS Cup: Conference Champions...Revealed!
I never heard what Greg Vanney
had to say just after halftime.
The 20-minute mini-game cut off
the highlights right as Vanney, Toronto FC’s coach, was about to reveal his
secrets – e.g. maybe that they’d channeled demons into Jozy Altidore (for he
did play possessed), or that someone finally explained to Nick Hagglund, at
long last, that he enjoys the freedom to score goals, as well as keep them out (or
maybe that he was much bigger and faster than the Montreal Impact’s Marco
Donadel). Vanney’s words could have explained everything, or nothing. What was
clear from the start, though, was that Toronto hit the field turned up to 11
(shit, used a cliché). Nothing made that apparent quite like Michael Bradley’s
slashing/manically-determined run into Montreal’s penalty area inside the first
minute. (NOTE: Due to where and when I post, I only have the capacity to link
to the match highlights; sorry for the inconvenience!)
Toronto simply never let up; if
they ran over the Impact, they did it slowly. Or, rather than ran them over
during the game, then backed over them in extra time. Count me among those
shocked by Montreal’s set-piece defending (assuming such population exists).
Hagglund got crazy-free twice (at least) and those lapses led to a panic/assist
on (was it?) Toronto’s first, cleaned up by Armando Cooper (if memory serves),
and the goal that forced extra time. At least Montreal had an excuse when it came
to Hagglund – no one saw him coming – but, because they were warned about
Altidore (see?), one has to ask just what the goofy fuck Montreal was thinking by
letting Altidore run completely unmarked right before half; that was one hell
of a tricky goal, but Jozy was good for it (again, possibly due to possession;
there was no other word for how he approached the game all day, other than
“surging”).
Montreal didn’t so much lie down,
as protect its vitals for as long as it could while slipping in a couple pokes
with a shiv. Dominic Oduro – who quietly put in a very credible year, as well
as a rock-solid playoff run, which breaks his famous every-other-year pattern
(congrats, kid!) – set himself up for the goal that could have won the series
(against anything but a freight train) with the kind of touch he pulls off once
every cycle of the moon. Piatti stuck in another one when he wrestled
Montreal’s second goal over the goal-line. It was a brave performance, but Toronto
was in what some folks call “a mood.”
