FC Cincinnati 2-0 Toronto FC: A Walk in the Park on Rotated Legs

Blue leg for Saturday, yellow for Tuesday.

It took a while, even a couple of shots at and physically-on goal (i.e., the ball hit the post), before FC Cincinnati finally took the lead in yesterday’s 2-0 home win over Toronto FC. The visitors only had a chance in the way a broken watch shows the right time twice a day – accidentally, and with a massive assist from the gods and circumstance.

About the Game
Yuya Kubo put a messy opening 30 minutes to rest when he kicked his own rebound off the post into the net behind TFC’s Sean Johnson. The goal didn’t stand – a foul before his first shot erased it – but the moment seemed to settle the nerves of a somewhat-rotated Cincy starting XI and steady them for the push. Toronto effectively pinned themselves into their own half for most of the game with wayward passes, naked giveaways, and a kind of pervasive disconnection that must keep Robin Fraser awake at night as he toys with novel ways to say, “this is not who we are.” The Reds had one shot better than jack-shit to show for (almost exactly) 45 minutes’ worth of soccer (the ref couldn’t watch anymore either), but Cincinnati didn’t have much more. Toronto showed some signs of life early in the second half, with a goal-mouth scramble just after the 50th minute counting as highwater mark (was their one shot on goal somewhere in there?), but “their identity” of hitting passes short ‘n’ wild continued. With their last line of defense keeping them in it, Pat Noonan decided to throw in some fresh ammo – most notably, Evander for Luca Orellano (more later) and DeAndre Yedlin coming in for young balding man, Lukas Engel – and the push resumed. Even if it took the ref four minutes and a trip to the VAR monitor to see, Cincy finally got the break they needed when Evander’s attempted cross quite visibly hit, then ran down the length of Tyrese Spicer’s left arm (see the highlights, somewhere; really wish they'd do pull-out highlights for a penalty call). When, at some length, the penalty was given, Kevin Denkey stepped up and made it look easy. While this can’t be proven conclusively (because what would it even look like?), Toronto was probably pushing for the equalizer when Evander picked the ball off of the try-harding feet of Federico Bernardeschi, dropped the ball to Yedlin, who found Sergio Santos, who found Pavel Bucha, who found Evander loitering wide on Cincy’s left, who clipped the ball to Kubo with nothing immediately between him and Sean Johnson’s goal. The game was over but for the time left after Kubo beat Johnson to the far post.

Getting Reacquainted with Toronto FC, the Once-Lucky Wastrels of MLS

Just reeks of the vibe, right? Especially then?

Thumbnail History
With Toronto FC, we arrive at the first expansion team to join Major League Soccer with the Designated Player Rule in full, if budding effect – i.e., the league allowed just one per team. Toronto wouldn’t sign their first DP until 2009 and, bluntly, it took them another five seasons to get it right. As follows (in the short-term), their inaugural season roster has strong Expansion Draft vibes, plus some half-desperate swings at star players – e.g., Danny Dichio, Carl Robinson, and…I don’t know, Adam Braz? Marco Reda? Their first forays in the DP market fell (very) flat – e.g., Julian de Guzman (hard, "eh"), plus a list of one-to-two season signings that impresses in all the wrong ways – but splashing cash paved their way to Toronto’s fleeting glory seasons. All the seasons prior to that point? Trash, sometimes absolute trash (e.g., Wooden Spoon’s in 2007 and 2012): they didn’t make the playoffs in any form until 2015. When the success did come, it’s hard to say where it started – e.g., was it signing Michael Bradley (2014), Sebastian Giovinco (2015) and Jozy Altidore (2015), or did that team need Greg Vanney (who looks better after 2024) to pull them together? – but I do know that those moves built Tim Bezbatchenko’s reputation into something that still sells today (not unreasonably). As the timeline below* indicates, the investment didn’t pay off immediately, but Toronto rose meteorically once they took off. In a better universe, Toronto would have won their first MLS Cup in 2016 against the Seattle Sounders (Stefan Frei had a goddamn day in that one), but they made up for it with a clean sheet/clean win over the same team in MLS Cup 2017. This brings up one key difference between the 2016 and 2017 rosters – specifically, the arrival of the Spanish midfielder Victor Vazquez. Unlike the rest of the big names, he wasn’t a DP; Vazquez was just a smart signing that gave Toronto the fourth dimension a good team needs to become great. Blessed with one of the great, single-season teams in MLS history, and a legit talent in Giovinco, Toronto made the U.S. top flight’s third close run at winning CONCACAF Champions’ League in 2018 and, to their credit, they came as close as any of them. The overall focus(/obsession) over DPs aside, the thing that stands out most about that 2017 roster is the large number of role-playing ploggers that populate it – e.g., Eriq Zavaleta, Mark Delgado, even Jonathan Osorio and the now-forgotten Armando Cooper. For a time, one could hold up Toronto FC as proof of concept for the DP Rule, i.e., the idea that three great players in the right positions can win a title. That wasn’t their last hurrah – they fought Seattle (such a fucking thing for those several seasons) in MLS Cup 2019 with another DP, Alejandro Pozeulo, leading the way – but the manner of that loss already hinted at a waning force. The trophy case in Canada’s largest city has collected dust since and that brings up something else about Toronto – i.e., the gambler’s ambition that defines the team that remains Canada’s best in the MLS era. I haven’t seen players get blessed as the Second Coming (of what, though?) the way Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi did when they signed for Toronto in 2022. Both players wouldn’t arrive until the middle of the season, but the mere thought that they'd finish the season with Toronto kept the team alive for a lot of pundits against the evidence of very bad results. Toronto finished 13th in the Eastern Conference that season, 27th overall. When the Wooden Spoon slapped them the following season (2023), I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the gods punishing hubris.

Toronto FC 2-3 FC Cincinnati: And They Threw in a Shield...

This came up in a search for "early onset nostalgia." For real.

Take your hat off to Toronto FC for playing with more ability, and even pride, than they’ve managed through their long, dreary and biting 2023 regular season. Seriously, the only thing that saved them from playing like shit in their win over the Philadelphia Union was Philly playing even worse. Toronto played a strong one last night: their passing was clean, they stayed organized defensively and, for all the (many) shots FC Cincinnati fired, they by and large kept the visitors in front of them. Even the numbers show that the worst team in Major League Soccer played its best one pretty even.

The fact Toronto had to rally out of a two-goal deficit only makes that doubly-impressive. The outlines of another painful rout took shape early, when Cincy fired one shot after another toward TFC’s goal starting around the 20th minute – and too many from inside the box. All that knocking finally opened the door when Brandon Vazquez fired home from a couple steps in from the spot. Cincy doubled its lead eight just eight minutes later when Alvaro Barreal and Aaron Boupendza played in-out-and-back-in Toronto’s right side to create the shot that led to the deflection that (again) Vazquez put away.

Still, Toronto had laid the foundation; they only needed someone to build something on top of it. The sometimes-maligned Federico Bernardeschi set to work on that, taking charge of Toronto’s attack and doing to Cincinnati’s left what Cincy had just done to their right. He took the first ball inside, past first Vazquez then Junior Moreno and drove a shot at Roman Celentano...who, in a moment that probably still haunts the young ‘keeper, let it squirt from out between his legs. Jonathan Osorio spotted the loose ball before anyone else and poked it home to make it a 1-2 game. Bernardeschi struck again minutes later, this time cutting toward the end-line and around Cincy’s defense; his cross left Celentano flapping and Osorio, again, the first player to the ball. And could anything be more fitting than seeing local legend Jonathan Osorio score both of those goals?

Sadly (for them), the universe still works according to certain rules, one of them being that we all wake from our dreams. As everyone knows by now, FC Cincinnati walked off the field as the 2023 Supporters’ Shield winners last night. Toronto threw all the rocks they could into their path and Cincinnati stumbled over a few of them – e.g., momentum killing slop on the left from Barreal throughout the second half, uncharacteristically loose touches from Obinna Nwobodo; Vazequez and Boupendza hitting good clean looks to Toronto ‘keeper Luka Gavran as if the man had a magnet stitched into his chest – but the chances still piled on (most of the cleanest made the highlights), as did the pressure.

Toronto FC v. Portland Timbers: A Clash of Fine China

Next-level Red Rover....

To shorten these preview posts a bit, I’m going listicle on the Portland Timbers’ previews and, when looking ahead to other games, I’ll stick to talking up (or down) only those with a good hook/angle. And, yes, this Wednesday game business is driving me goddamn nuts, because Sporting Kansas City v. New England Revolution? That there was a quality match-up, friends. It looked just as good on the menu as it did when it arrived on the table. (A missed penalty, a dubious penalty, big soccer players making big soccer plays; had it all, I tell ya!)

On to the main attraction: Toronto FC v. Portland Timbers. First, let’s set the stage...

Toronto FC. The buzz-boys of 2015. Major League Soccer’s big spenders. As Twitter announced yesterday, they spent over three times what the Timbers did to create their roster (just north of $20 million versus just short of $6 million). And what has all that scratch bought them? Three points fewer than Portland – though they can go even on points by winning this weekend and a keep a game in hand to boot.

Will they do it? The trends read better than the results, at least some of them. TFC started 2015 on a seven-game road-trip. Said trip started great and ended well, but a chasm yawned between in the form of five straight losses that surely reminded every Torontonian of a deeply-cursed former life (shudder to think of the atrocities committed by the former selves of every player who has ever pulled TFC’s red jersey over his shoulder). But two wins in their final road games (cough, Orlando, cough, in the bad days, cough, cough, Philly!) sent TFC rolling back to an embiggened BMO Field confident and hungry. The schedule handed TFC an opponent that looked entirely beatable, too, in the Houston Dynamo. A clear day broke. Toronto fans provided the theater, chanting and marching their way to the field. Promise swelled like the biggest, ripest fruit the club had ever seen...only to burst into a rancid puddle when Houston cut into the skin.

Toronto didn’t do so great against the New England Revolution last weekend, either; most reports I read said the draw flattered them, so there’s that, too. So, will Toronto make that big, beautiful stadium bounce when the Timbers come to town?