After poor start to season, MLS Cup finalists now travelling different routes

TORONTO — Coming off a short off-season and facing early CONCACAF Champions League matches, Toronto FC and the Seattle Sounders both stumbled their way into the 2018 MLS season.

Seattle started the campaign with three losses and went 1-4-2 before beating Toronto 2-1 at BMO Field on May 9. The MLS Cup runners-up then lost five of their next seven (1-5-1).

After 15 games, Seattle was 3-9-3.

Toronto opened with two straight losses and managed just one win in its first six games (1-4-1). After 15 games, the MLS champions were 4-8-3.

Since then the MLS Cup finalists have been travelling different routes.

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Seattle (11-9-5) has won seven straight and is unbeaten in its last 10 outings (8-0-2). The Sounders have not lost since June 30, when they were beaten 3-2 by visiting Portland.

In contrast, Toronto (7-12-6) has gone 3-4-3.

Seattle has climbed back into the playoff picture, sitting in fifth place in the West with 38 points just above the Los Angeles Galaxy on goal difference. Portland and Vancouver are in their rear-view mirrors, one point behind.

Toronto, meanwhile, stands ninth with 27 points in the East, six points out of the playoff picture.

“Momentum is a big thing in this league.” said Toronto coach Greg Vanney, whose team is trying to get off the ground before it is too late. “We talk about it sometimes and I don’t know if people understand the value of it. But (for) a lot of the teams, the margins between teams is not great. And sometime it’s confidence, it’s clarity, it’s just those little things that give you that extra boost when you need more energy. When you need to execute in the moment, confidence is always important.

“It’s not always a league about quality. Sometimes it’s just a league about form and about the guys working together as a group and believing in what they’re doing,” he added.

Seattle coach Brian Schmetzer is seeing that self-belief.

“It showed the determination, the fight, the ability to win games in different fashions,” he said of Seattle’s 1-0 win in Portland on Sunday night. “I thought you had some monster performances in that (Seattle) locker room.”

TFC can argue that its gloom is actually lifting. The team is coming off a 3-1 home win over rival Montreal and has lost just one of its last six league games (3-1-2) with the defeat at the hands of New York City FC coming with Jozy Altidore sent off just 11 minutes into the game.

Statistics can go both ways, however. It’s also true that prior to the weekend victory over Montreal, Toronto had not beaten a team other than 10th-place Chicago since June 8 — a 2-5-4 run.

The Sounders, no doubt, benefited from a shorter CONCACAF Champions League campaign given they were dispatched in the quarterfinals by Chivas Guadalajara. Toronto played four more matches in the competition, eventually losing to Guadalajara via penalty shootout in the final.

A stingy defence anchored by former TFC goalkeeper Stefan Frei and evergreen centre back Chad Marshall has also helped. Over the last 10 games, Seattle has conceded just five goals while posting five shutouts.

In contrast, Toronto has given up 17 goals in its last 10 league outings.

The Sounders’ depth has been a factor of late. Players like Roman Torres and Will Bruin have had to be content coming off the bench while others start.

Toronto has not had that luxury. Wonky knees, hamstrings and quads have made for a revolving-door to the trainers’ room.

Vanney blames a lot of that on the Champions League load.

Recent research by TFC officials has shown that in March when the team played five times (three MLS and two Champions League), the amount of high-speed running — accelerating and deceleration — was tenfold what it was the same period the previous year because of the intensity of the Champions League games “when the bodies weren’t quite ready for it.”

“I feel like we’ve been in a reactive state ever since, trying to get guys healthy. But it’s just been game after game for us,” said Vanney. “We haven’t had a lot of training time. And by training time I’m not talking about what you saw today (the team had a light session before boarding a late-afternoon plane to Portland), I’m talking about real intense training where the guys get durability, get strength, get prepared for games.”

The marathon continues Wednesday in Portland against the slumping Timbers, who are looking to rebound from a 1-0 loss Sunday to visiting Seattle. TFC then returns home to host Los Angeles FC on Saturday.

Seattle, meanwhile, hosts Sporting Kansas City on Saturday looking for its eighth straight win, which would erase the single-season league record in the post-shootout era set by Kansas City in 2012.

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Neil Davidson, The Canadian Press