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NEWPORT BEACH, Calif — Toronto FC captain Michael Bradley was talking about “the perfect storm” on Thursday at the team hotel, though the discussion had nothing to do with the rain that flooded parts of southern California earlier this week.

Bradley was looking back at last season and contemplating how he plans on using the disappointing second half (or MLS portion) of the 2018 season as motivation for the 2019 campaign.

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“A lot of things (fell apart) in a perfect storm type of way last year,” he said. “That’s not an excuse.

“In the end, we weren’t good enough in the league on enough days and you finish where you finish deservedly. Nobody will hide from that. But when you look at what we did in February, March and April, in terms of the (CONCACAF Champions League games), in terms of the travel, the altitude, the field at BMO — which took a real toll just in terms of how heavy and how taxing that was — it just meant that by the time we got to the end of Champions League (losing the final to Guadalajara in a penalty shootout on April 25) we were decimated. We were so thin, we had so many injuries and because of Champions League, we had put ourselves behind the eight ball in the (MLS) and we were forced to write off a few games in the league early on.