It had been 23 years since Toronto had experienced that championship-game feeling in a major North American league.

On Saturday, the city was reminded there is more than one variety of sensation. Toronto dimly remembered what winning it all felt like. This time, they were reminded how crushing it can be when it goes the other way.

Toronto FC was not just the better team in the Major League Soccer Cup final. For long stretches, it felt as if they were the only team out there.

Story continues below advertisement

Their opponents, the Seattle Sounders, could not manage a single shot on goal through 120 minutes of regulation and added extra time. Not even close.

"I really wish we'd played better," Seattle's own coach Brian Schmetzer said afterward. You don't often hear that an hour after a man has raised a trophy.

Toronto goalkeeper Clint Irwin didn't make his first save of the game until penalty kicks.

That's where it went totally wrong. Michael Bradley, easily the best player on the pitch over most of the night, scuffed his shot. Seattle also missed one, sending it to the sixth man.

For Toronto, that was poor Justin Morrow, a serviceable player who will now only be remembered for one thing. He beat the Seattle 'keeper. He could not beat the underside of the crossbar. The ball caromed back on him. Seattle sealed it with the next shot. Toronto quite literally lost a championship by an inch.

"I'm sure it will hit me at some point and I'll break down," Toronto coach Greg Vanney said dully afterward. "Right now, I'm numb."

He looked it. So did his charges. As soon as it ended, they followed Bradley off the field at a quick march. By the time they'd set up the trophy presentation, BMO Field was nearly empty.

Story continues below advertisement

The only Toronto fans remaining were the die-hards in the southeast corner. They were waiting for the team to come back out and end the season with a proper farewell. That the usual soccer tradition didn't happen was a measure of how hard the players had taken it.

So Toronto FC's season ended with Seattle friends and family gamboling around the Toronto FC pitch taking selfies. A few kids were picking confetti off the grass and tossing it in the air. Staffers were carrying away a banner that read "One Game to Glory."

It wasn't much of an end to a remarkable run.

The Sounders most valuable player was probably goalkeeper Stefan Frei. In the closing minutes, he made one of the great saves in MLS history off a looping, point-blank Jozy Altidore header.

A close second in the voting was 41-year-old Irish referee Alan Kelly.

Kelly allowed the final to become a game of remarkable permissiveness and occasional brutality. The emblematic tackle in the early going was Seattle's Nelson Valdez sticking his foot into Drew Moor's sensitive parts at high-speed. It went uncarded.

Story continues below advertisement

Since Toronto was the only team minded to go forward, that laissez-faire attitude tended to penalize them.

The key victim was Toronto's best player, Sebastian Giovinco. Every time the Italian got the ball in space, one or two Seattle players was there to cut him down or tug him to the ground. Kelly called it occasionally, but seemed to lose interest as the game stretched on. After nearly two hours of abuse, Giovinco left the game in the 103rd minute, limping with a cramp. It is hard not to imagine what might have been if he'd been one of the penalty takers.

That said, Toronto had their chances and missed them. Altidore's was the finest, but Tosaint Ricketts scuffed a shot inches wide in the final moments as well. There were others in regulation that missed by the slimmest margins.

But after those two late misses, something drained out of the crowd. They were largely Torontonians, after all. They can sense better than most when the tide has begun to turn.

"[The game] didn't have the greatest flow," Vanney said.

Not until then. Then it had flow – most of it downhill.

Story continues below advertisement

Morrow is the goat, Kelly is the villain, Bradley is the thwarted hero and the real loser on the evening is the city writ large.

Toronto wanted to feel what it's like again on the biggest stages. What they remembered was it turning out well in '92 and '93.

They'd forgotten that it also goes wrong just as often. And, in the moment at least, that can feel worse that never getting there at all.