This was catharsis for Altidore and Bradley

The spirit of blame has been bouncing around US soccer circles since the USA’s World Cup elimination – but over the course of these MLS playoffs far more than its share has settled on Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore. Both men were booed by opposing fans every time they touched the ball during the playoffs, and both had their struggles – Bradley was nullified by Tyler Adams in the home playoff loss to the Red Bulls, while Altidore saw red in the same game and missed the first leg against Columbus.

There’s no doubt that the fallout for the national team will continue for some time to come, but on Saturday evening, the pair at least got to put an emphatic full stop on the other story of their year – the obsessive drive to put right what went wrong when Toronto lost a home MLS Cup final last year.

Jozy Altidore has last laugh to seal MLS Cup glory for Toronto FC Read more

Altidore, as he did in leg two against Columbus, burst through the heart of the opposing defense to open the scoring, ensuring that the three goals he managed in these playoffs will be remembered long after the six he scored last year are forgotten. And Bradley was immense in the holding role – dropping deep to organize his defense in possession, and tigerish in his pursuit of the ball every time Seattle had the temerity to try and possess it in his half. In many ways, if Altidore’s exuberant goalscoring form was the story of the 2016 playoff run, Bradley’s bloody-minded determination was the story of 2017, as first New York, then Crew SC, tried and ultimately failed to knock Toronto off their stride.

Vanney won the battle of the coaches

It’s a measure of how nervy the last month or so has been, as free-scoring attacking soccer has given way to a slog in the playoffs, that when Toronto’s Greg Vanney made the switch to a 4-4-2 diamond for the final, the first instinct of neutrals was not to credit his tactical nous, but to wonder if he’d second-guessed himself into trouble.

Toronto have played the diamond with some success at moments this season, most notably in wresting control of the Eastern Conference final back from Crew SC in the second half of the second leg. But their usual 3-5-2 had utterly smothered Seattle last season, and while this was a more attacking Sounders team than 2016, the onus should in theory have been on Brian Schmetzer to figure out a way past Toronto.

Instead Schmetzer’s team played into Toronto’s hands, by pushing into the spaces they were invited into and failing to cover the spaces they’d left. Combined with Toronto’s mix of tenacity and creativity, there was little time or space for Seattle at any phase of the game, and by the end Vanney’s tweaks had seen off Schmetzer’s relaxed inclination to keep things simple and trust the players. That had worked in the playoff run, when limited opposition gifted Seattle the time and space to have patience and break opponents down. But in the final, Seattle met the class of the league, and in the post-game press conference a dejected Schmetzer could only lament the duels his players had lost. He’d lost one too.

The best ever?

In the Toronto locker room after the game, several of the players took time out from soaking each other to offer a series of short, excitable toasts. At one point Drew Moor, the defender who’d been part of the cohort of MLS veterans brought in to help engineer last year’s great leap forward, jumped on a locker seat and silenced the room, to yell out, “This debate on ‘Are we the best team ever?’ It’s fucking over!”

Canadian Champions, Supporters Shield Winners, and now MLS Cup winners. Toronto won everything they could win this year, and broke multiple league records in doing so. If they aren’t the best ever, we’re into the deeply subjective realm of style points to say that they’re not.

Even the scrappy periods of the playoff wins were a perverse kind of tribute to how good they are. None of their opponents could hope to impose themselves on Toronto, they could only hope to live with them or stop them, with intermittent but ultimately futile success.

It may be too that Toronto has not been quite so sparkling since the last month of the regular season, as the various finish lines drew near. But they were so far ahead for so long, that some dip was perhaps inevitable. And when it mattered most they were back to their best to secure their legacy. The best ever? For now.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Toronto’s Sebastian Giovinco vies for the ball with Seattle Sounders midfielder Cristian Roldan. Photograph: Networ/Sipa USA/REX/Shutterstock

Frei and Dempsey add unwanted chapters to their own MLS history

Spare a thought for Clint Dempsey and Stefan Frei. After his recovery from a season-ending heart ailment kept him out of last year’s MLS Cup triumph, Dempsey was billed as the player who could help his team achieve much more than another smash-and-grab raid this year. But like all of his team mates he ended up as a peripheral presence watching red shirts swarm around him at every glimpse of goal. He’d get a shot on target – more than his team mates managed last year. But it was a tame shot scuffing along the ground into Alex Bono’s arms and that was as dangerous as Deuce got. Three finals for him now, and three losses.

Stefan Frei meanwhile, deserved so much more than being on the losing side of this game, and it will be little consolation to him that there was a rather perfect symmetry in Jozy Altidore being the man to finally get the ball past him on Saturday evening, after his miraculous save against the same striker last year. Frei was outstanding again, beating away shot after shot as he racked up 186 unbeaten minutes against Toronto in these last two MLS Cups. Near the end of that run, one save from Giovinco looked like it might just tip Toronto into the type of fatal self-doubt that would again haunt them in a penalty shootout, but a few minutes later Giovinco fed the ball to the onrushing Altidore, and from then on, Frei had to settle for a great legacy in MLS Cup folklore, but one less trophy than his performance deserved.

Sebastian Giovinco shares playmaking spotlight with Victor Vazquez

Sebastian Giovinco arrived in MLS with all of the game-changing impact of a cheat code in 2015 – at times making Toronto look like a one-man team with his single-handed interventions. Since then his stock has remained high, but the improving roster around him has perhaps muted an appreciation of his qualities – or we’ve just come to take him for granted. Like Toronto’s other high-profile players the playoffs had been a mixed bag for Giovinco before the final. A sublime free kick to beat the Red Bulls; a needless yellow to keep him out of the first Columbus game; significant impact without dominance.

Giovinco opened the final with a one-on-one miss against Stefan Frei, hit the wall with his first free kick and generally looked a little anonymous by his own standards, until the moment where he hooked the ball perfectly into the path of Altidore for the winning goal, and in doing so reminded us what a sublime talent he is in the context of this league – a player defenders can never switch off on.

But it was also fitting that Giovinco should share creative top billing with Victor Vazquez, who has been the single player to have most improved Toronto this season. Vazquez’s cool in the final third and his movement and distribution into that ares, has had knock on effects in the freedom afforded to Giovinco and Altidore in front of him, and taken a lot of visionary duties off the laundry list of duties Michael Bradley has to attend to behind him. Vazquez had set the tone for the final early as his switches in play rocked Seattle off balance repeatedly. By the time he bundled in goal number two in injury time it only confirmed what we already knew: every one of Toronto’s key quartet had showed up when it mattered most.

