The Orlando City head coach has helped the MLS expansion team to a promising start, but he nearly missed the chance after almost joining Toronto FC in 2012.

Orlando City's first season in Major League Soccer has been a dream come true for Adrian Heath, who took a chance on coaching a third-division team with the hope of one day leading that same club in the top league of American soccer.

Heath's Orlando City dream almost didn't happened.

When Orlando City takes on Toronto FC on Saturday, it will mark Heath's first meeting against the same TFC side he came close to joining as an assistant coach in 2012. Then a coach for the USL PRO version of Orlando City, Heath was courted by Toronto FC in the fall of 2012 to join then-head coach Paul Mariner's coaching staff as first assistant.

Heath traveled to Toronto to meet TFC officials and visit the city. He was seriously considering the offer but ultimately decided to stay with Orlando City after being convinced by club owner Phil Rawlins to believe in the MLS dream Rawlins had.

"I thought about it, I had to think about what would be the best way for me to reach the top level in this country," Heath told Goal USA in an interview earlier this season. "Phil (Rawlins) really sold me on the vision of the club. It was easy to buy into his vision because of the passion he had for it. He really believed we could get to MLS, and when you look at how everything has gone, everything he saw has become reality."

Heath stayed with Orlando City, and helped lead the club to the best record in USL Pro in three of the four seasons the Lions were in the league, winning league championships in 2011 and 2013.

Despite his clear success in USL, Heath was seen as a bit of an unproven commodity upon his arrival in MLS, something he admits he expected after spending four years in the third division. That stigma had at least some part to play in Heath considering a move to Toronto FC as an assistant, and it is a stigma he has worked hard to fight since Orlando City’s arrival in MLS.

“I know that, even though I coached in England before at a good level, in some ways I still have to prove myself here,” Heath said. “I believe I’m good enough for this level and I want to show that someone can work their way up the ladder. I’ve paid my dues and I believe in my abilities.”

The early returns on Heath’s MLS tenure are promising. He has helped the expansion team establish a reputation as a team that tries to play attractive attacking soccer. Poor finishing has hampered the team’s early efforts, but Orlando City leads the league in passing percentage and is in the top five in total shots. Orlando City also is sitting in fifth place in the Eastern Conference, ahead of fellow expansion team New York City FC and also ahead of the team the Lions are set to play Saturday.

Toronto FC hasn’t been quite as successful in the years since Heath passed on making a move up north. Mariner was fired just three months after Heath turned down TFC’s offer and was replaced by Ryan Nelsen, who retired as a player to make the TFC head coach job the first coaching job he ever had. The Nelsen experiment lasted just a year and a half before he too was fired and replaced by current head coach Greg Vanney, who is already finding himself the subject of rumors he's on the coaching hot seat.

We will never know what may have become of Heath had he accepted the TFC offer, which was reported at the time as a lucrative three-year, $300,000 offer to be an assistant coach. Perhaps he would have taken over for Mariner instead of Nelsen, and maybe he could have helped the club snap its playoff drought (TFC has yet to reach the MLS postseason in its existence). Or perhaps, given TFC’s tradition of instability, Heath would have been just another TFC coaching casualty who could have found himself regretting his decision as he watched another coach lead Orlando City into MLS.

As things stand, Heath’s decision is looking like a very smart one, and if at some point he stares out on the field Saturday, and considers the possibilities of what might have been, it is difficult to imagine Heath having a single regret about choosing to stay with Orlando City.