In Toronto FC coach Greg Vanney’s ideal world, his team would always put on free-flowing, dominant performances, full of possession, outright scoring opportunities and error-free defence.

But Vanney’s ideal world also includes winning the MLS Cup, which can mean putting ideology aside to get the job done.

It meant taking a more gritty, pragmatic approach in the Reds’ Eastern Conference final win over Atlanta United FC on Wednesday. Toronto won the match to earn a spot in Sunday’s MLS Cup final against the Seattle Sounders, but no one would call it a pristine performance, not even Vanney. He was honest about that with Atlanta coach Frank de Boer afterward, telling him that the Reds didn’t play well and conceding that Atlanta was the better team on the night.

“From an ideological perspective, that’s not what I wanted the game to look like, obviously,” Vanney told reporters in Atlanta. “From a practical perspective and what our players did today, they deserved it and that’s real. But from a soccer perspective, we probably didn’t win very many categories except for one, which was the 2-1 on the scoreboard.”

The Reds’ ugly performance in Atlanta was arguably one of Toronto’s most professional games. After going down by a goal early and conceding a penalty that Reds keeper Quentin Westberg had to save to keep his team in the game, Toronto withstood a flurry of United attacks. They were content not to have the ball, protected themselves when necessary and executed in transition, leading to goals by Nicolas Benezet and Nick DeLeon.

It was a similar approach to the one Toronto used to upset New York City FC in the conference semifinal, also played on the road. It differed from what the Reds did home against D.C. United in the first round, when they spent most of the game with the ball.

That ability to adapt reminds Vanney of Toronto’s 2016 squad, which reached the MLS Cup final for the first time in franchise history. TFC finished third in the East that year, compared to fourth in the conference this year. Neither the 2016 or the 2019 team look like the dominant side of 2017, the Supporters Shield and Canadian Championship winner that was expected to make that year’s final.

“We had grinded a little bit in 2016, we were still coming up with that final identity, all those little things,” Vanney said.”We went into the playoffs with this idea that … we were going to play the disrupters for the opposition’s possession and by disrupting them we would then have the ball and create opportunities.”

Toronto has used a similar strategy this post-season and being able to win in different ways has become a point of pride for this Toronto team, DeLeon said.

“We can win with the ball, we can with without, as you see in Atlanta when we were a lot more defensive but we were together and we forced everything out wide,” he said. “I think that just goes to show the character of the team, that we can get it done in multiple ways.”

For all the comparisons to the 2016 and 2017 teams that will inevitably be drawn this week, Reds midfielder Jonathan Osorio, who appeared in both of Toronto’s previous finals, said competing for the cup feels different the third time around. The adversity that came with playing on the road for most of the post-season and playing without starters Jozy Altidore and Omar Gonzalez because of injury has made this year particularly tough, even as the team was getting hot at the right time.

“That just shows the fight that we have as a group, as a whole, and how good we are as a whole,” Osorio said. “It’s pretty amazing.”

The Sounders are similar to Toronto in that they can play with or without the ball. They dominated possession during the regular season but played predominately on the counterattack in post-season road games against Real Salt Lake and Los Angeles FC.

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It is likely Toronto, as the road team, will be on the back foot to start the final. But how a game will play out isn’t always so easily predicted, something the Reds are learning to live with.

“Sometimes they’ll look like we want them to, sometimes they won’t,” Vanney said. “We’ve got to be OK with that and ready to answer whatever is need of us on the day.”

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