With the amount of frustration and anger, and even a hint of disgust flowing through my head after the final whistle, I felt I needed to sleep it off before writing any sort of official recap. For those of you who may follow me on twitter, the above listed feelings were pretty apparent. Waking up and thinking it all through gave me a slightly different perspective… Maybe, what we watched the other night in the Canadian Championship was a double edged sword of sorts.
On one hand, our Reds dropped a result to our most hated rivals, in their house on a last ditch effort. Losing the match and also the trophy we owned for 4 consecutive years is a bitter pill to swallow, not to mention losing the bragging rights that come along with being champions of Canada.
But on the other hand, maybe this was a blessing in disguise.
The Impact will have more matches added to their schedule, with stops in New York and in Central America, not including any matches they’re involved in should they advance from the group stage. All those matches will take a serious toll on their tired and aging bodies and will surely affect their standing in MLS play.
On the bright side, TFC will not have to worry about additional mid-week matches. Their travel schedule will not include stops in Central America and our injury prone players will not have any additional opportunities to pick up knocks along the way.
I don’t want you, the reader, to get it twisted…I am in no way diminishing the value of the Voyageurs Cup or the Canadian Championship as a whole. That was a huge loss. It is an important trophy to Canadian soccer supporters (myself included) and should be put on a pedestal, no matter how small the tournament is in its current state.
All things being considered leads me to wonder if the Voyageurs Cup, and by extension the CONCACAF Champions League was really in TFC managements plans from the get-go?
Would I say that they deliberately attempted to throw any of the games by not playing their first choice players? Not exactly. No self respecting manager would do that, even though some decisions in the midfield left me questioning Ryan Nelsen’s sanity, but he didn’t seem to have many choices.
What I’m trying to say is, the emphasis for the 2014 Toronto FC season is and has always been trying to end the 7 year playoff drought. It has to end now. Everyone knows it. From a support level, it has to happen. From a ticket sales and a dollars and cents stand point for ownership, it has to happen. For the mental stability of all current and future TFC fans, playoffs have to happen now.
Based on league standings as they are right now, the Reds have at least 3 games in hand on every team above them. A win at home against the Quakes would put us level on points with the defending champions SKC, and would still afford TFC at least 2 game buffer heading into the World Cup break. Meaningful soccer late in the season and a potential playoff berth are within our grasp.
So in the short term, that ugly feeling of losing a derby match and the Canadian Championship could pay dividends for a franchise and a market as a whole that has been starved of playoffs since its inception. Hold your heads up high TFC fans, there’s a silver lining in everything, even a loss.
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