KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Coming into Saturday night’s matchup against Sporting Kansas City, Toronto FC were faced with the looming possibility of a disastrous week of results. But Jordan Hamilton’s 69th-minute strike helped stop the bleeding as TFC drew SKC 2-2 at Children's Mercy Park.
The point might be their lone takeaway in the standings from a rough three-game road trip in the span of six days but according to Toronto captain Michael Bradley, the overall performance was a good building block going forward.
“We talked a lot today about the idea that this was the first game of the second half of the season,” said Bradley. “It’s pretty clear from here on in that we’ve got to win our fair share of games. There’s going to be some games that we can’t win and we have to find ways to pick up points. From that standpoint, a lot of positives to take away.”
TFC manager Greg Vanney felt like his side’s performance in Kansas City showed improvements from their performance against Minnesota, which resulted in a 4-3 loss.
“We were closer together as a group. We were able to make some plays, cover each other and help each other out more times than not. From that standpoint, it was better.
“In terms of dealing with the numbers that they were pushing forward, and still managing to get pressure to the ball, we still were probably not as comfortable with it as we would’ve liked it to be. That’s a situation that we’ll deal with. All in all, our guys gutted it out.”
The point may not have been what the locker room wanted, but it’s something that they’ll gladly take given the context of their situation. They now sit eight points behind the Montreal Impact for the sixth and final playoff spot and their next three matches (vs. ORL, at CHI, vs. CHI) gives them a chance to make up some ground on teams ahead of them in the standings.
“I think you have to take it for what it is,” said Vanney. “I think we would’ve liked to get three points. But in the situation that we are in, we dropped two games. We needed to stop that. We needed to build some momentum."
