TORONTO – Milos Kocic apologized.
He apologized to the fans at BMO Field. He apologized to his teammates.
The Toronto FC goalkeeper let the game slip through his fingers in the 88th minute Saturday and D.C. United to escaped with a 1-0 victory at BMO Field.
The 27-year-old Serbian mishandled a long-distance effort from Maicon Santos, a former Toronto FC forward, and in doing so gave Hamdi Salihi the easiest of goals.
It was the 16th goal conceded by Toronto in the final 15 minutes of league games, a depressing statistic that helps tell the story of a miserable season for Toronto FC with 20 losses so far.
Kocic immediately pointed to himself after the goal as if to tell the crowd, “It’s on me.”
Later in the dressing room, he apologized to his teammates.
“We deserved to win,” said Kocic, who has missed the team’s last two trips to stay home with newborn triplets. “It’s unfortunate. I worked hard all week. I was ready to help the team. I looked good the whole game. It was just a mistake that happened at the end and I lost the game for my team today.
“I just want to apologize to everybody. The boys deserved better today and the fans and the club. Everybody deserved better. I let them down today.”
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The problem was a diagonal shot from just outside the right corner of the penalty area by Santos. Kocic went down for it, but the ball slipped underneath his body and Salihi pounced on it.
“Maicon hit that deeper ball and those are very difficult for goalkeepers and at that moment I should do better,” Kocic said. “I don’t know if I lost focus. I don’t what was the problem. But definitely I have to do better, especially in that moment of the game.
“If I catch that ball nice and easy, it would have been a point and maybe as you could see we created a couple of chances after that and maybe we score a goal and we win 1-0.”
