Toronto FC's first-ever road victory came on July 4, 2007 against Real Salt Lake at RSL's old venue, Rice-Eccles Stadium. Now, almost two years later, TFC will travel to Utah to play in a new stadium but with the same goal in mind -- collect an important road win.
"Everybody knows how funny this league is and whenever teams travel they always seem to struggle," said TFC team captain Jim Brennan. "But when we go down to Salt Lake we want to win. We're looking to get something out of the game since we've got some momentum here and we want to continue it."
Ten of TFC's first 15 league games were played in Toronto, an advantage the Reds used to lift themselves into second place in the Eastern Conference. The RSL match, however, is the first of nine road games that TFC will play in their next 12 league games overall, meaning that if the Reds want to continue their drive to the playoffs, they're going to have to reverse their traditionally poor away form. The club is 5-23-7 all-time on the road.
This season's away schedule has been a roller coaster of results for TFC. The Reds began the season on a promising note with a win in Kansas City and a draw in Columbus, but went on to suffer a heartbreaking loss in Dallas on April 19, and arguably their two worst performances of the season; a 3-0 defeat in Houston on May 30 and a 2-0 loss to Vancouver in a Nutrilite Canadian Championship match.
Those two defeats and a home loss to Los Angeles on June 6 represented the nadir of TFC's season, but interim head coach Chris Cummins said that those poor results (particularly the Vancouver loss) strengthened the team's resolve.
"We learned from that. I said to the lads remember how you feel now because I don't like feeling like that," Cummins said. "Three weeks ago it was the worst day of my life in soccer, and yet three weeks on the lads are completely different. If you lose games like that you have to learn from it, and you see every game now, we compete."
Since that loss to the Galaxy, the Reds are 3-0, with the second of those wins coming in spectacular fashion at Montreal. Toronto picked up a 6-1 result against the Impact that gave TFC the Canadian Championship title, and the team hopes that stirringly big triumph will act as a seminal point in their season.
"It helped big-time to win that tournament," Brennan said. "You could see when we won and we had the [Voyageurs] Cup and we ran to the fans, you could see how much it meant to everybody."
TFC's search for consistency mirrors that of their opponents on Saturday. RSL had two lopsided victories (4-1 over Columbus on April 2 and a club-best 6-0 win on April 25 over New England) early in the season that seemed to announce themselves as contenders, but the club then sent on a seven-game winless streak (0-3-4) following that big win against the Revolution.
Real Salt Lake finally got back in the win column with a 2-0 result in L.A. on June 13, and enter the weekend unbeaten over their last three matches.
"Salt Lake is a good team," said TFC midfielder Dwayne De Rosario. "They have a lot of great players, a lot of guys who can do a lot of damage going forward. Defensively they're quite sound. They're on a little bit of a roller coaster right now, up and down, hopefully we can catch them on their down day."
The Reds are making their first visit to RSL's new Rio Tinto Stadium, where the Claret-and-Cobalt have lost just once in eight regular season matches since the facility opened last October. With the 2009 MLS All-Star Game coming to Rio Tinto on July 29, however, it's possible that a few TFC players could be making a return visit shortly.
De Rosario is one of the leading contenders to represent the Reds and make his fourth consecutive All-Star appearance, but the 2006 MLS All-Star Game MVP said his attention is focused solely on his club.
"There's a lot more games before that," De Rosario said. "If I do [get selected], I'll take it with the biggest honor, but right now I'm just worried about getting a result in Salt Lake and taking care of business before that. Obviously you would love to be part of the All-Star Game, bearing in mind we do have a game with Puerto Rico [in a CONCACAF Champions League qualifier on July 28] around that same time, but if I do get called up, I'd love to be part of it."
Toronto hopes to benefit from Real Salt Lake being without two of their regulars Will Johnson, RSL's leader in minutes played this season, will miss the match due to being capped Canada for the CONCACAF Gold Cup, and defender Jamison Olave is suspended due to his red card last Saturday in Houston.
TFC is still without Marvell Wynne due to the defender's participation with the United States in their cinderella run to the final of the FIFA Confederations Cup, but Wynne is the only absentee. Rookie midfielder Sam Cronin and newly-acquired striker Ali Gerba were also capped for the Gold Cup, but Cronin won't leave for the U.S. camp until after Saturday and Gerba is ineligible to play for Toronto until after the MLS transfer window opens on July 15
One striker who will almost surely be in action for the Reds on the weekend is Danny Dichio. The veteran forward played just 26 minutes in a substitute role against New York on Wednesday, a move that Cummins said was intended to keep Dichio fresh for the RSL match.
"With the two games coming up [this week] ... I just thought we'd have a bit more energy and legs with Pablo [Vitti] and Chad [Barrett], who only played the 45 themselves in Montreal," Cummins said. "I'm looking ahead to the game on Saturday and Danny's going to be a big part of that."
TFC is 2-1-1 all-time against Real Salt Lake, making the Utah side one of three teams (New York and Colorado) that Toronto has an overall winning record against. On the flip side of the statistical ledger, the Reds are just 1-1-4 this season against Western Conference teams, with their lone win coming against Chivas USA on April 22.
Mark Polishuk is a contributor to MLSnet.com.
