TORONTO – The chase for the playoffs will be many things for Toronto FC. Easy won’t be one of them.
Toronto denied themselves an opportunity to take three valuable points Saturday at home, settling for a 1-1 draw with streaking FC Dallas.
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The Reds opened the scoring on newly acquired Maicon Santos’ first league goal, but they coughed up the lead—and the win—when Milton Rodriguez leveled on a corner in the 77th minute.
Though the draw stretched Toronto’s undefeated run at home to nine games, the players view the game as a loss. True, the single point moved the Reds up slightly, but the two lost points are killers.
Dallas’ six-game unbeaten streak aside, this is a game Toronto felt they should have won. They outplayed Dallas for much of the match and had, by far, the better scoring chances.
Embarking on the second half of the season with four of the next six games at home, where they’re undefeated, Toronto had a glorious opportunity to move up the standings and out of the precarious eighth and final playoff spot.
Instead of joining Dallas in fifth place with 25 points and regaining some confidence, Toronto sit in a sixth-place tie with Colorado and San Jose.
Defensive mistakes that lead to tying or game winning goals are going to make that all-elusive first playoff spot that much more difficult to achieve.
“Probably the most important part of the game is the last 20 minutes, especially when you get on top and you score a good goal,” TFC coach Preki said. “And then, once again, we found a way to give away a soft goal. That’s a worrying thing. I think we’re lacking concentration in the box.”
In training this week, Preki said the 2-1 loss last Saturday at Philadelphia to the struggling Union was a “wake up call” and likely removed any smugness the team had during its eight-game unbeaten streak.
Last week, Philadelphia did the damage on a penalty in second-half injury time, and this time Rodriguez got in between Nana Attakora—arguably Toronto’s most reliable defender—and the athletic Dan Gargan to head a David Ferreira corner by a helpless Stefan Frei late in the game.
“We gave the ball away, and gave them a corner—it was one of those lethargic plays,” Preki said. “Give them credit, they were sharper than us [on the play]. They stole a point. I don’t think they were a threat until then.”
A "soft goal," and the second time in as many games the club has allowed a goal in the last 15 minutes. Where have we seen this story before? Last season when the barrage of late goals allowed caused TFC to miss the playoffs by a mere point.
Frei feels the lack of discipline on set plays was a culprit.
“We didn’t win our individual battles and we must pick the intensity up a notch when we defend those set pieces, we gotta get better,” said Frei. “We always work on set pieces and if I had the answers we wouldn’t be in the position that we are now, so we have to just keep working on it and get better at it.”
