TORONTO – Flying high in spirits and confidence, Toronto FC looks a team reborn after coming back from 2-0 down at half time to win 3-2 against the Portland Timbers.
It’s a significant win for the Canadian club, too. It marks Toronto’s 11th victory of the year, a franchise record, and moves the team back into a Eastern Conference playoff spot for the time being with 40 points, another franchise high. It’s also the second time in the club’s eight-year history that the team has come back from 2-0 down to win.
The first came earlier this season against the Houston Dynamo. Nick Hagglund scored a pair of second-half goals before Michael Bradley capped off the victory with a free kick that found its way through a crowd.
“That was quite the comeback,” TFC head coach Greg Vanney said. “The guys were committed, and I felt like once we got out of that first period where we took a couple of goals, we needed to be a little more aggressive and create some dangerous moments. At half time, the discussion was to be aggressive, believe you can do it, keep moving forward and things will happen. All the credit to the guys because the amount of work they put in, together, to make it happen was fantastic.”
But while the TFC faithful left BMO Field in high spirits, the game started off on a low note with a serious injury to Canadian international Will Johnson, who went in for a 50-50 challenge with Mark Bloom just 11 seconds into the game.
Johnson immediately signalled to the bench to be removed, and the Timbers confirmed afterward that Johnson had suffered a fractured right leg. Before answering any questions, Vanney took the time to wish Johnson well.
“I want to send my best to Will Johnson,” he said. “I hope he has a speedy recovery. I always thought he is a classy player and a hard-working guy so I send my best to him.”
As Johnson was stretchered off the field, Bradley offered him a hug. The two are close friends, and Bradley said that seeing his friend suffer like that wasn’t easy.
“As a player and as a competitor, you hate to see anybody get hurt,” Bradley said. “But that’s one of [my] closest friends; it’s not nice at all. They both went in very hard. On the one hand you expect that they would both pop right up, and on the other hand that play had a hard edge going to it. You could even hear the way they crashed into each other and you kind of knew that that was a hard one.”
As for Bloom, the right fullback said his leg had stiffened with what he thinks might be a bruised bone, though it probably won’t rule him out for next week’s encounter with the LA Galaxy.
“My leg’s throbbing, but I’ll be all right,” Bloom told reporters in the locker room after the match. “It’s just a situation where he took a bad touch that got away from him and at the beginning of the game, you want to set a tone so we both went in for the tackle. I thought we both went in clean, no one went in dirty and it’s just unfortunate that someone had to come out like that."
