Break-time for TFC after 0-0 draw

Time to take a breather DeRo

Its time for the Toronto FC players to take a well-deserved break for a couple weeks while the World Cup gets underway in South Africa. Yesterday was a hard-fought and ultimately frustrating match for the team as they played to a 0-0 draw at home against the Kansas City Wizards. I say frustrating mainly because the ref seemed to be making a lot of arbitrary calls in KC’s favour. I don’t like to complain about the refereeing, but its really strange to see straight red cards called (against Garcia early in the game), and then no card at all against KC for a similar foul later in the game. Neither foul was intentional (they were each trying to cut out a pass), but TFC’s was deemed unsafe for Garcia cleating the guy on the thigh, but Barrett got kicked in the face and that was all good in the ref’s eyes.

Anyway, KC eventually got a red card to even things out, but by that time TFC had spent so much effort defending that it was too much for them to get back into attacking mode to try to win the game. So a draw was the result, much to Preki’s disappointment.

You can check out the game hi-lights below or here. The foul by Garcia I talked about is at 1:50 in the video if you want to decide for yourself if the ref knows what he’s doing, but the kick to Barrett’s face isn’t in the video so you’ll just have to trust me on that one.

So after that game the league will be taking a break for the first couple of weeks while the World Cup group stages are on. If you want to read up on that, please check out the World Cup Blog for all kinds of good stuff on all the countries involved. TFC will be back in action on June 26 when LA comes to town. That could be an interesting game because the undefeated top team in the league has its 2 top scorers in Edson Buddle and Landon Donovan away with the US National team in South Africa. If USA do well, TFC may be facing a depleted squad, which may just give them the edge to hand LA their first loss of the season. So, do you root for USA to do well at the World Cup for TFC’s benefit, or do you want an underdog like Slovenia to advance out of their group (assuming England wins the group, we’re talking about who can finish 2nd to advance). We’ll watch that play out and see what happens, but I think when USA do well in international games, it does help to raise interest in the MLS, which can only be good for the league.

OK, last words: TFC are solidly in 3rd place in the east with 17 points (4 points ahead of the next team), and their point total is the same as the 4th place team in the west, so their record is looking pretty good at this stage in the season. I hope the rest is good for them but at the same time doesn’t hurt their momentum. They have a long way to go and they need to keep picking up points or the same thing could happen as the previous years where a mid to late season slide sees them finish just shy of the playoffs. I have faith that Preki is the kind of coach who can cut that off if he sees it start happening. This looks like the most focused and determined team that Toronto has fielded, so lets continue to cheer them on as we head into the summer!

Category: Toronto FC