The march towards the end of the regular season continues for Toronto FC on Saturday night with the beginning of a three-match road swing.

The journey begins on Saturday night when Toronto stops in the Rocky Mountains for a clash with the Colorado Rapids in Denver. The trip west heads all the way to the shores of the Pacific midweek with the final of the 2024 TELUS Canadian Championship at BC Place against Vancouver Whitecaps FC on Wednesday and then concludes next Saturday at the Chicago Fire.

It’s going to be a challenging week, pushing TFC to the limit in all manner of ways.

“It's going to take the whole squad,” said John Herdman on Friday of the task ahead. “We've seen that. With injuries, suspensions looming, and then just the accumulation of games – it's a midweek game every week until the end of the season with a lot of travel. It's time for men to step up and step forward.”

“Guys that haven't had opportunity, that have been toiling and pushing in the background, those opportunities should come thick and fast over this period of time,” he continued. “It'll be a next man up at times and it'll be about the fight and spirit of a collective. They will all get a chance to contribute and that becomes an exciting period for players, less training, more games, more opportunities.”

The week between the end of the Leagues Cup and the September international break was a taste of what was to come. Toronto began that stretch with a gutsy road performance in Houston, collecting all three points, and followed that up by getting the job done against Forge FC in the second leg of their Canadian Championship semifinal series. A disappointing result against D.C. United would follow.

Ups and downs: a 2-1 win over Austin FC, a 2-0 defeat to the Columbus Crew.

That’s what these final throes of the regular season are going to be like. High highs and low lows, the swings between, every team jostling for position and trophies as the calendar begins to run out of pages and the number of matches remaining dwindles.

It is the end of one journey and, hopefully, the start of another after all. And every little detail matters in this final phase.

“Phase Six, stage three this week,” laid out Herdman. “We're in the three-game Colorado, Vancouver, and Chicago, that east to west reality.”

“We did some good work as a staff to close some of the potential gaps that we might find going from east to west, whether it was nutritional, squad accumulation, bringing some of the TFC II players closer to us, etc, etc,” he continued. “There's a few things we've tried to put in place just for this one week and that's part of the micro planning that the staff behind the scenes here do.”

“It's a great staff, I keep saying, here at TFC,” Herdman credited. “There's a lot of good people who take care of the details behind the scenes and hopefully they are able to help us through what's going to be a tricky period of time.”

Three things that have served Herdman well in his past experiences will be crucial in this moment: fight, resilience, and belief.

Toronto are in the fight, holding onto one of the playoff spots in the East with four games remaining.

“All through my career, I've had to believe in my own ability. The path that I've taken, not many people give you a chance, so you've got to keep that belief,” explained the TFC coach. “And then the resilience, just how quick you can turnaround from the disappointment, not let that sink into your soul and into your psyche.”

“These are long days for the staff, these quick turnarounds, to gather information, to analyze, to then process it for the player group, and then deal with the chaos,” he continued. “You have to remind yourself that it's been a journey to get anywhere we got to in our careers as a staff.”

“Belief comes from the goals that we set at the beginning of the season: to build trust with our fans, to reconnect with our people here in Toronto, and give them the belief that this club can step forward this season and seasons coming. Those things connected are what drives us” Herdman underlined. “No matter how fatiguing it gets or how much crazy seems to be happening around my world or the world in this club, we just keep those things in perspective.”

The stage is set. It begins on Saturday in Colorado.

Led by former TFC coach Chris Armas, the Rapids come into the match in fourth place in the West, but on the back of a 4-1 loss away to Sporting KC midweek that snapped a three-game winning streak.

The two sides have not met since 2021, a scoreless draw in Colorado. TFC are unbeaten in the last two encounters, having defeated the Rapids 3-2 at BMO Field in 2019.

Herdman highlighted DP striker Rafael Navarro and playmaker Djordje Mihailovic as key pieces for Colorado.

“Their two DPs are really making a difference there,” he said. “The centre-forward, [Navarro], has got 14 goals, the number ten, Mihailovic has got 10 goals, [12] assists. There's a group of players there that are contributing to the success, that's always important.”

“Chris has come in with a style of play that he's mastered over a period of time,” Herdman continued. “He's a smart coach. He gets the best out of his players, in terms of intensity, and he recruits players that fit that style of play as well.”

“All in all, they've done a good job pulling together a team that can play Chris's way. They're doing well in the West,” he closed. “For us, we've got a tough match, we know that, and we intend to bring an intensity and a discipline to this match to do something similar to what we did in Houston.”