When Toronto FC takes to the pitch at BMO Field on Saturday in front of their home fans against the New York Red Bulls it will be a special moment.
It’s been just about two years – March 7, 2020 to be exact – since the team has been able to play without restriction.
For some, even longer.
“Yeah, even more so for me, I wasn't here that day,” said Michael Bradley during Friday’s pre-match media availability. “I was a few weeks post-surgery, still on crutches, that afternoon it was just easier to watch from home.”
“For me, November 29, [2019] in the playoffs against D.C. [United],” he added. “Yeah, we're, needless to say, very, very excited.”
There is nothing like playing in front of the home fans.
“It’s going to be awesome,” smiled TFC Head Coach Bob Bradley. “The excitement of just being back, but then the preparation for a home opener, especially given the circumstances of the past few years and the connection that's always been there between the team and the fans and the city, you can just feel it every day when guys come in, and so we're really excited to have the chance in front of our fans to get this thing going.”
Toronto picked up a point in their season opener last weekend with a 1-1 draw at FC Dallas, but they know that to achieve the great things they desire, they will need support.
“Good Energy,” replied Carlos Salcedo, who made his TFC debut last weekend, asked what he expected on Saturday. “We want to achieve good things. It's going to be very important, not only for tomorrow, but for the rest of the year.”
There have been a lot of magical days and nights at BMO Field. To call this one special doesn’t seem to do it justice.
“It's going to be surreal in a lot of ways. If anything, the last two years have taught us all to not take anything for granted, to not consider anything a given and so I'd be lying if I said that there weren't a few moments along the way where you wondered if you were ever going to get another, forget another season, another game at BMO Field with a real atmosphere, with all our fans,” added Michael Bradley. “So the fact that tomorrow sets up to be that, there aren't words to describe how excited I am and, honestly, I think the entire group is the same way.”
Having arrived back home after nearly a month in Texas, Toronto have had another busy week of training to continue integrating the ideas, hammering those concepts into form.
“The ideas in our football are there, but always need to be improved,” said the coach. “The speed of doing things, just the execution at times. This week, in addition to that though, you have to spend a little bit of time understanding what games with Red Bull are all about. And then you throw in the change of training situation, getting back home, there's been a lot of different parts to the week, but the players have handled it all really well.”
With one game under the belt, the schedule makers have placed a new challenge in front of the Reds. No matter where they fall in the season, games against the Red Bulls are a different beast.
“They like the game to be chaos and so there’s going to be moments where, like it or not, the game will be on their terms,” cautioned Bob Bradley. “Loose balls, second balls, headed balls: you’ve got to react, you’ve got to think fast. But then there's going to be other moments where you can put the game on our terms, where we can connect the right passes, use the right spaces.”
“It doesn't matter which Red Bull team you're talking about, whether it's Red Bull New York or Salzburg or Leipzig, there are certain parts of the game. By design, balls go forward, they come together in a very fast way, they try to play off the loose balls, attack very quickly. The understanding of what those games are like,” he continued. “There’s enough players here that have experience playing against Red Bull and that always helps. We have to just find a balance, but you've got to always understand, especially at the start, that they're going to come after us in different ways and we have to be able to be a step or two ahead.”
New York won their season opener last Saturday, defeating the San Jose Earthquakes 3-1 in California.
Polish Young Designated Player Patryk Klimala scored the opener just before half-time. The Earthquakes would pull one back in the 69th minute, only for Omir Fernandez to put the Red Bulls back in front three minutes later. Tom Barlow would add the third in stoppage-time.
A strong start from Gerhard Struber’s side in his second full season in charge having joined the club in October 2020.
“It’s a Red Bull team,” levelled Michael Bradley. “At this point, if you follow football all over the world you know what that means.”
“You know that you’re getting a team that's going to step up and come out to you and really be looking to press. They're not worried about what the game looks like, in terms of the football, or the possession, or the control. They want to make the game fast and chaotic, they want to create as many moments of transition as possible, they want to win the ball and play forward as quickly as possible,” he continued. “And so you have to understand that. You have to know what type of game that that makes for, you have to understand that inevitably there's going to be moments that are hectic and crazy, so we just have to be ready to understand what the game is about, understand what they want to do, and still find the moments to make sure that the game looks and feels like like we want it to.”
