With the international break over Toronto FC returns to MLS action this weekend with the visit of Atlanta United to BMO Field on Saturday night.

Heading into the October pause, TFC were in good spirits, riding a two-game winning streak and four unbeaten – five in all competitions. Javier Perez and company will be looking to continue that form through the final full month of the 2021 season.

Wins over Nashville SC, FC Cincinnati, and the Chicago Fire were not perfect displays by any means, but they were steps forward in the evolution of the side. It was a marriage of offensive potency with defensive solidity. 

Furthering that bond was the emphasis during the two-weeks away.

“We've been working on different things, but something that was very important for us was to stay compact,” said Perez during Friday’s prematch Zoom call. “It took us a little bit of time to find the connection between the dots, but now we’ve finally got it and we need to keep going in that direction.”

“We have been focused on how we are going to click the different parts [together] and how we are going to be more effective defensively,” he continued. “That doesn’t mean that you aren’t going to concede goals, but at least you're going to minimize or reduce the number of times that the opposition is going to have the ball and give more freedom to the players up front that gives you more opportunities to score goals. Coordinating those parts of the game that been part of the focus.”

This season has been one long cluster of games interspersed with the odd week off – or so it has felt like entering month seven. October will be no different.

Saturday against Atlanta kicks off another sprint of seven games in three weeks – the old Wednesday-Saturday-Wednesday until the end of the MLS regular season on November 7.

Six MLS matches and that tasty Canadian Championship semifinal against Pacific FC lie ahead in short order.

It’s a player’s dream.

“We as players just want to play a lot of the time,” smiled Kemar Lawrence, asked about the upcoming schedule. “Sometimes it gets fatiguing, but overall we’d rather play games like this back-to-back than long weeks of training.”

“Guys get excited for games,” he added. “The coaches get to rotate the team and give younger guys chances.”

For coaches, it can be a nightmare, but Perez has been able to welcome back several players from the injury list, including Alejandro Pozuelo and Jozy Altidore.

Pozuelo was an unused substitute against Chicago at the beginning of the month and the extra few weeks will have done him well, whereas Altidore has not played since the beginning of August.

“Players are coming back into the team,” summed up Perez. “This break has been really good for us because we have had time to work with players that have been out for a long time. We have to remember that it takes a little bit of time for them to get into the fifth gear they need to.”

Both Pozuelo and Altidore have been in full training with the squad.

“There’s a chance,” smiled Perez, asked if Altidore could factor this weekend. “I was asked a few weeks ago if we were going to see him before the end of the season and I said that that was positive and was all based on his hard work.”

“I can see that he's doing everything on his end and he wants to be part of the team in this last stretch,” he added. “He has been working extremely hard, so we are looking forward to having him with the team and contributing.”

Of the remaining games, Atlanta is the only team Toronto will face twice in the remaining stretch – the two will face off at Mercedes Benz Stadium on October 30 – and given the history between these two and the pride of each side at the tail end of difficult seasons they will be intense contests.

The Five Stripes struggled under the leadership of Gabriel Heinze, but have turned things around since his departure. 

They enter the match one point adrift of the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, having won eight of their last 11 matches. They have lost their last two away fixtures: most recently a 2-1 defeat at CF Montreal on October 2, as well as a 1-0 loss at the Philadelphia Union at the end of September.

Their talisman Josef Martinez is listed as questionable heading into the weekend, but even without him, Gonzalo Pineda’s side is stacked with difference makers.

Atlanta won the previous meeting between the teams 1-0 in August with Ezequiel Barco scoring the game’s only goal, but Toronto won the two regular season clashes before that – 1-0 in Connecticut in 2020 and 3-2 in June 2019 – as well as the 2019 Eastern Conference Final. In three all-time visits to BMO Field, Atlanta has never won.

“Atlanta is a very different when they play at home and when they play away because that field is extremely fast,” observed Perez. “They know very well how to play on their own own field and then when they play away they look a little bit different, but, in the end, I expect a very well organized team, a team that know they have a very strong identity.”

“They are very dangerous on set-pieces, in transition and long balls,” he cautioned. “This is their game, they have a lot of quality.”

Martinez leads the side with ten goals through 19 matches, while Barco and Marcelino Moreno each have seven. Barco’s six assists just beat out Moreno and Brooks Lennon’s five for the most on the team.

“Barco scored in that game that we played in Atlanta,” recalled Perez. “We had a decent game, but in the end we didn't get any points. They’re going to play in a 5-2-3, we know that Martinez is a question mark, but if there is no Martinez, there will be Moreno, who can be a kind of a 10, and then Barco and [Luis] Araujo up front. These three put a lot of energy, a lot of pressure.”

“They have in the middle [Santiago] Sosa and [Matheus] Rossetto, the two holding midfield players. They cover the ground, at times they sit back, but they also like to step up and put pressure, he detailed. “And then they have the wing-backs – George Bello and Lennon – who have been doing a terrific job. They join the three up front offensively, they are fast.”

“And the three at the back – [Anton] Walkes, [Alan] Franco, and [Miles] Robinson – they are very fast, they are reactive, and they cover a lot of ground,” Perez added. “Overall we are going to find a team that connect well with each other, they are very fast in transition, and then they can hurt the opposition because of the quality that they have.”

For TFC, it’s just about doing what they had been doing before the break.

“We’ve just got to play it the way we've been, keep moving the ball fast and when we get them on the back foot just put away chances,” levelled Lawrence. “They’re a good team, they're coming here to try and win the game, they're not coming to tie or just to sit back, so I feel like it's going to be a back-and-forth game, but it's just for us to really manage the game properly, knowing when to slow it down and when to speed it up.”

“The team is in a good way, the team is confident,” he added. “So we'll get the right result tomorrow.”