TORONTO — Toronto F.C. barreled into this season’s M.L.S. Cup final as something of a juggernaut. With the most expensive roster in the league, Toronto amassed a league-record 69 points in the regular season and, a year after losing the championship game on its home field, stormed back to the final.
But the players knew only a victory in the title game would vindicate a season full of success, and so over 90 dominant minutes in a 2-0 victory over the Seattle Sounders on Saturday night, they proved they could finish the job. Jozy Altidore delivered the first goal, slipping behind the defense in the 67th minute for a delayed — but deserved — opener and Victor Vazquez started the celebrations with an insurance goal moments before the final whistle.
By the time it finally blew, the crowd at Toronto’s BMO Field was pulsating with joy and smoke from flares had filled the air behind the Seattle goal. Many of the fans had been in the stadium for last season’s final, when Toronto failed to score against Seattle and ultimately saw the title it had dreamed about slip away in a penalty-kick shootout.
This time, the home team, and the home fans, got to cheer.
“Toronto, I just want to say, on behalf of the team, the staff, everybody — this is the greatest city in the world,” Altidore shouted to the crowd after the game.
The championship was the triumphant culmination of an ambitious, and expensive, push by Toronto F.C.’s management over the past several years to rebuild the club around high-salaried players like Altidore, midfielder Michael Bradley and forward Sebastian Giovinco — high-profile signings who steadily lifted the club from M.L.S. irrelevance to leaguewide dominance.
Continue reading the main storyGiovinco and Altidore, two stars acquired before the 2015 season, delivered on that investment when they teamed to produce the eventual winning goal in the 67th minute. A quick exchange of passes had moved the ball to Giovinco in midfield, from where he played a smooth through ball that Altidore ran down and lifted over Seattle goalkeeper Stefan Frei.
Vazquez scored the clincher nearly four minutes into injury time, bundling the rebound of a shot off the post past Frei.
The title was a particularly personal and professional victory for the American internationals Bradley and Altidore, who have borne a heavy share of the player criticism for the United States national team’s failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. Both were booed heavily in road games in New York and Columbus earlier in the playoffs, and each had publicly avoided discussion of the topic of the national team’s failure in the days leading up to the final.
But even the rosters for Saturday’s game provided a constant reminder of that failure, with Panamanians, Costa Ricans and even a Swede taking the field of living reminders of what had been lost earlier this fall.
Seattle, a club that has held itself as one of the league’s standard-bearers even before winning last season’s championship here, appeared to be much looser leading to the final. Frei, the singular hero of the Sounders’ victory in the 2016 title game with his fingertip save of Altidore’s header in extra time, expressed hope for a more low-key role in this game.
“Hopefully, I don’t have to make another save,” he told reporters Friday. “I would really appreciate it if one of our strikers could come through.”
That proved from the start of the match to be wishful thinking. Seattle’s first-half highlights, aside from a weak left-footed shot from Joevin Jones, was essentially a montage of Frei stretching, leaping and diving to push balls away from his goal, or over it.
Giovinco had the best of Toronto’s early chances in the 10th minute, when he received a well-placed cross from Vazquez on the right side of the penalty area with an open path toward goal. It was the type of chance Giovinco has put away with ease since he joined Toronto from the Italian giant Juventus three years ago, but Frei and defender Chad Marshall converged at the last minute and deflected his shot just past the left post.
Frei continued to keep Toronto at bay as the tone of the crowd’s chanting shifted from exuberant to nervous. When the halftime whistle blew, tepid clapping summed up the attitude of the home fans.
Giovinco nearly put Toronto ahead in the 64th minute when he received a pass from Altidore with space in the middle of the penalty area. But his hard shot to the right side was pushed away by a sprawling Frei. In seeming disbelief, Giovinco stood with his hands on his head.
Three minutes later, Altidore put his team ahead. Giovinco received a ball in Seattle’s half, then spun and delivered an incisive through pass that split the Seattle defense. A sprinting Altidore took a touch to move the ball into the Seattle penalty area and then lifted the ball over Frei with his left foot, rippling the net and conjuring a mixture of smoke and beer and streamers out of the home fans — very few of whom sat for even a moment over the course of 90 minutes.
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