Toronto FC-- Every Dog has its Day

The top story this week is easy: Toronto FC 3: Chicago Fire 1.

The expansion team gets its first goal, first red card and first win. Naturally, everyone had picked the Fire to dominate this game. But I think this ending was as foreshadowed as Macbeth killing the king:

First, I had asked earlier if the Fire were a paper tiger. Despite compiling an impressive record against the league's best teams, the Fire have been outplayed in large stretches of every match except against Kansas City. They are capable of playing the best soccer in the league on the backs of Justin Mapp and Chris Rolfe, but they are a supremely fragile team that has had a few breaks go their way.

Second, Toronto really weren't as bad as they seemed. Initially, a number of good soccer writers thought that FC would be a decent expansion side. Probably no one expected struggles to rival Real Salt Lake: Toronto had a pretty impressive array of talent-- Eskandarian and Buddle are both [i]capable[/i] of 10 goal seasons. Ronnie O'Brien and Richard Mulrooney are perhaps the best in MLS at their positions. And Mo Johnston had put together a roster full of guys on defense who had played in EUROPE! This team was going to be pretty good. AND they had Conor Casey, who had also played in EUROPE!

So how did this team go 0-4 without any goals to start the season-- and how did they put together this win at home?
(1) Mo Johnston went out and got some MLS defenders. Marvell Wynne and Kevin "Bobcat" Goldthwaite aren't exactly MLS Best XI defenders, but they've both played in this league. In contrast, Marco Reda came from Songdal in Norway. I think the Norwegian league is probably equivalent to MLS. BUT success there is absolutely no guarantee of success in MLS. Trotting out English first division players and Scandinavian top flight veterans is not a recipe for an MLS Championship.

Goldthwaite instantly repaid Mo Jo's decision to bring him in by having a career game against Chicago and even scoring a goal. There should a rule-- let's call MLS Expansion Rule No. 1-- If you want to be successful in MLS, build from the back. MLS defenders don't cost much money, but you need a few solid veterans if you want to make a run. Salt Lake is the perfect example of how to screw this up: John Ellinger never learned Rule No.1, but I bet Kreis is smarter and will spend some of the money RSL is getting from the league (ironically, to compensate for Kreis's retirement as a player...) on defensive-minded veterans.

(2) Settling things in the back really helped out Toronto's midfield. Andy Welsh, in particular, looked like he figured out to play in MLS, but a lot of that had to do with just getting the ball in better positions.

(3) The acquisition of Dichio looms large. Danny Dichio has the potential to be a major MLS scorer. Forget his and Mo Jo's hype about how MLS defenders have never seen anything like him (part of the whole massive Canadian and European tendency to want to "educate" us about soccer). It's hardly the first time that MLS defenders have faced an imposing target forward (geez-- remember Mamadou Diallo?). But Dichio will cause trouble-- and he certainly did for Chicago. It's fitting that he'd score FC's first ever goal.

(4) Ronnie O'Brien is a bad ass. Simply put, some of Toronto's problems just come down to the fact that O'Brien, the best player on their roster, was injured. O'Brien, with his leg so wrapped in tape that he looked like the Michelin Man, was massively influential. He didn't get on the board, but his vicious long range blasts made defenders step up-- which created space in the box.

(5) No. 1 draft pick Maurice Edu is solid. He too was injured for the first couple of games. He played well enough in the first two, but against Chicago, he had his coming out party.

(6) The fans. No, Toronto's not the first MLS town to have passionate fans. But the fans created an imposing atmosphere, throwing approximately all 20,000 seat cushions that had been given away at the gates. When the TV announcers mentioned at the half that Chicago had requested a covered bench, you kind of wondered if it was all over for the Fire. Sure enough, they came out of the break tentatively and were rightly punished by FC.

Put it all together: Mo Jo's biggest mistake was not putting together an MLS-ready defense. FC suffered a few key injuries. And that was a recipe for a terrible starts. But with the addition of two MLS defenders, one bull of a center forward, and the return from injury of O'Brien and Edu, Toronto should be much better from here out.