Fair-weather viewers who, after an early lead, decide a match is over and switch off at the half? Joke’s on them!
Saturday night’s Trillium Cup – the annual rivalry series between Columbus Crew SC and Toronto FC – sparked, zombie-like, back to a second life in the span of 10 minutes in the second half at MAPFRE Stadium in Columbus. (Mmm, brains!)
Crew SC came up on halftime with two goals to Toronto’s zero. TFC head coach Greg Vanney thought things really weren’t supposed to look so grim at that point. “We had the vast majority of chances,” Vanney said after the match. “It was hard to say at halftime that we were supposed to be down by two goals.”
Of course, then, that’s when things got worse—at first. Around the 46-minute mark, Crew SC's Justin Meram managed a sweet dribbling pass to Ethan Finlay, who sent the ball straight through Toronto goalkeeper Joe Bendik’s legs. This would lead some over-confident fans to change the channel, maybe, and for some less-confident players to just chuck it. “We had a lot of reasons to put our heads down at 3-0,” Vanney said.
But this is Toronto FC we’re talking about, home of white-hot All-Star Sebastian Giovinco, and trailing Crew SC in the Eastern Conference by just three points. So just a few minutes later, the team jostled their fans awake from naptime. Just two minutes after Finlay’s goal for Columbus, Toronto’s Collen Warner managed to get the ball to Giovinco, who easily shot it into the back of the net. Just five minutes after that, Warner scored himself.
Everybody awake?
From there, Crew SC, perhaps psyched out and tired, lost steam. A comeback finally seemed possible for Toronto, but it came down to the 89th minute—that’s when they clawed back with a draw after Jozy Altidore scored on a penalty kick. The stadium boomed with the boos of Crew SC fans, so Altidore decided to make things extra sweet.
Vanney seemed pleased with the naysayer-silencing, second-half plot twist. But with the team testing a new 3-5-2 formation, he admitted his guys can’t snooze and lose. “The way they got [their chances], I think we could have been a little tighter,” he admitted, saying he wanted goalkeeper Joe Bendik to get “a little stingier about goals.”
Still, he’ll take the undead draw as something of a victory—until they’re back in Toronto.
“It’s an outstanding result for us,” said Vanney, whose team has 10 of 15 matches remaining at the friendly confines of BMO Field. “We know at this point we’ve got to get results at home.”
