TORONTO — No one said it was going to be easy.
Despite all the pre-match talk about how Toronto FC was going into the CONCACAF Champions League final as the favourite, it was Chivas Guadalajara that looked like the team of destiny after the Mexican side won 2-1 in Tuesday's first leg at a frigid BMO Field.
Having scraped into the final by virtue of a 1-0 aggregate win over the New York Red Bulls in the previous round, Chivas made no new fans with a style of soccer that saw the Mexican side get heavily outshot. Guadalajara looked second-best in both legs against the Red Bulls, as it did for much of the quarterfinal series against the Seattle Sounders.
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Meanwhile, TFC was slugging it out with Tigres and Club America and coming out on top. Toronto went toe-to-toe with its Mexican opposition in the rounds leading up to the final, and was full value for each successive aggregate victory it claimed over teams that are, quite frankly, much better than Chivas in 2018.
Given the path each team took to the final, it stood to reason that Toronto should be favoured.
On Tuesday, Chivas showed the fallacy of such thinking.
By no means a free-flowing side, Guadalajara had to rely on scrappiness and smart tactics to earn results earlier in the tournament. And in the first leg of the final, the Matías Almeyda-coached club never looked to outplay the reigning MLS champs in their home stadium, but rather to secure a result through strong defensive organization and opportunism in front of goal.
MORE: Almeyda works around Chivas' limitations to deliver first-leg win over Toronto
"We knew what the game was going to look like, telling you from experience this was a very man-to-man game," TFC coach Greg Vanney said. "In the grand scheme of things from what I can recall they didn’t have a ton of shots on net, most from distance. No great looks on goal."
This was a departure from anything TFC saw from the other Mexican sides it faced in the tournament. Tigres and Club America approached their matches with TFC as if they were the teams which would set the tone and dictate play. The result was open, attacking soccer — the type that Toronto was built to play.
By the time Tigres and Club America realized that TFC could hang with them, it was too late. Both sides had allowed Toronto to claim first-leg victories and were forced to open up even further in the second legs, giving TFC the opportunity to grab the needed away goals and move on to the final.
That's where things changed for TFC. Chivas' gameplan of stifling the Toronto attack and man-marking all over the field was a different look than the Canadian club had previously faced, and it forced awkward turnovers and at-times frantic play in the defensive end.
It gave the visitors just enough opportunity to grab a pair of crucial goals at BMO Field before the action shifts to Estadio Akron in Guadalajara next week.
"I don’t think the outcome was based on the style of play, I think the outcome is based on them finishing a couple chances that we should’ve dealt better with," Vanney said. "We had a couple looks that we wish we could take back, but that’s how games are contested like that and sometimes that’s how the results play out."
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That's not to say TFC was without its chances. Jonathan Osorio's first-half goal was an example of how effectively Toronto can cut teams open with purposeful passing in transition, and TFC had several opportunities to draw level or even pull ahead on Tuesday.
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But the end result was the same: a well-executed defensive gameplan by Chivas that gives them the advantage ahead of the second leg in Mexico.
And now Toronto is going to have to win in Mexico for the first time in club history if it wants to live up to the role of favourite.