TORONTO — The evolution of Jonathan Osorio is happening before our eyes.
The 25-year-old midfielder is one of the longest-tenured players on Toronto FC's roster, and in the five years since his debut for his hometown club Osorio has worn many different hats.
An unexpected addition to the 2013 roster under Ryan Nelsen, the then-fresh faced Osorio displayed some fine technical skill and a nose for goal on a team that was desperate for talent. In the years since, TFC has improved steadily until becoming an MLS juggernaut, with Osorio needing to reinvent himself several times as the team around him got markedly better and different.
The kid that surprised everyone by notching five goals as a rookie never reached that mark again, but Osorio continued to find ways onto the field.
But there were hiccups along the way.
As a two-way midfielder under current Toronto boss Greg Vanney, Osorio struggled to maintain a place in the starting lineup for much of the team's record-setting campaign last season. It weighed on the Canadian international, who saw his minutes diminish while the club flourished.
"I was starting at the very beginning [of the 2017 season] and then we didn't have great results so a change needed to be made, and unluckily for me I was that change, and then our team started doing well," Osorio said on Wednesday. "That happens in football, you know? That happens. I don't think I played badly last year, there were other guys playing really well and they were winning. When the team wins, you've got to keep that team on."
Osorio reclaimed his starting spot toward the end of the year, and in the playoff run he solidified his value as a responsible central midfielder who would make the right pass and had an uncanny ability to keep possession of the ball. It was far from his swashbuckling days as an attacking midfielder or second forward early in his MLS career, but Osorio had taken on more responsibility on a much better team.
His good showing in the 2017 MLS Cup-winning run bled into 2018, with TFC making an early start to the year in the CONCACAF Champions League. Many, including the player himself, feel that Osorio has been playing the best soccer of his professional career over the past dozen matches for Toronto.
"I feel like I've earned my spot," Osorio said. "I've proved to the coach toward the end of last year and beginning of this year that I help this team and I want to big part of this team and play as many minutes as I can. To do that I've decided to play with more confidence and be more aggressive. This year I've grown a lot physically and that's helped me a lot. I've just chosen to be more aggressive this year."
Osorio's forward-thinking play has resulted in a pair of game-winners in TFC's first three CCL games. He hit a powerful header in Colorado last month to open the scoring in a 2-0 round of 16 first-leg victory over the Rapids, and on Wednesday at BMO Field he scored a sublime spinning backheel goal in the 89th minute to give his team a 2-1 first-leg win over Mexican powerhouse Tigres in the quarterfinals.
Yeah, you're gonna wanna watch this one again. And again, and again.
— Toronto FC (@torontofc) March 8, 2018
A moment of pure magic from @OsoJ92 seals the winner for the Reds.#TFCLive | #TORvTIG | #SCCL2018 pic.twitter.com/UKITbHHguM
His two goals in CCL play give Osorio the early team lead, a fact that made Vanney chuckle after Wednesday's victory.
"It's a little bit of a Jedi mind trick that I put on him," Vanney said. "I told him to stay a little deeper and not worry about scoring goals more, and now he's in front of the goal all the time."
While Vanney's tongue was firmly planted in his cheek in his summation of Osorio's play so far in 2018, it is true that the midfielder falls far down the depth chart in terms of expected offence. Behind TFC's star strikers Sebastian Giovinco and Jozy Altidore, the club also counted Victor Vazquez, Justin Morrow, Tosaint Ricketts and Marky Delgado as players who scored more goals than Osorio did last season.
With that in mind, it's by being a smarter, more team-oriented player that Vanney says has led to Osorio finding himself in dangerous positions more often in the early stages of this season.
"He's combining with [Giovinco] and playing off of guys and then moving into the next line, and he's finding himself in some really good attacking positions," Vanney said. "It's good that he's in those positions. We like those goals, we like those chances. But it isn't necessarily the focal point for Oso, so those are all bonus goals for him and for us."
CONCACAF Champions League: Toronto and Seattle take first-leg leads
Osorio is unlikely to continue to score at his current goal-every-two-games clip, but when the offence starts to dry up he doesn't intend to be any less useful to his club. Osorio has said on multiple occasions that his loss of playing time in 2017 has motivated him to be a better, more well-rounded player, and he plans to use his recent experience to his -- and his team's -- advantage.
"The last year helped me more mentally than anything," Osorio said. "Mentally I'm much stronger than I was before and that's a big part of growing as a player, and as a man."