TORONTO — Moments after Toronto FC had completed its biggest win in club history on Sunday night, the players gathered in front of the south end of BMO Field and prepared to join the team's most vocal supporters in a round of chanting, as has recently become tradition after TFC's home victories.
Except one player was missing.
Jozy Altidore, TFC's in-form striker who had scored the winning goal in a 2-0 first leg conference semifinal against New York City FC, was at midfield doing a television interview.
Getting impatient, the crowd in the south end, and many thousands more who had remained throughout the rest of the stadium to celebrate, started chanting Altidore's name. He wrapped up his interview and quickly hurried over to join the rest of his teammates, grabbing a drum stick and — along with fellow goal scorer Tosaint Ricketts — led the crowd in a round of rhythmic singing and clapping.
"They called me over to bang the drum," Altidore said of the supporters groups who make up BMO Field's south end. "It was cool. The fans have waited for moments like this for so long — to feel the importance of a team that's trying to build something, that's trying win trophies, and this is all for them. We play for them and we feed off their energy."
It took almost ten seasons for TFC to win a playoff game, and in the course of four days the club has done it twice. The diehard fans, who were the real story behind TFC for most of the club's existence, have been renewed by the on-field surge that began last year and hit a crescendo for the club over the past couple of weeks.
TFC is 90 minutes away from the conference finals, an unthinkable situation just a couple of years ago. For the supporters, many of whom have suffered through unbearably bad soccer for the better part of a decade, their passion is finally being reflected and matched by the team on the field. And both sides are better for it.
"It's probably the best MLS atmosphere I've ever been in," Drew Moor said of the 28,220 fans who braved near-freezing temperatures on the north shore of Lake Ontario. "It was unreal. These fans have been great all season, but it seems like the last two games they've really taken a hold of it. You want to capture it, and you want to enjoy it as long as possible.
"The plan is to make sure they have at least one more [playoff game] to come back to."
The press box here at BMO Field shook quite hard on both of those goals. This place is lit. #TFCLive #torvnyc
— Rudi Schuller (@RudiSchuller) October 31, 2016
Of course, that means putting NYCFC to bed after grabbing the two-goal lead in the first leg. The players know that, if they want to keep the great feeling going at BMO Field, they need to take care of business at Yankee Stadium on Nov. 6.
"The atmosphere from the first minute, right up until the end when we got the goals, and the celebration at the end, it was a special night," TFC captain Michael Bradley said. "We're happy that we could reward everybody that came out again and send them home happy and hopefully proud as well. But the job's not done."