Toronto FC sees progress on the field, looks to bring in more talent to build on it

TORONTO — Toronto FC’s season started with an eight-game (0-4-4) winless streak. And it ended with just six wins in total, outside of the playoffs for a fifth straight year.

But there appears light at the end of the TFC tunnel. How bright is yet to be determined.

Toronto (6-14-14) lost just once since the start of August. And while it only posted one win in its final 10 games (1-1-8), thanks to a league-record run of eight straight draws, it was a victory of consequence. Playing for pride and job security, Toronto recorded a 4-2 win over a motivated Orlando City side fighting to avoid dropping into a playoff wild-card game.

“It was a tough year, especially a tough start,” said captain Jonathan Osorio. “But I think I’ll remember it as in the summer, for various different reasons, the team started to jell, and it started to click.

“At the end of the day, listen, we didn’t make the playoffs and it’s disappointing … But I think we can say with the results that we’ve had in the last few games, we became a hard team to beat and that’s positive. And the last game ending like that is also a positive. It gives hope for next season, and so I hope the club is now in a position to begin really a new era, a new project, to get things going in the right direction again.”

Finding a marquee striker is key after Toronto elected not to retain German forward Prince Owusu, who went on to lead CF Montreal with 12 goals this season, and struck out with Norwegian Ola Brynhildsen. High-priced Italians Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi are also in the club’s rear-view mirror.

TFC tied for 27th in the 30-team league on offence, averaging 1.09 goals a game. Toronto’s season total of 37 goals was just eight more than Lionel Messi’s solo haul for Inter Miami.

Toronto ranked last in the league in shots (341) and shots on target (121). The club was 6-2-4 when scoring first, 2-7-0 in one-goal games and a dismal 0-12-7 when conceding the first goal.

The story was far better on defence, where Toronto tied for seventh in the league in conceding 1.29 goals a game on average, with veteran goalkeeper Sean Johnson routinely standing on his head

The club has plenty of room to manoeuvre with 14 players on expiring contracts, albeit with club options, and the loan spells of Theo Corbeanu and Maxime Dominguez expiring at the end of the year.

Expect change.

“There’s a lot of talk about bolstering the roster, and we’re looking for everything to be quite honest,” said coach Robin Fraser.

“I don’t believe that there’s a portion of the field in which we shouldn’t be looking to strengthen and bolster,” added GM Jason Hernandez.

The key will be to not throw out the baby with the bathwater — and to find pieces that fit with playmaker Djordje Mihailovic, who arrived via an August trade with Colorado.

“For us, it’s really an opportunity to strengthen the roster while maintaining the culture that we’ve established this year,” said Fraser. “So clearly it’s not that we’re going to change the entire team over. We certainly want some continuity from what we’ve accomplished this year.”

The season started with uncertainty over Insigne’s future, a leaky defence (12 goals conceded in the first five games) and star fullback/wingback Richie Laryea going down 22 minutes into the second game of the season, March 1, with a hamstring injury that kept him out until May 31.

Considered surplus to requirements, Insigne did not even dress in the first four games. He ended up making 12 league appearances, including 10 starts, with one goal and three assists before the club bought out his contract along with that of Bernardeschi, who produced four goals and four assists in 15 games.

Fraser’s biggest challenge was “to get the team to be on the same page and to have the same goals.”

It’s perhaps no coincidence that talk of the team’s selflessness followed the Italians’ July 1 buyout. TFC became a team rather than two leading men and a supporting cast.

Fraser has said his players “came together and trusted each other and were accountable to each other.”

“And the last two or three months of the season, we’ve just seen progress every day,” he added,

Spanish midfielder Alonso Coello says the team began to find its feet during the summer under Fraser.

‘When you have four coaches in the last three years, it’s not easy to stay consistent as a player, as a team,” he said. “Every coach tries to bring his idea of how the team should play and how even you in your position should play.

“I think it took us some time to adapt to what Robin is trying to do here. I don’t think we have reached the level that we want to do it at yet. His idea is, I think, way more fluid and free than, for example, what John’s (Herdman) could be last year.”

Herdman’s style of play was “a bit more rigid and pattern-based,” Coello added.

Toronto finished 11th in the Eastern Conference under Herdman last year, three points out of the playoffs with an 11-19-4 record, good for 37 points. TFC placed 12th this season with 32 points, 21 points below the playoff line.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2025