I think I just witnessed some of the most masterful time wasting I've ever seen in my life. I...I...I think I may be ready to concede. The Union are...good?
Someone needs to get a screenshot of Bradley walking off near Aaronson: past and future of the USMNT.
I absolutely loved watching Toronto and their fans absolutely losing their $h!t during our epic time wasting there in stoppage time. Feels good to be on the other side of that. Karma's a bitch, suckers!
Something about the Union's goals recently, a lot of them seem "easy". Tap ins from simple crosses, goals that you should finish. But I think it only looks that way because the Union are starting to move much better off the ball than they have previously. I think this raises an interesting point. The Union are doing well because they're doing what they should on the ball: players off the ball move in a way that allows the attack to press forward or provide outlets to relieve pressure. What I find astonishing is how few teams in MLS do this properly and do it consistently, and how this becomes evident when you watch defenses pulled all sorts of out of position when they encounter that kind of movement.
So I rewatched the game on ESPN+. I feel like I need to give a brief play by play of just how great they did at wasting time. Przybylko went down at 89:13. He comically rolled back onto the field at 89:21. He finally is off the field at 89:50. He then stands past the end line looking confused and pointing in random directions. Ref makes him go past the touchline. Restart at 90:08. 55 seconds for that sequence. The ball then goes out for another corner. Substitution is made at 90:22. Kacper then wanders around the goal acting confused/angry. The ref escorts him to the touchline again. The whistle is blown to restart at 90:55. Add another 33 seconds. Montero goes down at 91:17. Writhes around in pain. Adding the little "VAR" signal to the ref for added flavor. Then the ref has to come over and give Przybylko his yellow for the earlier theatrics. Ref blows whistle to restart play at about 92:15. 58 more seconds. Then they played for two minutes. Pozuelo came and knocked Trusty down at 94:20 as Trusty was holding a ball near the edge of the box. Trusty milked that for over a minute and the ball didn't come into play until 85:28. 68 seconds wasted. As a side note, Trusty was literally holding the ball for about 1.5 seconds before Pozuelo came barreling into him. And in the middle of a throwing motion in an effort to get rid of the ball. So this is more of an own time waste than a time waste credited to Trusty. But just like the Union's first goal being an own goal...I'll take it. Ball is in play for about a minute and game was called at 96:26 after 6 minutes of stoppage was originally given. So adding all of that up, the Union successfully wasted over 3.5 minutes of the last 7 minutes of playing time by being complete bastards. Well done, boys.
My immediate reaction after the final whistle was, "How in the hell was that 6 minutes of stoppage time?" I wouldn't be surprised if the sequence with Kacpar was discussed ahead of time...like maybe the staff told the players, "If someone goes down 'injured' in stoppage, we will sub you out while you're down, but act confused about what just happened and take forever to leave the field to run off some time." I just hope that yellow card doesn't come back to bite us when we need him later in the season and he has to sit because of card accumulation. If we were on the other side of this, like when Toronto beat us 3-1 at home earlier this year, I would be pretty pissed off with that sequence. I feel a little chagrined to be on the winning side, but those are the rules, and 3 points is 3 points.
Kacper seems to be the player we always wanted CJ Sapong to be. That swap is making a huge difference.
From the match summary in the Toronto Sun: https://torontosun.com/sports/socce...reds-as-tfc-lacks-finish-in-2-1-loss-to-union "When the inevitable late-game push was made, frustration would lead to cautionary cards in the wake of the Union resorting to diving or engaging in delay tactics." Hey, they're talking about us!
On Instant Replay on the MLS site Bobby Warshaw reviewed the late interaction between Trusty and Pozuelo and claims "if anything, Trusty moved his head into Pozuelo". WTF? Warshaw kind of went back and forth about if the Pozuelo should have gotten a red for hands to the face and/or Trusty a second yellow for time wasting but I can't seem to follow his line of thinking most of the time anyway so whatever...