Voyageurs Cup 2012

Last week the Canadian Championship, officially the Amway Canadian Championship but unofficially the Voyageurs Cup, started last week with the semifinal, first leg games. These were the scores:

Montreal 0-0 Toronto
Edmonton 0-2 Vancouver

Toronto did not win in Montreal but they also perhaps miraculously did not lose and now have a chance to reverse their fortunes and advance to the final this Wednesday when they host Montreal in the semifinal return leg.

Vancouver got goals from Eric Hassli and Atiba Harris to win 2-0 at NASL club FC Edmonton. Looks good for Vancouver's chances of advancing this week to the final.

If Canada expect to have a club make a good run in the CONCACAF tourney then I think it would be best if Vancouver or Montreal, assuming they get their rumored signings this summer, win this year's Canadian championship.

Then again who expected Toronto, after their struggles this season and last, would make it to the semifinals?

Toronto 2-0 Montreal (Toronto 2-0 on aggregate)
Vancouver 3-1 Edmonton (Vancouver 5-1 on aggregate)

Wire service story on Toronto's win, goals by Reggie Lambe and Ryan Johnson. Toronto have 2 victories in 2012, beating Los Angeles away in the CONCACAF quarterfinals and now defeating Montreal at home in the Canadian championship. Something about knockout stage games appeals to Toronto. They won this match even when playing 74 minutes with 10 following Richard Eckersley's red card.

A wire service story on Vancouver's win. Sebastien LeToux with a pair of late goals to break a 1-1 tie with the NASL's FC Edmonton.

So the championship will be Toronto-Vancouver, with leg 1 next Wednesday in Vancouver, the title decider the following week in Toronto.

I finally got to watch some V Cup action tonight.

If Montreal could score (or Kocic wasn't so great), TFC wouldn't have had a chance. Toronto scored about 90 seconds in after a ball fell right into Reggie Lambe's path and his shot deflected into the far corner.

The Eckersley red card was preposterous. It was made even more preposterous by the fact that they gave Sinisa Ubiparipovic a foul. Basically Eckersley had the ball, had a shaky touch and Ubiparipovic slid in from the side/behind and Eckersley stepped on his ankle while Ubiparipovic challenged. If that's a foul on Ubiparipovic, how do you send off Eckersley?

In any event Toronto, surprisingly, dominated the rest of the first half and after some terrible defending by Montreal (again I don't know why Jeb Brovsky plays), the ball fell to Johnson who finished from in close. Johnson had publicly criticized Winter earlier in the week, so it was a nice moment.

The second half was all Montreal and it really looked like they were going to score twice, take the away goals and move on. Except they couldn't score. Kocic made some very nice saves, Corradi couldn't hit the net and that was that.

TFC seems to be unimpressive and then win the must-win final game to advance in cup competition.

TFC is going for its fourth straight Voyageurs Cup title. Montreal had won seven straight until they lost the case for the Cup. I'm just saying.

The late game was much more entertaining than the score would indicate. Against all of the odds, the Eddies were the better team for 60-70 minutes. They were dominating possession and creating more chances. It was a pretty patch work Vancouver team, but they did start Hasli, DeMerrit, Chiumiento and Camilo.

I really enjoyed getting the chance to watch some of the Edmonton players I rarely get to see. Michael Cox is a 19-year-old second striker/flank player who has size and pace, but needs some work. I think Hamilton could be an MLS level defender some day, but not much more. Saiko played much better than he did in what I saw of the first leg. Kyle Porter was disappointing once again. He looked so good when I saw Edmonton last year. I guess I'm understanding why Vancouver gave up on him.

I did think Antonio Rago played very well at right back and dealt with some talented Vancouver players pretty well and I finally got to see Matt Lam play! He looked pretty good, but shot far too often. Lam spent three years at the Ajax academy.

Rago sent a good cross in and Yashir Pinto headed it off of Carlyle Mitchell's back, off his own head and into the corner of the net on another ugly goal. I didn't know Pinto's back story, but he's a regular Chilean U20 int. who has played a bit for Colo-Colo. He's on loan. There's a lot of Chileans in Edmonton, but it's a bit of an odd fit.

Vancouver made some subs and they paid off quickly. Le Toux scored twice and played very well. Etienne Barbara made his debut after being injured in the pre-season. He scored 20 goals in NASL and 10 seconds into his Caps debut he had burned his mark on his first touch, rounded the keeper and drew a penalty. He had the penalty saved, but looked fantastic. He's a Malta international and looks like he will add some much needed punch to the Caps attack.

Same for Darren Mattocks who scored in the 93rd (the game was still 1-0 Edmonton in the 75th) to ice it. Mattocks has unbelievable pace, but it was nice to see him score by find space in the box and finishing.

I thought Michael Nanchoff was maybe Vancouver's best player that actually started. I would like to see him get more minutes.

Once again Monsalve let Edmonton down in goal. LeToux' first wasn't very good and he gave up a bad goal in Edmonton. He did well to stop the penalty, but the Eddies might have made it interesting if Olympic qualifying hero Misiewicz was healthy.

All in all a fun night of soccer. Not the best matches, but Toronto probably saved Winter's job and it was good to see Edmonton press Vancouver.

cheers,
hobbes

Eric Hassli just helped keep Vancouver's cup dreams alive with possibly the goal of the season in the 91st minute in Vancouver.

TFC and Vancouver finished tied 1-1 heading to BMO next Wednesday.

After a weekend off, Toronto looked a little fresher and Vancouver started Marques Davidson, Thorrington and Watson and I thought they lacked a little quality and creativity early.

It was even and scrappy when DeGuzman hit a great cross to the back post and Johnson beat Beausejour in the air to power his header past Cannon who didn't move to give TFC a 1-0 lead.

Vancouver brought Hassli in for Etienne Barbara and brought Chiumiento in and really went after it. Far too much in fact. At one point TFC had a 4v1 and it looked like they had sprung Plata wide and he failed to take the pass well and stumbled until Vancouver got back. I thought Toronto had an excellent penalty appeal on a late corner when DeMerit blocked a cross with his hand.

The equalizer was a little odd. After committing a foul Soolsma tried to time waste and stood a foot from the ball and the free kick taker, took it anyway and played a one-two and ran past Soolsma into open space. That seemed to stretch the TFC defence a little and after a layoff to Rochat, he had time to pick out Hassli for a long cross to the back post and Hassli volleyed it into the top corner.

It was a great finish, but Hassli shouldn't have been that open. Henry was marking him, but I have no idea where Morgan was. He probably should have been Morgan's man considering where he ended up.

As the Canadian team gets named tomorrow morning, there's been lots of talk about the many TFC players and they almost to a man stunk. It's a miracle Dunfield stayed on the pitch. Cann was bad. Morgan wasn't awful, but he gave the ball away to LeToux a few times. Henry was the one who was playing really well and then he didn't mark tightly enough on the equalizer. DeGuzman wasn't terribly good either, but he did send in a nice ball on the go-ahead goal.

TFC can't be mad with the away goal and a draw, but considering it should have been 2-0 or 3-0 by the 90th, they may feel that had a chance to kill the tie off before coming home and they didn't do it.

P.S. Also LeToux took an illegal corner, which I'm not sure I've ever seen before. He collected the ball, rolled it to the flag, rolled it out to the edge of the corner kick semi-circle (whatever that's called) and left it for whoever was taking the kick. Except he over-rolled it by about a rotation. He was still walking away when a very head's up Hall decided the corner had been taken and LeToux touched the ball again meaning he played it to himself and it was blown dead as a foul.

P.P.S. not sure if this is better than his goal v Seattle last year, boy it's close:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_k_dc-x-Po

cheers,
hobbes

A beautiful volley by Hassli. I never tire of watching goals like that.

Sure he was left alone on that cross but how many times have we seen players similarly open put their shot into row Z? Hassli's finish was top notch.

^^+3 on that. it was a freakin' killa strike!!!

I definitely didn't want to take anything away from Hassli's finish. It was world class, but giving him that kind of space in the box and the ease with which Rochat found space to cross would bother me if I were a TFC fan.

Hassli apparently was working on volleys in training the day before. He said he "killed some birds" the day before but apparently it paid off because his technique was flawless.

cheers,
hobbes

Toronto 1-0 Vancouver (2-1 overall)

Toronto can not win a MLS match but put them in a knockout tournament and they seem to do well. For the 4th straight year Toronto win the Canadian championship.

DeGuzman and LeToux were each sent off for a mini scuffle and afterwards Toolsma set up Reggie Lambe for the 83rd minute game winner.