TORONTO — Toronto FC and the Chicago Fire have seen a lot of each other of late.
The Reds host the latest meeting between the two clubs at BMO Field Saturday night, seven days after goals from Sebastian Giovinco and Jonathan Osorio carried them to a 2-1 win at Chicago’s Toyota Park. That was their second meeting of the season after a 2-2 draw in Canada back in May.
The feeling of familiarity extends to personnel. TFC swapped wingback Nicolas Hasler for Fire forward Jon Bakero before last week’s match, while Chicago has also added ex-Toronto winger Raheem Edwards in this transfer window. Toronto lost Edwards to LAFC in December’s expansion draft. He was flipped to the Montreal Impact before being traded again to Chicago.
“To see Nico there will be strange,” TFC coach Greg Vanney said. “Seeing Raheem over there [in last week’s game] — Raheem has been gone for a little longer, so it’s maybe a slightly different scenario. But seeing Nico… I assume he’ll start. I assume he might start at right back, that’s what I would anticipate. So yeah, it will be interesting. It’ll be strange. I know the guys are close to him, so it’ll be good for the guys to get out and compete against him. He’s a good player. He’s a good kid.”
Asked whether he enjoyed playing the same team twice in a row, Toronto captain Michael Bradley replied: “I’ll tell you tomorrow, after the game.”
“It’s one of the peculiar things about MLS scheduling sometimes, is that you have these back to backs,” he added. “We’ll take it for what it is. We can’t pick and choose who we’re playing against or who we want to take points from at this point. We’ve got to play and step on the field every single weekend ready to play and be sharp and to take three points. Obviously the fact that you’re playing the same team so quickly means you try to take some things away from the first game, for sure. I’m sure they, like us, will tweak a few things around. We’ll go from there.”
Vanney said that “probably 90 percent” of the players, including Bradley, who have not been sidelined by an injury have played through some kind of physical issue this season. Bradley will be back in the lineup on Saturday after being rested in both legs of the Canadian Championship semifinal against the Ottawa Fury, which TFC won 4-0 on aggregate to create its first three-game winning streak of the year.
“I feel good,” Bradley said, declining to reveal any ailment he has been battling. “I feel very good.”
He could be joined in midfield by Victor Vázquez, who trained in a pattern of one day on, one day off this week. Vázquez came off the bench in Chicago but his involvement has been limited due to multiple ongoing niggles, the latest of which is swelling in his knee.
“Good possibility that he’ll be involved,” Vanney said.
Brazilian right back Auro trained lightly and is expected to return to TFC’s sessions in full next week after a hamstring injury. Fellow defender Drew Moor, however, will need more time after sustaining a minor calf injury while recovering from a quad problem and looks set to miss next weekend’s game at Atlanta United.
“On his return from the original quad thing, he had a small calf setback,” Vanney explained. “Problem is when you sit out for these long ones and you’re trying to push to get yourself fit again, you’re a little bit susceptible. So he had just a small calf thing that has probably set us back a week. He’ll be somewhere between Atlanta and soon then after that.”