TORONTO – Greg Vanney entered the news conference room sporting the salmon-pink shirt he wore last week, a big smile painted on his face.
“It’s all in the shirt,” he joked.
Over the last few weeks, Vanney had been the subject of a few Miami Vice references, for his pink-shirt-and-white-jacket combo on the touchlines. But, the TFC coach embraced the look, sporting the lucky button-up after this, the second straight home win for his side.
“We took a step forward,” Vanney said, after the match. “Would I say it was perfect for us? No. But, we took a step forward today as a group again today. All in all, I thought it was a great work effort by everybody, a good performance with the ball and we created a lot of chances.”
“It’s another step in the right direction, for sure,” TFC captain Michael Bradley said, after the match. “We talked before the game about making sure we followed up last week with another good performance and three more points today.”
While it was Justin Morrow, Warren Creavalle and Luke Moore who scored the goals to give Toronto FC a 3-1 win over the San Jose Earthquakes, each goal was birthed of the creative trickery and footwork of Sebastian Giovinco. The Atomic Ant was as impressive as ever on the day, already tying the all-time team record with six assists after two more Saturday. Vanney says this marked improvement comes down to his team figuring out how to play alongside Giovinco at last.
“We keep finding him more now than I thought we did at the beginning of the year,” Vanney explained. “He’s incredibly hard to get a hold of. He’s so quick, he finds gaps, he gets isolated one-on-one and then you’re in trouble. If you get two people or three people around him, then Michael is coming through a gap.
“I was disappointed for him today, that he didn’t get a goal,” Vanney added. “He definitely deserved one.”
Still, Vanney was pleased to see new names on the scoresheet.
“I will tell you with all candidness I told Warren before this game I thought he was going to score today,” Vanney said. “And then before the match, I said I think Luke is going to score today. He’s due. So, I didn’t call it, but I’ll say I called it.”
Toronto FC is on a high, and without one of their high profile Designated Players. Jozy Altidore is ahead of schedule recovering from a hamstring issue, and when the US forward returns, Bradley says this team will be even more dangerous.
“We’re excited to get Jozy back [soon],” Bradley said. “We feel good about the group we have. On different days, different guys can step in. We can do things in different ways. It doesn’t mean that it’s perfect yet or it always will be perfect but I still think if we’re able to keep improving, there’s not too many teams in the league who are going to enjoy playing against us.”
