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MLS PLAYOFFS MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 16, 2016

Greg Vanney

Q. Initial comments from Toronto FC Head Coach Greg Vanney on going into the Audi 2016 MLS Cup Playoffs Conference Championships vs. rivals Montreal Impact.
GREG VANNEY: My thoughts on the rivalry and the match are I think it's great for both MLS, and I think it's great for soccer in Canada that two Canadian teams get to compete against each other in such a meaningful moment of the year and a meaningful home-and-away series. Last year was just a small taste of that, and obviously that first match, which was the play-in match, we started extremely poorly in that game and paid dearly for that, but I thought it was just a taste of the rivalry that is continuing to build between these two franchises. The Montreal-Toronto rivalry in hockey and other sports that goes way, way back, and probably soccer as well, but not obviously in MLS. But each time we play these games that are more meaningful than the last, I think the more this rivalry continues to grow and become more exciting and more interesting for the fans. And I think the players are starting to feel that same sort of buildup in this match, and obviously history will play a part in it just from last year. We have enough guys on this roster from last year who remember that day and were embarrassed on that day, as was myself, but our mentality and our mindset as we start this series will be different than what it was last year. So we're very much looking forward to it. I think it's going to be a great series and one that I think fans will find very interesting.

Q. Sebastian [Giovinco] was kind of the big snub in the MVP race but [Ignacio] Piatti was barely talked about at all in the final stretch, and I wonder your thoughts on whether Piatti is under appreciated for what he's done in the league and how youâ€™re trying to take him out of the game as much as possible?
GREG VANNEY: I think Piatti amongst his peers and players and teams that play against him and us in particular in this scenario speaking for us, we don't underestimate him. We very much know his value to the team and his ability to create and to finish. So obviously he's one of their players that we really have to keep an eye on, and we have to know where he is at all times. In my opinion one of his greatest strengths is what people don't sometimes see and what he does before he actually gets the ball. He's a guy who's very, very clever about his moments when he's helping the team defend, when he sees that the team is about to win the ball and then he's quickly transitioning into an attacking action. Before anyone else on the field is transitioning, he's already transitioning, which is what he wins fragments of time, seconds above everybody else, and that's where he gets his space and that's where he gets his separation from defenders. And then what we all see is his ability to take on defenders one vs. one and to score. Really for me what sets him apart from a lot of players in this league is his recognition in his craft to anticipate when transitions are going to happen and be one step ahead of the opposition when those moments happen. And for us it's obviously to be aware of him at all times, especially and most notably when we have possession of the ball and making sure that in those moments when he separates from the defensive effort to transition, that we have a keen awareness to where he is in addition to other players, but I think he is very, very clever about that. So we have to be organized. We have to be very aware of his surroundings and make sure that we're accountable in moments before transitions take place.

Q. Obviously there's been a lot of talk about the 3-5-2 both with the National team and even overseas in the Premier League. I was wondering if you could talk about the genesis of that idea, for bringing it to your side and some of the ups and downs that you experienced in kind of working out some of the kinks.
GREG VANNEY: Sure. For us it was a system, if you will, that we used in specific situations, scenarios, sometimes against specific opponents. And over the last couple of years, whether it was us pushing at the end of a game to try to get a goal and we would swap somebody out and be a little more attacking minded sometimes in the 3-5-2, play a little more man to man in the back sometimes if we needed to push for a goal. That was one way we used it. We also used it at times when we wanted to lock down, what we call our lockdown, which is to preserve or protect the goal, and we added what looks more like a fifth defender versus of three defenders. So we've used it in various scenarios mostly over the course of the last couple of years, and this year as we started to get more comfortable with it, we employed it a couple of times against specific opponents for very specific reasons. And through sort of training it and using it in these moments, the team became more and more comfortable with it, and we started to use it a little bit more at the end of the season. But I still think it's one of these that it works best with certain teams under certain circumstances and scenarios that make sense. And again, the guys around and in the back specifically have gotten more and more comfortable with it in their decisions and how to move in it, and so it's become beneficial for us. I think we're pretty seamless between rotating between a diamond and the 3-5-2. They're not totally dissimilar systems, though they appear so when you write them down on paper, but the way we move in them and various things, they're not so far away from each other from just the principal standpoint. But we use them now and again because the guys have gotten comfortable in it. We've used the diamond mostly against Montreal and have had a lot of success with that as well. So we feel comfortable being able to go in either direction.

Q. Don Garber spoke earlier this year in Montreal about the league's commitment to grow and enhance soccer in Canada. And I know you mentioned it briefly in your opening comments, but in what way specifically do you think having two Canadian teams will have an impact or show that growth?
GREG VANNEY: I think television viewership I think will be one. I think between our two stadiums; Montreal having moved their game into Olympic Stadium means that 60,000 or so fans will attend and have that experience of this opening game, which is something that could ignite, whether it's more fans to the game or whether it's young players to want to get into the game. The more you have experiences in the game, the more it starts to grow. And so again, having such a meaningful match between two Canadian teams, I think, will draw more eyes to it, both in the stadiums and on the field. We also in our stadium fully expect to sell out. I think by my calculation there could be 100,000 fans between the two stadiums in these two games. That's pretty amazing, and I'm not sure if MLS has ever done that before in a two-legged tie to get over 100,000 fans in the stadium. So not to mention, I think it's just going to be a very attractive matchup for the Canadian viewership across Canada. For the first time two Canadian teams playing each, then puts a Canadian team into MLS Cup Final, and again, all of these little moments, whether it's a rivalry or whatever, all these little moments to help build the sport and we've seen it grow through MLS over the years, and this is just another where the emphasis and the focal point goes on a little bit north of the border here in Canada. So no question that some growth will come out of it. How we ultimately measure that I think is tough to say and it might be over years; it may not be immediate, but we'll see it, I think, in television viewership and butts in the seats, if you will, in the stands right away.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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