Toronto FC (0) - New York City FC (1) Postgame Summary

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MLS Toronto FC

Toronto FC (0) - New York City FC (1) Postgame Summary

April 26, 2025 - Major League Soccer (MLS)
Toronto FC News Release


SCORING SUMMARY

NYC -Alonso Martínez 64' (penalty kick)

MISCONDUCT SUMMARY

TOR - Deybi Flores 21' (caution)

NYC - Kevin O'Toole 22' (caution)

TOR - Kevin Long 31' (caution)

NYC - Julian Fernandez 71' (caution)

NYC - Tayvon Gray 90+7' (caution)

RECORDS (W-L-T)

Toronto FC 1-5-4 7 points

New York City FC 4-4-2 14 points

LINEUPS

TORONTO FC - Sean Johnson; Kosi Thompson, Kevin Long, Sigurd Rosted, Raoul Petretta; Deybi Flores (Alonso Coello 66'), Jonathan Osorio (C), Federico Bernardeschi (Tyrese Spicer 70'), Maxime Dominguez (Lorenzo Insigne 67'), Theo Corbeanu, Charlie Sharp (Matty Longstaff 88')

Substitutes Not Used: Luka Gavran, Nicksoen Gomis, Kobe Franklin, Lazar Stefanovic, Markus Cimermancic

NEW YORK CITY FC - Matt Freese; Tayvon Gray, Justin Haak, Thiago Martins (C), Kevin O'Toole (Nico Cavallo 65'); Keaton Parks, Jonathan Shore (Birk Risa 79'), Maxi Moralez (Andres Perea 78'); Hannes Wolf, Agustin Ojeda (Julian Fernandez 65'), Alonso Martínez (Monsef Bakrar 90+6')

Substitutes Not Used: Greg Ranjitsingh, Tomas Romero, Strahinja Tanasijevic

MEDIA NOTES

Charlie Sharp and Maxime Dominguez made their first starts for Toronto FC.

MEDIA ASSETS

Media assets including match photos and post-match press conference from Head Coach Robin Fraser and midfielder Maxime Dominguez are available HERE.

ROBIN FRASER - HEAD COACH, TORONTO FC

Q: Robin, obviously not the result you wanted, but maybe you talk about the performance. How would you evaluate your team's sort of showing today?

I think we did so many things well and we defended hard. I can't fault the effort. It reminds me a little bit of some of the earlier games where we do a lot of things really well and then a moment kills us. I felt like we were in decent control, we weren't really too threatened. And then in a moment, a defensive moment, we ended up giving away. I hadn't looked at the penalty kick, so I'm not really going to comment on it. But from where we were, we shouldn't have put ourselves in that position. So that part of it was disappointing offensively again, we had a few promising moments where I think we, again, keep using this word moments that a loose first touch ball gets away from us when we're in a pretty good scoring opportunity. So for me, again, it comes down to the moments.

I think overall with the ball, we were better today than we were last week. We had some promising attacks, we were able to unbalance some a bit, but in the final action, probably not quite as sharp as we needed to be at the end of the day. Disappointed because it was a game that I thought we could have won. And certainly, credit to New York. They came in tough conditions, windy day and got out of here with a result. So, credit to them, but disappointment for us because I feel like it's a game that we could have gotten more out of.

Q: Charlie Sharp made his first MLS start today. Interested to hear your take on how you thought he did?

For the most part, I thought Charlie did well. He ran hard. He defensively, he did kind of everything we asked for offensively. We were able to play some balls into him. He had some good layoffs to help continue our attacks. He had a couple of moments that I'm sure he'd want back and then in and around the goal. But overall, I thought his performance was good. I mean, ready to be called upon at the last second and to get your first start and to play in a tough game and tough conditions, I thought he did quite well.

Q: It was last second?

It was not determined before. It was about one o'clock today.

Q: Why was it left so late then?

We were just hoping that Ola [Brynhildsen] would've been ready and it turns out he wasn't ready.

Q: Is that always kind of the risk when you guys don't take your chances and you had the ball in a couple of good positions today, just weren't able to find that moment?

That's a great question. You basically loaded that up for me to answer and without a doubt that's how it works, right? You create some good opportunities early if you capitalize on them. The game is different. Goals change games so much. So, if we capitalize on some of our early chances, if we're up one nothing, if we're up two nothing, the whole game feels different. And certainly, when you're at home, that's the feeling is that can you capitalize on some of your good play? Because then there becomes this groundswell of emotion that helps really push you forward. And that's really the critical thing. You think about last week we played quite poorly, but we scored early and because we scored early, the game just feels different. So certainly, that's something for us that we have to finish our chances early. We have to have this sort of killer mentality in front of the goal and early in games because as you said, James, it's a fantastic question. Goals really, really change games. And so for us, we have to a little bit, I've talked about this before, we have to reward ourselves. We had some really good moments early on, didn't quite capitalize. And then the longer a team hangs around, the more you leave yourself open to this sort of outcome.

Q: It was a first start for Maxime [Dominguez] as well and he's still working his way into the side. You can see a little bit of that. But what did you see from him? What is he going to add to the team?

It felt like there were some moments in the first half in particular where we're able to find him behind their sixes and the game sped up immediately and it felt like it was going to be a really dangerous moment. So, he's the type of player who can travel with the ball quickly, he can play quickly, he can play in one and two touches. And I thought he had a few moments tonight where again, it looked really promising. And just in the end, I think for all of our attacking crew, they all probably are thinking could have done better in that instance. But what he brought I thought was a real change of pace in the attack at times when the balls got to him.

Q: It's just two points out of 12 at home with one goal and I think it's about a 340-minute goal drought. How do you account for maybe the lack of results at home?

Well, moments, moments, moments on the attacking end, moments on the defending end, I would say that our performances at home have been decent, but I think moments have decided the games for us. I mean Chicago, I thought we played really well at home, didn't take chances, ends up on the wrong side of it. Some of the others, Vancouver obviously a very tough team, fought hard, played really well, or played really well in spurts but didn't capitalize on opportunities. And I would say the same for today. I felt like the way we were with the ball today was obviously much improved to how we were last week but doesn't do any good if the result goes the wrong way. So I do think it comes down to moments we're still trying to fine tune or attack to turn decent opportunities into real scoring chances. And I think that that's where we are in the process of this build as we started off by really focusing on making ourselves difficult to play against.

And certainly, in the last four games prior to today, we saw that even today we saw that it's not like we were giving up a lot of chances. So, I think the mentality has improved from the beginning of the season to now. And then I think I said this earlier in the week now, it's about really starting to fine tune our attack while continuing to have this very hard to play against mentality. And I thought we really did defensively, we looked like we've looked, we worked for each other, covered each other, won a lot of second balls, made it somewhat difficult for them, which I think has really been our calling card for the last number of games. But the emphasis now has to be, especially at home, continue to be hard that way to play against, but we have to be a little bit sharper with the ball, a little bit sharper in the moments in front of the gold.

Q: It's a short turnaround because you've done Montreal here on Wednesday. What do the next few days look like and how, I mean in terms of lineup for Wednesday, I know you can't sort of say, but I mean --

I wish I could tell you I have no idea at the moment really. Guys did some running after the game to top them up. We'll take tomorrow off and we'll come in Monday, look at what we have, look at what's healthy. And as I said to them, coming with a mentality that we're not going to lose here, we're coming with a mentality that when games are tight, we need to come out on top. And it's easy to say, but it's again about this mentality, about this engagement level that when we're at home, we have to do everything we can to win the games here. Starting the Canadian Championship, which is certainly a big deal here in Canada and something that we obviously badly want to win. This team has won it quite a few times, but not recently. And certainly, this is something that we would love to be able to win for our fans as the Canadian Championship. Obviously, it leads to other things, Champions Cup and that sort of thing. So it's something that we take very seriously. This is not a throwaway tournament for us at all and it's about getting ready for Wednesday.

MAXIME DOMINGUEZ - MIDFIELDER, TORONTO FC

Q: Your first start for Toronto. Just wanted to get your thoughts on the game and how you thought you did in your first start in MLS?

Happy to start for the first time with the team, but honestly I have a bad feeling today because we should win the game and personally, I can do much better. So yeah. Bad feeling today,

Q: Do you feel like you guys created enough chances to win this game today?

I think we had two, three big chances to score. If we score the goals, the game could be different. But yeah, I think we have quality to do more and we will do more.

Q: What's the difference for you between a play coming off and not coming off? Is it familiarity with your teammates sort of being on the same page? What did you see today?

No, I see that we have good feeling. I have good feelings with the other players. We just need to be, I think, better on the last part of the pitch, the last pass, the last shot to score the goals. But like I said, we had chances to score and if we score first, I think the game is completely different.

Q: Did you get a good look at the penalty decision?

No, I didn't see. I need to see again, but when I spoke with the players, I think it was a bad decision. So, this hurts.

Q: The last couple of games we've talked about engagement, we've talked about mentality or attitude. Does it feel like performances like today where everybody's given their all is the baseline for this group right now?

Yeah. Right now we can see, the last couple of games we are playing all together. We can see less goals and yeah, we had in every game chances to score and we need to keep going like this and hope that the results will come.

Q: How difficult did the wind make it out there?

Yeah, it was not easy to play, honestly, with the condition was not easy. I think that without this wind we can play much, much better. But yeah, that was for both teams so we can't speak about this.

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